“Ringing the Bell with Guitar”

The first question is about the most important sound that you remembers. It could be something he heard as a child or something he heard recently.

The first time music made me feel good was when I was in elementary school and I was riding in my mom's car and we were listening to a best-of album by a classical guitarist named Narciso Yepes. I don't know why my mom had that CD, I think she played it because she thought it was good for kids' emotions rather than because she knew exactly what the music was about, but that day the guitar sounded really nice and warm, even for an elementary school kid.

The second time was when I was playing a video game, called ‘Uncharted Waters’. In that game, different music played in different cities. When I was visiting somewhere in South America, I heard bossa nova rhythms and melodies, I didn't really know what it was at the time, but something ambiguous, major or minor, sounded very good to me. It was Yoko Kanno's music. Then there was a period where I was listening to metal, and the biggest influence was a video of Led Zeppelin live at Madison Square Garden in 1973, and it was a song called 'Since I've been Loving you', and I was shocked when I heard the solo. It was blues-based, rocking, with lots of notes, but it was balanced and refined. Then I fell in love with D'Angelo's sound, which was strangely edgy, but also warm and comforting. Looking back, texture was the most important thing to me, and I was looking for a good sound rather than a genre, a sound that had room to breathe and could go somewhere rather than being full of itself.

So, your guitar tone was established by searching for sounds like that?

I didn't really have a concept of tone at first. For example, I saw an interview with guitarist Grant Green, and he said that he used to turn the highs and lows all the way down to zero on his amp and just turn the mids all the way up, so I just copied that. It's actually a very crunchy and difficult sound, but I didn't think much about it, so I just used it like that. At the same time, I was using a wah pedal, but I was so busy playing that I didn't pay attention to the sound.

But after a while, I finally realized that it sounded awkward with just the mids up.

So now I'm trying to put everything at 12 o'clock and do everything else by hand. That way I can control the change in sound, and from there I can build up the amp settings little by little. At home, I also play my electric guitar without an amp, and I can hear the sound of guitar more and more. I'm always thinking about the sound, and the first thing I was looking for was a warm sound with a long sustain. The guitar is an instrument with relatively short sustain, and I want to maximize it with my hands and strings rather than artificially fixing it with effects. I think I'm still trying to find that ideal sound that I used to hear from Narsos Yepes' classical guitars when I was a kid, where the highs are very well rounded, like a bell, and the lows are rich but not overdone.

There are many guitarists who rely on effects and amplifiers, but your guitar is the opposite.

It's the complete opposite. I like to make things by hand. I recently bought an amp called the Roland Super Cube 100, which is actually a bass amp. Normally, guitar amps have 70 or 90 watts of power, so if you stroke the guitar a little hard with your hand, it will distort, but this is a bass amp, so you can hit it pretty hard. It's fat, but it sounds clean and good, but it's not too sharpy. That's what I make by hand.

You've played in several bands with different colors. Was there a different tone you were trying to achieve in each band, or were you always searching for the same sound?

What people hear in a band is the notes, the harmonies, the rhythm, the laybacks or grooves, and those things are kind of superficial and kind of like a dialect, so it's fun to try to emulate them in other bands. The thing I've always been most concerned with is the tone. How much better does the sound stick and resonate, does it harmonize in the performance, things like that.

You've tried a lot of different things musically, but I feel like your most important identity is that of an improviser. I think it's possible to categorize everything you've done so far under the theme of improvisation. Can you describe what improvisation means to you?

I used to think a lot about what music is ultimately about, and for me, it's about personal release. Doing it for other people comes after that. I do different genres because I get bored of doing the same thing every day, so I do different things, not because I think about what other people will like. If I've been doing Second Session for a long time, I want to do something that smashes like Hellyvision, and if I've been doing Hellyvision for a long time, I want to do something a little more structured. I feel like I need to keep doing it in this way, with my tail between my legs, so that I can balance it out and find peace of mind.

Improvising makes it easier to transition in the process. Even if the setting changes, I'm still the same person, so I can still say the same thing, just in a different intonation. That's why I don't do a lot of outside sessions these days. That's always a problem because I have to tell someone else's story. The story I want to tell is an abstract thing that I can't put into words, and there are vibrations that come from the personality that I have as a person, and I express them with an instrument anyway, so I think the density or kind of story is always similar.

You studied composition in college, right?

First, I graduated with a degree in classical composition, and then I took a semester of guitar at Berklee, but soon I dropped out. I couldn't afford to go to school twice.

Has the foundation of classical composition you learned in college influenced what you do now?

It had a huge impact. I still use the techniques I learned then. The most difficult part of improvising is what to do next when you get stuck, but if you think about the form of the piece and draw a guideline, it becomes easier. In classical compositions, there is such a well-organized database of how to breathe after this long breath, so I think what I analyzed while studying then is still ingrained in me.

In terms of classical compositional methods, there is counterpoint, but there are also post-war and new music composition methods that attempt to move beyond the constructivist composition of the past. Can you tell us more about the compositional methods that you considers important?

I think the different directions of contemporary music have arisen because trying to break the inertia of the past and express something different. I'm not saying that 12-tone techniques aren't musical, but I think the basic breathing and the tone you're trying to achieve should remain the same, whether it's 12-tone or atonal music.
A big influence on me is the music of the early 20th century. I listened to and studied a lot of music by Béla Bartók, who wrote a lot of music that was modern but also had folk elements. Folk music is more rhythmic than classical music, and I think studying Bartók taught me the balance between folk and modern. When I use harmony, I like to use them in a modern way, so that even if I play outside of the key, I can still recognize the original source. I think I've found the right balance now, and that's where my classical studies have helped me the most.

You've released a lot of improvised music, and even within that, you've shown very different styles. Cadejo is also an improvised music band, and there are some delicate improvisations like TEHO and some avant-garde improvisations like Beheaded. I'm sure there are many more unreleased.

I think improvised music changes depending on who you're play with. I think music is a conversation, and improvised music is not really a genre, but more related to the tone and attitude I mentioned earlier. My playing also changes depending on what the conversation is about and what the theme is. If I want to talk a little bit longer, I'll play teho, and if I want to talk a little bit more casually, I'll play cadejo.

Do you think all these different ways of speaking are necessary for you?

Yes, I need them, I think it's a temperamental thing, I don't like to speak in just one way.

When you're improvising, do you find yourself constantly thinking in your head, or do you try to clear your mind as much as possible?

When I practice on my own, I think a lot. I try to maintain a certain structure and form. For example, I might stop playing and think about the progression and variations of a theme. It's not so different from composing. But when I'm in stage, I don't think about that at all. The most important thing is to quickly understand what the other person is playing and react to it. In a performance, I try to do that first, and then I try not to be conscious of my own playing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but if the mood is good and we're communicating with each other, it doesn't feel like I'm playing. If some sounds comes in and goes out, I just let it flow. When I'm trying to do something there, it breaks the flow and the moods becomes very artificial. Because my body is already doing the talking for the situation, so all I have to do is wait and let it happen on its own, and I just let my body be a part of the process.

In Kenny Werner's book <Effortless Mastery> he talks about something similar, that improvising is about being out of your body and just watching yourself play.

I try to play as non consciously as possible. It seems it takes a long time, but sometimes things come out that don't sound like me playing. When I was recording the Cadejo album, there were a couple songs that came out completely different, even though I didn't intend for them to, and they don't sound like me playing.

You works a lot with bands, but also released many solo albums. In your solo work, I can hear the sound of nylon string guitar and the influence of Brazilian music. You said that the sound of the classical guitar was a big influence on you as a child. Is it the sound that touches your inner self the most?

I spend a lot of time playing guitar alone, and the classical guitar sounds the best when you play alone. It's much easier to get that rounded tone that I've been trying to achieve. I kept playing classical guitar like that until about 2020, and now I can play it without any effort at all. I use the classical guitar the most when I'm composing, and the results naturally come out on my solo recordings.

Let's broaden the question for a moment. The elements that make up music are rhythm, melody, harmony, and timbre, but more broadly, there are also social and technological circumstances. What are the important elements of music for you.

I've been thinking a lot about mood, atmosphere, because if the music creates a certain mood, the story will come out of it. If you create an atmosphere that's dense enough that people can relate to it, the audience will create their own story, and to create that mood, timbre and tone are important, but I think concentration is the most important thing. If you can show that the artist is concentrating on the music, people will naturally be drawn into the story, and that's what I'm looking for these days.

One of the key words in this interview is the word contemporary. In the art world, whether you like it or not, you hear the word contemporary a lot. In music world, there are sound artists who are struggling to find a sound that is at the forefront of the current era, there are people who are still trying to sound like music from the 1960s and 1970s, and there are people who have nothing to do with that at all, who are most fond of authentic African music, for example. I feel that they coexist here and there, and I want to look at these coexisting sounds with a more affectionate eye, and that's the direction of my work now. What do you think of when you hear the word contemporary?

Contemporary is literally the sound of the present, but I think it's actually genre-agnostic, just like improvisation is genre-agnostic, so I think the music that tells a story of the present is the most authentic contemporary music. Personally, I think that whereas music in the past was more physical, talking about the practical problems of making a living, music today is more spiritual, and most of the contemporary music I like has that aspect. Personally, the best contemporary music I've heard recently was Pharoah Sanders and Floating Point with the London Symphony Orchestra. It's music that flows like nothing is happening, but it's music that you can listen to over and over again without getting bored. It's tiring to debate the definition of modern music, but I think the most modern music is music that doesn't drain our energy after repeated listening.

Your work is also presented as contemporary music in some contexts. In Beheaded's liner notes, I found a sentence that said, “The two performers boldly express their contemporaneity.” What kind of contemporaneity did you express?

It's a bit personal, I think at the time I talked about that kind of contemporaneity to somehow overcome a bad situation, but actually I just make music, and I think people make up words like that. I think all music is naturally improvised because if you hit the same note ten times, they all sound different, so I don't think there is actually such a thing as improvised music. Even if you play with a machine, the machine is influenced by electricity or something else, so it's always a little different. In the end, I think contemporary is a word that makes it easier to understand certain music.

Is there a time or place that has strongly influenced your music?

When I was in high school, I studied abroad in the U.S., and the attitude I gained there still sticks with me. When I was in high school in Korea, I was worried about not fitting in because of college entrance exams, but in the U.S., I didn't have to worry about that. In the U.S., where I stayed, there were a lot of people who just did what they wanted to do without thinking about what they wanted to do in the future or whether they should be good at music. It was all about having fun, and I think that's what stuck with me.

Last question. If you had an imaginary microphone that could pick up sounds from your subconscious, what do you think it would record?

‘Lee Taehoon’, the voice that calls my name, it's probably the voice I've heard the most in my life. I heard it when I was younger, when I was being scolded, and now I hear it when I'm performing.