Part 2
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?
Dafne: I like both, depending on the situation. I can’t tell which one is better but for me, being collaborative tends to produce more creative results than doing it alone.
DyoN: Both are needed for me. Writing lyrics happens only when I’m totally alone because I have to face myself. But making a whole piece of music is like a construction to me. Some talented good workers can build their own fine house by themselves, but I am a plasterer focused on songwriting, so I need a welder, an electrician, and architecture to work with to structure a certain world.
SEI: Even if you are creating music privately, interacting with others is essential at the moment when you are releasing it to the world. It might be a good idea to prepare for it in advance.
Minsuh: I prefer being collaborative. I can't create anything alone. I'm a drummer and I don't play any other instruments. Also, since we have our guitarist as a producer of the team, I trust his decision about music.
How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?
Dafne: My work contains a love for the world, my own finiteness, and a sense of guilt towards non-human beings.
At the same time, I think the only role of music is ‘to exist’, just like human and other lifeforms exist. Giving a role to music in society is too human behavior. Music is made up of sounds which do not take a role, so I want to let my music exist solely.
Due to those conflicting ideas in me, our music will be interpreted and projected differently depending on the listener. That’s what I want and how my creativity relates to the world.
DyoN: My inspirations mostly come from inside, but those inside are grown from incidents that happened outside. After losing a loved one in the world, loneliness grows rapidly in me. At some point, it starts to overgrow that eventually breaks through me and comes out as music.
The role of music in society, for me, is to help people to keep that tree from overgrown and reduce the suffering of the existence of unwelcome plants that cannot be rooted out.
SEI: They are connected by the major theme, ‘emotion’. And I think the role of music in society is one branch of communication. Languages may vary, but emotions can be similar. I think music plays a role in bonding them.
Minsuh: I believe that it is very personal, not really about the world or society. Thus I don't make music with a sense of assigning a role. Nevertheless, if listeners get any kind of energy or consolation from us, so the world can move in a positive direction even just a little, that would be good.
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?
Dafne: Life is a mixture of loss, death, love, pain, and birth. Every component exists, and forms a whole, all are fundamentally connected. Loss is connected to death and it is painful, so is birth. Deep loss is connected to new birth, so the image of birth is also reflected in the song dealing with “Loss”, the origin motif of our music. The music making process gave me the chance to consider these ideas and rebuild them inside of me.
SEI: Music was comforting when I was in a harsh time. It was also helpful indirectly to experience things I had not been through yet by music. Especially death.
When listening to classical music, I feel very comfortable but also anxious. Feelings and thoughts that occur in me at the moment music flows, are not understood in my own way. I recognize them as if I judge them from someone else’s experience I’m listening to, even though I don’t know the creator’s intention. This phenomenon lets me deal with those big topics calmly.
How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?
Dafne: I think science broadens the range of expression in music.
DyoN: Science brings new technology, leading to new tools for music like the theremin. Also music encourages the development of science / technology to portray a certain sound. The mystery of music was revealed by science such as the scale and frequency, and why we are fond of certain types of waves. Music may reveal what stage the current technology has reached.
A song that flows into your ear is the sum total of all technologies. Online music platforms, streaming services, pressing CDs, recording engineering, microphone components, the cables, those are all sciences. Musicians and sound engineers are dying to use the latest innovation to their musical work.
SEI: Those two categories are both deeply related to biology. Sound, the vibration of air, can be felt by many animals in the form of frequency. Depending on how frequency is used, it can be communication, noise or music. Also those two help the growth of living in different ways.
Minsuh: Some scientific understanding about harmony and rhythm can be helpful for writing music. And scientists listen to music when they study or work..
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
Dafne: I think they are the same essentially. I love delicious coffee, and love the people and processes of making it.
The interesting point is, there are various standards to define a good coffee, which leads to evolution of variety tastes with a lot of creativity. So does music.
DyoN: The difference is ‘where to spotlight? This or me?’ The coffee you've given as an example, iis the main character to the customer and the worker is the background. (But at the same time I should say that those ‘mundane’ tasks support many people’s daily life and routine, so let’s call them ‘necessary’, not ‘mundane’.) On the other hand, music allows me to express ‘me’ or ‘my feelings’ as a main role.
SEI: I don’t feel they differ in the base. But some things cannot be expressed in words. I express them through music.
Minsuh: I think it's all about freedom. Like, making a cup of coffee has less degree of freedom than writing music. It has a standardized manual to some degree, but music doesn't.
That's why I can be creative as much as I want when I write, and it helps my expression through music being closer to my intention.
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
Dafne: Scale and resonance are tools to express my emotions and thoughts. Notes and sound impresses listeners. Plus, I think energy and messages can be transmitted by the concept of human beings playing together. It has a power itself.
DyoN: It’s all magic by the fairy of music, haha. Let’s pray to them.
SEI: Music consists of frequencies in several ranges. A person’s tension varies with frequency. It is related to brain waves, and also hormone production. That is, when you listen to music, emotions change due to the effect of brain waves and hormones.
If one can feel diverse and deep messages, it can be seen as a conclusion that the frequency of the music was effectively used.
Minsuh: I believe that it's up to the listener's mind. As you said, music is just a vibration and nothing more. But listeners feel something and interpret, sympathize, imagine, give meanings, think of memories and keep making new memories from that wave energy. That's how.
