Purpose of Music

On the surface it appears that music is for entertainment or as a money-making opportunity for the gifted or the lucky. But if one looks a little deeper it can be seen that music can be used to bring people together to build community in group performances whether that community is in the audience, in the ensemble or both. Music can be used in psychology to help people express their emotions when they find it difficult or impossible to use words. Music therapists use music for healing the sick or the bereaved through its power to stir the emotions. Music can be used to help people unwind after an upsetting day, to enter into meditation, to express the religious sentiment or create drama in the movies. The powers of concentration involved in performing and composing music can give a person a greater chance of success in the world. It can help people see themselves as having an influence on the world and therefore feeling contented if they create something useful and beautiful. A person becomes a co-creator of the universe with the source of all life instead of merely theorizing about life in lofty spheres of abstraction which alone leads to depression and a lack of passion.

Many people are becoming unbalanced as a result of modern life due to its complexity and the difficulty of living sustainable with nature and each other. A call to greater complexity, disharmony and distortion for no other reason than because it is the way we seem to be going is like intentionally stepping on the gas while approaching a fatal fall from a cliff. There must be a balance between randomness and control.

I like aspects of modern education because it is sometimes saying that fields such as music are not separate boxes from other subjects. For example, music composition overlaps music theory, performance and aesthetics. These are obvious. What is not obvious is that music composition overlaps other fields such as religion, philosophy, mythology, architecture, mathematics, sociology and psychology. Music does not have hard boundaries that separate it from everything else and therefore cannot be thought of as a box. The same way that we cannot place ourselves outside nature. We are a part of nature, the trees are our external! lungs and there is no escaping the fact without them we would all die.

Thai Music: Tuning

The Thai tuning system is originally derived from the Javanese which in turn was derived from Chinese music theory. The Thai system is based on seven pitches an equal distance apart from each other. This results in a scale which not only does not have a perfect fifth but also has no notes which will be the same as any in the western scales. In Thai music, the fourth and seventh pitches are usually avoided, a practice similar to the avoidance of the 3rd and 7th in China. They function as ornaments or passing tones.

My Bio II

I have read many books on aesthetics, music composition, and ethnomusicology especially gamelan transcriptions and East Indian musical practices. I'm interested in world music theory, scales, chords, harmony, music composition, rhythms, drums and drumming.

I have jammed with Korean jazz marimba player and music professor Baek Jin Woo and Blues artist Son Yong Woo of the band Shincheon Blues.

I have a sitar, a Korean Kayageum (Koto), Korean Guengari (small gong), Korean Jing (medium gong), Korean Chango (double headed drum played with a stick and a hard ball mallet), American Chapman Stick, Steel drums from Trinidad, a didgeridoo from Australia and an equal tempered Indonesian Gamelan!