This work begins from the possibilities contained in a single pitch. It explores the playing techniques and gestures available on one note, then expands across multiple strings and registers. In the end it returns to a single pitch, exploring nonghyeon (vibrato and pitch bending), noise, and the resonance of the open string, attending to the texture of sound itself rather than to rhythm and meter.

 Furthermore, from the perspective of Western 12-tone equal temperament, the modes and tuning practices of traditional Korean music inherently involve microtonal qualities. Rather than leaving these microtones unattended, this work paradoxically explores their possibilities by strictly controlling the fixed pitches of the geomungo.

 In particular, the composer requires that gwae sang-cheong and gwae ha-cheong be tuned with a quarter-tone difference in pitch. This is an attempt to deliberately structure the slight imbalance of tension that arises within the traditional tuning system. The underlying judgment is that when a fixed pitch system is controlled to a high degree, the timbral spectrum arising from changes in string tension can paradoxically be extracted with clarity.

 The title of the piece, old korean dressing table, functions as more than a simple mirror reflecting the performer; it serves as a metaphorical medium that confronts us with the heterogeneity between the image of the past reflected in an object and the reality itself. This symbolic framework is given concrete form in the mechanism between the human performer and the electronic sound.

 The electronics used in this work do not rely mainly on artificial spatial-expansion devices such as reverb or delay. They use only differences in volume and direction between sound sources. The sonic material that is projected consists not only of recordings of past generations of performers (especially Kwae-dong Shin), but also of recordings of physically impossible performances realized through virtual instruments. This electronic sound constantly converses with and opposes the performer on stage, staging an acoustic struggle between the real and its reflection.

 In the end, what are we, seen in the mirror of the dressing table we found in our grandparents' wardrobe? Are we an extension of the past, or simply ourselves as we exist? The answer is not clear either. Who, after all, can see themselves straight?

(revised version of the program note, Septemper, 2026)