Finding the greatest common factor
In the process of communication, of course public participation is indispensable.
Besides holding workshops, for the second wave of station ambient music the city government also solicited submissions from the public.
They responded with 447 creative works that came in from 12 countries and territories, offering music for the Dongmen, Longshan Temple, Songshan Airport, Xiangshan and Taipei Arena stations.
“Roaming Traveler,” which Chang Chun-tzu created for Songshan Airport Station, uses two extremely simple sonic lines, coming and going like ocean waves, to symbolize a dialogue between expectations of a coming trip and memories of the past. It gives travelers the feeling of being enveloped in a fine mist, creating an atmosphere that makes one long to soar aloft.
Emma Kao has taken part in a lot of soundtrack work for domestic films. She feels that ambient music is like perfume or incense: it is intangible, but can quietly change people’s mood. The music she created for Xiangshan Station employs plucked stringed instruments like guitar and mandolin. With repeated scales, plus layering and reducing techniques, she fills the station with relaxing and refreshing music.
Chang Yung-chiao, who studied film score composition in San Francisco, used traditional Chinese musical instruments at which she is expert (including suona, gongs, cymbals and drums), and added the sound of an electric bass, to express the busy, crowded feel of a temple for Longshan Temple Station. Harvest Music Production head Mike Lin, who organized the selection project for Metro station ambient music and was also on the judging panel, argues that this piece is very elegant, that the instruments were used ingeniously, and that the piece shows a global outlook.
Musician Ma Yixian, who composed the music for the Taipei Arena Station, wanted to express the area’s busy, dynamic “urban spirit.” The materials he chose were sounds he recorded himself inside the station, such as human voices, footsteps, doors opening and closing, trains entering and leaving the station, and hands clapping. He made the rhythm the center and assembled other elements around it like a collage. It ended up being the most unusual of the five top selections, and it allows commuters to rapidly grasp the special local character.
Dongmen Station’s music was created jointly by musicians Yin Chen and Zero Hsu. Working with the themes of “bustling market” and “warm human sentiment,” they took the five-tone scale of Chinese traditional music as their source material. Yin’s expert erhu playfully circulates throughout the work, while Hsu, relying on his rich experience in film scores, added in Western orchestral music. The intermingling of old-fashioned and modern music symbolizes the energy of the constant interplay of old and new in metropolitan Taipei.
Besides soliciting works from the public and selecting their submissions, the real meaning of public participation was in listening to the opinions of users from all walks of life and finding the greatest common factor. For example, when the music for trains entering stations on the Zhonghe‡Xinlu Line first came onstream, many citizens called Taipei’s 1999 hotline to protest, and netizens complained on social media that the music was weird, unsettling, or strange, or put them in a bad mood. But Lee Mingtsung says this is a good thing. He is happy to hear different voices and see critical opinions appear, because this means that “people are starting to pay attention, because everyone is finally hearing, finally opening up their ears, and that’s what I really want.”
What kinds of sounds make up the Longshan Temple of your memories?