Last Tuesday morning, the musician Joo Won Park was standing on the JFK Boulevard Bridge holding a small recording device near a flock of seagulls in order to capture the sounds they were making. “You have to be very quiet and very patient,” he said softly, trying not to startle the birds. “When I am making a field recording, I have one rule: I always wait until I think I have captured the best sound of the day, and then I keep recording for five more minutes. The best sound always happens after you think you already have it.”

Park, 33, grew up in Korea. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, and his doctorate from the University of Florida. He has lived in Philadelphia since 2008, and is currently an assistant professor in the music department at the Community College of Philadelphia. He also composes, records and performs using a computer, toy instruments and field recordings.

Park kindly shared with us the piece he made using his field recording from last week’s meeting at the 30th Street Station (stream it below). About the finished piece, he said: “The first part is a collage of field recordings I made that day. The ‘outside’ sounds (hail, seagulls) and ‘inside’ sounds (train station, resonance of the metal poles of the bridge) are mixed into one soundscape. As the piece progresses, the sounds become more unnatural: the hail sound turns into a hectic melody, the voice becomes incomprehensible echo, and the pole sound with larger-than-life reverb signals the end of the piece.”

Though Park mostly works as a solo artist, on Saturday night, he performs in a duo at Studio 34 with Julius Masri (Superlith, et al.). Before we went out on the bridge to chase seagulls, Park and I walked around the train station and talked about his music and the importance of listening closely to what’s happening around us.

The Key: What does computer music mean to you?

Joo Won Park: I think of it as trying to do something that’s unique with the computer, rather than imitating human performance. I try to make music that a computer can do better than a human, or that is too bothersome for a human to make. And I’m interested in creating a duo between the computer and me. A lot of times, I don’t know what the computer will spit out. When I make music on the stage, there is no pre-recorded sound. What I play goes straight to the computer, and the computer processes and changes what I play. The process the computer goes through is intentionally made so that the outcome is different every time.

TK: How exactly does your live performance practice work?

JWP: I have a program called SuperCollider that allows me to customize a lot of computer effects and processes using a text-based language. The ingredients and programs are prepared, but the combination is different depending on who I’m playing with, or what sort of instruments I bring on stage, and how the effects combine at the time. On stage, I try not to stare at the computer—a lot of performers do that. I’m not clicking the mouse or staring at the computer. I’m playing instruments, and those sounds are processed. The sound is fed through various microphones, it goes into the computer, and the sound of my objects is then processed. It’s like an extension of the sound. If you think of a word processor, it’s the extension of your arms or fingers. The computer part extends the sound that I’m creating on the stage. It extends the sound of an instrument.

TK: Why do you use toy instruments?

JWP: They’re easy to carry around. It’s impossible to carry a piano around, but I have a little xylophone I can bring with me. I also have a 3-year-old son, and when you have to take care of a child, a lot of sound inspiration comes from them. I like melodica a lot. I have a kalimba and a kazoo, too. Lots of small things. I like the idea of holding a small instrument because it’s very personal. I like to bring that intimacy—that personal experience—to the stage. It’s also sort of nostalgic. When I grew up in Korea, I remember 60 kids in a room playing a recorder. It was a very harsh sound, and I still like that harsh sound. I like recreating that memory.

TK: How do field recordings fit into your work?

JWP: When you record something, or listen to something while having the intention of recording it, you hear things differently. All of the sounds we hear right now, are actually a disturbance to our interview. But if you stopped to hear these sounds as a source to record, you would start to hear something else. You’d hear the room resonating, and you focus on these people walking, and at a certain point you find something musical about it. My job is to find these moments, and to archive these musical moments that happen in life. Recording for me is like playing scales. If you want to be a good guitarist you have to play your scales. As an electronic musician, I think field recordings are one of those things I have to do to stay in shape. And it’s a great opportunity for me to stop and listen to the world. It’s also a great way to get original sounds. You can’t get the sound of train station from a sound library, but the sounds we’re hearing right now are unique to us. I could use them for my composition. And I can bring out something more personal from the sound.

TK: How often do you make field recordings?

JWP: I record things a lot. I carry my recorder everywhere I go. Moments are always happening and I don’t want to forget them. It’s like taking a picture. For example, I recorded my son’s voice from the day he was born until his first words. I recorded as much as I could a few times a week. I got all the recordings and made a 90-minute piece out of it. The result is a baby’s voice gradually becoming speech. You can hear the changes in his tones and voice and his intelligence. It’s very interesting, and much different than making a photo or video. There are certain sounds that are very personal to me; if I don’t have a recorder, it’s just in my memory. Sometimes I take archived sounds out to refresh myself of a memory. One day I will maybe play my son this recording on his wedding day to embarrass him.

TK: What will your performance with Julius be like?

JWP: When we were rehearsing, we both just brought a bunch of stuff we can make sounds with. We had tables with objects on them. We just started making sounds, and it ended up being sort of us challenging each other. He would toss me a chain, or something, and tell me to make a sound out of it. It was like a friendly dojo battle. It’s nice to have a friendly battle like that. I respect him a lot as a musician, and the sound he makes intrigues me. Sometimes when you play, you get into a zone, and you don’t realize that time is passing. We will hopefully create a moment like that. We promised each other that we would surprise each other.

TK: And do you hope to surprise the audience, too?

JWP: After they come to our show, I want the audience to find something unusual and new in the sounds they hear everyday. Perhaps if the audience sees me making music with my coat—by rubbing my coat against something—perhaps they will hear the sound of their coat differently. Everyday sounds can become beautiful music to you. If we pay more attention to these mundane things, then I think the world becomes much more interesting.

Joo Won Park & Julius Masri play with Ashley Paul & Anthony Coleman on Saturday, February 16 at Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Avenue. More information here.

The Archer Spade Performance Series

Archer Spade Performance Series

2/16  Anthony Coleman / Ashley Paul (organ/sax duo); Julius Masri / Joo Won Park (homegrown electronics)

3/16 Chris Forsyth / Nate Wooley (guitar/trumpet duo); Jesse Kudler / Ian Fraser (electronics)

Chicago singer-songwriter and Pitchfork darling Angel Olsen plays a Folkadelphia presents show at Studio 34 in West Philadelphia tonight. Olsen recently released her acclaimed debut Half Way Home on Bathetic Records. Joining her tonight is Philly space rock explorer Brendan Codey, and haunting singer-songwriter Meg Baird, playing her last show as a Philadelphia resident before moving to San Francisco (read our exit interview with Baird here). The show begins at 8 p.m., tickets and information can be found here. Below, watch Olsen’s music video for “Acrobat.”

The Tuesday Tune-Out continues at PhilaMOCA tonight with November’s curators, JUMP Philly Magazine, bringing Southwest Philly hip-hop collective The Astronauts to the gallery, along with a screening of the locally-produced documentary Tailor Made: The Bucky Davis Story. The all-ages show begins at 8 p.m., tickets and more information can be found here. Below, watch the music video for “High Top Fade,” a song they collaborated with Chill Moody on.

From indie rock goddess to disco siren, Mirah has covered a lot of ground in her twelve-year career (get an overview in our interview here). Recently relocated back to the east coast, she plays Johnny Brenda’s tonight with Mount Moriah. The 21+ show begins at 9 p.m., tickets and information can be found here. Below, watch Mirah’s 2010 music video for “The Forest.”

Long-standing Canadian five-piece The Tragically Hip return to Philadelphia tonight for a performance at The TLA. The band is touring in support of Now for Plan A, released in October. The all-ages show begins at 7 p.m., tickets and information can be found here. Below, watch the band’s clever video for “The Lookahead.”

Photo by Aaron Igler | www.igler.net

“One thing that I love about Philly is that people aren’t very careerist here,” says Philly songwriter Meg Baird, Saturday afternoon over coffee at South Street’s OFC. “In cities like New York or L.A., I feel like there’s a greater pressure to present highly complete work. But here people are happy to hang out with your cocktail napkin work. They enjoy your sketch-y stuff, and I think they like being in on the process a little, where they see you play something that maybe you don’t really have worked out quite yet. It’s something people say is true in San Francisco too, so I’m kinda hoping that will be a nice segue, to help me feel comfortable.”

She pauses to sip her coffee. Almost two decades after moving to Philly from South Jersey, Philly’s honey-tongued songstress will be leaving the City of Brotherly Love for San Francisco, where her boyfriend lives. It’s an exciting but bittersweet time—while she’s eager to delve into the city’s long folk history (“there’s this band from San Francisco called Icky Boyfriends that really played a big role in my formative musical years,” she says. “I actually got to play with them last week in New York City which was incredible”), she knows for sure she’ll miss her family and friends, not to mention the community of musicians and music-lovers.

A Philly resident since ’95, Baird has remained close to the local folk scene pretty much ever since. The great great-niece of famed Appalachian composer I. G. Greer, she quite literally has music in her blood, and grew up singing and playing guitar and piano. After graduating from college, she admits she considered moving to NYC, but found Philly more manageable and affordable.

“A room opened up in a big house in Washington Square—this is way back when everyone lived downtown for $400—so it was a good situation,” she recalls. “It was certainly much more appealing than heading up to New York and cramming into a box on the Lower East Side or something.” She pauses. “This was of course before everyone lived in Brooklyn—living in Brooklyn at the time seemed insane.”

It turns out Philly was a good match. A few years later in 2002, Baird became a founding member of acclaimed folk band Espers, who won fans with their haunting melodies and enveloping soundscapes. Baird describes the band’s formation as a particularly memorable moment in her career: a brief but serendipitous time where friends came together to create something larger. “It was one of those moments that worked so well because it was brief,” she says with a laugh. ”That kind of thing isn’t sustainable.”

Of course, Espers is not Baird’s only successful endeavor: her two solo records, Dear Companion (2007) and Seasons on Earth (2011), are strong and seductive offerings, which paint Baird as an incredible, emerging talent. She’s also collaborated with Kurt Vile, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Sharon Van Etten—to name just a few—and has toured with Bert Jansch and James Blackshaw. But Baird has never considered herself even as much as a local celebrity.

“I know that there are people out there that enjoy my music, but it’s never like, you know—I’ve never had one of those awkward moments where someone is like ‘Wow, you’re here! You’re really great!’” She giggles. “It always surprises me when someone I don’t know has heard of my music. I think the level of notoriety is so small—when I do run into someone who is familiar with my work, it’s always a pleasant surprise. More likely, we end up having something else in common. Like, ‘oh, you live on that block? I used to live on that block!‘ Or we shop at the same farmer’s market or something.”

When Baird is not busy composing songs, she works full-time at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in North Philly, a Victorian natural history museum whose collection has remained pretty much unchanged since the death of its curator and founder William Wagner in 1885. Baird describes it as a unique trove of Darwinian science, adding that “it’s a beautiful place. I’m gonna miss it like crazy.”

Working full-time and composing is a necessity, but Baird doesn’t mind it too much. “The only thing I don’t like about working full-time and writing music,” she says—”is that I feel like I end up watering both down, which is frustrating. And it’s hard to give a lot of energy to my work, because then the music suffers, or vice versa.”

So does that mean she’ll work less when she moves to San Francisco?

“I’ll get away with what I can,” she says laughing. Other plans include spending more time recording (“I’ll have a lot more resources out there, so that might help a little,” she explains), and hopefully working towards a new record in the coming years. “I’m trying to speed up my recording process a bit,” she says sheepishly, sipping her coffee. “Generally it takes me 3 to 4 years to record an album. I’m looking to cut that in half.” She’ll also have her own recording space for the first time in years, which will allow to her expand creatively.

“Right now, I do most of my recording from my apartment,” she says. “And I like working in my apartment…but there are definitely certain sounds and textures you can’t get working from home. It’s just too obnoxious. I couldn’t do that to my neighbors!”

Baird will play one more show before heading out to the West Coast—at West Philly’s Studio 34 with Angel Olsen and Brendan Codey. But don’t expect this to be the last you’ll see of her. “I hope to visit often,” she says. “I’m looking forward to it, but I know I’ll be homesick.”

Meg Baird plays Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Avenue, Tuesday, November 13 with Angel Olsen and Brendan Codey. The all-ages show, sponsored by Folkadelphia, begins at 8:00 p.m. and admission is $8; more information can be found via Facebook. 

Galactic

Finally, if your looking for something folksy, check out the Folkadelphia Presents show at Studio 34 with The Black Swans, Meg Baird, and Glenn Jones tonight. The doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are on sale here for $10. For more details check out the Facebook event page here. Below, listen to The Black Swans’ song “Nap.”