AKMU shocked the world with their homeschooled musical genius with their self-composed songs. Their success reminds us of the importance of music education and shows that the naturalness of creativity can be nurtured in a free environment.
AKMU is praised for the innocence of the teenage siblings, their emotional delivery, and the perfect chemistry between them. In addition, their original arrangements and unusual and sophisticated lyrics are also appealing. What is surprising is that unlike previous auditionees who only sang existing songs, AKMU showcased their charm through their own compositions. The songs were written by the teenage siblings, who are homeschooled at home in Mongolia and have never studied complex music theory such as harmony. The appearance of these two geniuses was a great shock to the public, who had only been exposed to the music of conventional learners who studied music in the composition and practical music departments of universities, where music theory and performance are systematically taught, or singers produced by various agencies.
It is no secret that the genius of the composer plays an important and decisive role in the creative process of making music. In the movie Amadeus, we see that Mozart’s genius was the basis of his immense ability to create music, but it was also the cause of Salieri’s jealousy and eventual death. Salieri lacked Mozart’s genius, which he was unable to overcome through sheer hard work.
What does music created by musical geniuses look like? First, it contains new formal elements, such as rhythms and scales that are completely different from those of previous music. Just as the German philosopher Kant said that a genius is a rule-maker, they create aesthetic elements that deviate from the established principles of composition and incorporate them into their music. It’s generally thought that musical geniuses have the ability to easily discover and create these new elements. Unlike recent popular music, which mostly sings about love and separation, AKMU’s music contains unconventional themes and lyrics such as “Is my lunch still ramen noodles today?” and “Don’t give up before you even start, a dream deep in your heart,” and features anomalous progressions rather than the usual scales and chords. He was perceived by the public as a genius because he continued to showcase these unique aspects in his weekly broadcasts.
While there are music schools, such as composition departments, that teach the methods and techniques of creating these new elements, every once in a while, a musical prodigy appears in the media who did not go through an institution. These prodigies create new musical elements with their natural talent, without effort or learning, based on only basic music theory. Does this mean that music education and learning is pointless?
To answer this question, we need to look at the need for musical organization. A long time ago, there was no systematic music theory and no unified content. Because of this, creating new music was as difficult and cumbersome as creating something out of nothing, and because different people created and used different musical systems, it can be assumed that there were considerable inconveniences in musical interaction, cooperation, and use of musical instruments. In order to eliminate these inconveniences, the 7-scale (Doremifasolasi) proposed by Pythagoras in the West and the 5-scale in the East were utilized as a standard. These scales were not arbitrarily chosen for mere convenience. In the case of the Pythagorean scale, the empirical discovery that different notes produce indistinguishable harmonies that are perceived as one sound was applied. The idea is that if the string lengths of the instruments that produce each note are expressed in terms of simple integer ratios, such as 1:1, 2:3, and so on, the sound waves will resonate instead of interfering with each other and canceling each other out, creating harmony. Since then, the 12-note composition system, a system of 12 notes with five semitones between the notes, has been completed, and acoustics, the science of music based on this system, has been developed and studied along with physics and biology. The social nature of language, which states that the form and content of language is a promise between the people who use it and cannot be changed by any one individual, is also applied to the 12-note composition system. In other words, it can be seen that set rules and theories in music are necessary for the convenience of composing, singing, and researching.
The need to learn theory is confirmed by scientific research on the actual creative process of composers. Charles Lim, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, conducted an experiment in which he used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe jazz musicians’ brains in real time as they improvised. The results showed a decrease in activity in regions associated with performing planned actions and self-censorship, and an increase in activity in regions associated with self-expression and individuality. Since improvisation requires not only spontaneous ideas, but also the skill to structure those ideas in an orderly fashion, it is believed that differences in performance levels will occur depending on the richness of musical material in the performer’s knowledge database, experience, and degree of organization. Taking this into account, it can be seen that the creativity of improvisation is ultimately determined by the knowledge in the performer’s brain, which is in the process of expressing individuality based on this knowledge. This means that even if you don’t have to know something to improvise, you have to know something to be able to do it well, and this improvisation process involves brain activity related to self-expression. Since imitation is the mother of creation, it can be inferred that the process of creating new musical elements requires a base of knowledge to refer to, and that prodigies also needed to acquire knowledge to imitate. However, the amount of knowledge they learned in a short period of time was enormous, and their ability to learn was exceptional, which is why their genius was possible.
Besides being good at creating new musical elements, what else do musical geniuses excel at? For this, let’s look at the idea of the nature of music.
“What is the essence of music? Is it the resonance of physical sounds, notes on a sheet of music, or traces of memories in the mind? Perhaps a physicist would see music as the resonance of sound, a musician would see it as notes on a score, and a psychologist would see it as traces of memory. Or, more loosely, music is the resonance of sound expressed as notes that remain in our minds as memories.”
There is no right answer to the nature of music, but it can be summarized that music is the “better and stronger” memory of notes expressed as sound echoes in our minds, where genius has the upper hand. This is because there are clear limitations to attempts to improve upon existing music theory, acoustics, physics, and other disciplines. While we may be able to identify elements of musical theory that tend to affect certain emotions, such as the length of a piece of music and the frequency of use of certain chords, through empirical research, we will not be able to express the degree to which music triggers certain emotions in a formal way. This is because there is no such thing as an absolute piece of music that has the same effect on everyone. This is why music is such a clear and unmistakable expression of the creator’s inner feelings, and why musical geniuses have the ability to express whatever they want to express.
Music can fulfill many functions, but its role as a medium of emotion is of great significance. When we experience intense emotions, we may associate them with a particular piece of music, or we may relate to and remember things we’ve experienced in the past through certain music and lyrics. In the case of AKMU, their genius lies in their ability to help people recall, remember, and relate to a variety of emotions outside of the box of love and separation that recent pop songs have shown. It’s the perfect answer to a public that’s tired of the same old idol singers and wants something new. I think this is the reason why their songs were successful and topped the music charts week after week without any special musical knowledge.
How did these musical geniuses acquire this ability to express their inner feelings? In his essay “Iruma’s Little Room,” the new age pianist Iruma said that the spontaneity that comes from music is not the result of forced instruction, but comes from musicality that is naturally instilled in the body by being exposed to a musical environment all the time. If musicality is cultivated naturally, even those who have never been musical can develop a certain degree of musicality. Just as famous composers have been exposed to music from a young age and developed their skills to create great works, it is easy to think that musicality can be cultivated through early education and an efficient educational process from a young age. However, while such efforts may improve competency through the study of musical theory, they will not provide the “naturalness” that Iruma refers to. We can only speculate about what the education of famous composers might have been like based on Iruma’s experience. Iruma once mentioned that at the Pacelle School, a European center for musical prodigies, where he received his childhood musical education, he was free to utilize his time and do what he wanted to do, rather than being taught according to a set time and curriculum. AKMU once said in an interview that, unlike ordinary students in Korea who are stuck in a fixed timetable, suffering from the stress of forced study and pressure on grades, they were able to enjoy music when they wanted to through homeschooling without being bound by special rules, and their parents were happy to see them and encouraged them to enjoy music. These examples show that genius can be cultivated in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere rather than through artificial effort.
Currently, the composition curriculum in practical music departments and large entertainment agencies is overly focused on teaching composition methods that utilize hook songs or electronic sounds, which are characterized by simple melodies, short choruses, and repetitive lyrics. This is in line with the reality that such music is currently dominating the popular music scene. However, education that emphasizes only a short-term perspective cannot help composers develop their abilities to introduce various musical forms and express rich emotions, and will hinder the diversity of popular music. Therefore, in order to nurture and utilize the genius of composers, and to create compositions that can utilize the diversity of popular music, the curriculum should provide opportunities to encounter and feel a variety of music. In addition, the strict trainee education system of entertainment agencies may also hinder the development of compositional skills. Trainees are required to complete basic singing, dancing, acting, and foreign languages, as well as character education and volunteer activities, on a set timetable, just as if they were attending school. Even if the curriculum is not necessarily connected to music activities, it is important to give them the freedom to make their own choices so that they can gain a variety of experiences and emotions, and enjoy what they are learning to the fullest.
In season 2 of K-Pop Star, judge Park Jin Young praised AKMU’s ability to write their own songs, and one of the pieces of advice he gave them was to “start from the heart and end with the head” in the creative process of writing a new song. This means that you need to feel emotions and start writing a song from your heart, but in order to properly convey the emotions you feel in your heart, you need to be able to express them in various ways with your head through various music theories, so that you can complete a masterpiece that conveys exactly the emotions you wanted to convey in the song and express them effectively. While it is important to be able to express your life experiences, feelings, and natural state in your songs, he also emphasized the need to learn theory for geniuses who can make different and original expressions. As he advised, AKMU is showing his genius with different expressions and lyrics that other singers don’t have, but in order to write more different, better, and more complete songs, he will need to devote more time and effort to studying music theory and experience a lot of things to feel rich emotions. I hope he can improve his musical skills and continue to create good songs that answer the public’s needs without losing the innocence and sparkling musical talent he has now.
