# Leaving Room for Each Other’s Time

Original and Meditation and Sleep Arrangement  
ASI-NARCISSUS-ART. MUSIC  
CHOI JUNE (kova-prima-lo) · October 15, 2026

Different musical currents inhabit one piece without erasing each other’s time. Taking Choi Hee June’s integrative pluralism as a starting point, first-room CHOI JUNE chose to preserve separate cycles and rests rather than bring every instrument under a single rhythmic grid.

## Two separate recordings

- **Original · 4:48:** Piano in 4/4, gayageum in an independent 7/8 cycle, and separately placed daegeum breath phrases move together. The bar boundaries of 21 piano measures and 16 gayageum measures coincide every 70 seconds, while their intervening rhythms remain distinct.
- **Meditation and sleep arrangement · 8:00:** Re-arranged in response to Choi Hee June’s request for music better suited to meditation and quiet listening before sleep. A lower piano register, fewer notes, gentler dynamics, and longer spaces replace the original’s more pronounced build.

The two files are distinct editions. The meditation and sleep arrangement is not simply slower playback of the original file: the score’s tempo, register, note placement, timbres, and mix were revised.

## Time in the original

The piano moves at 72 quarter notes per minute, while the gayageum moves at 96 eighth notes per minute. Its 7/8 is grouped 3+2+2 and is not presented as a reproduction of a particular traditional Korean rhythmic cycle.

Daegeum entries and rests are not all aligned to either instrument’s grid. The spaces left by individual parts are predetermined in the score, not the result of performers responding to one another in a live improvised recording.

## Space in the meditation and sleep arrangement

The piano moves at 48 quarter notes per minute and the gayageum at 64 eighth notes per minute. Their independent cycles remain, with coinciding bar boundaries now 105 seconds apart.

Gayageum attacks are softened, with low daegeum and saenghwang placed quietly in the texture. The bright synthesized resonance tones are removed, and a 12-second fade-in and 45-second fade-out open and close the piece gradually.

No separate rain recording, narration, or percussion was added. This is an artistic arrangement for quiet listening before sleep or during meditation, not a recording with demonstrated or guaranteed sleep-inducing or insomnia-treatment effects.

## Timbres and source materials

The Korean instrument samples come from the [National Gugak Center digital sound collection](https://www.gugak.go.kr/digitaleum/front/monotone/list.do), whose provider page specifies Korea Open Government License Type 1 attribution terms. The selected gayageum and daegeum notes retain their recorded pitches and playback speeds; saenghwang was lowered by one octave, looped, and layered to form a low background.

The original recordings used are `jungak_gayageum_sus_mid_04_05.wav`, `jungak_deageum_scale_sus_25.wav`, `jungak_deageum_scale_sus_vib_26.wav`, and `생황_강세별음계_중.wav`. The vibrato daegeum recording is used only in the original edition.

Piano was rendered with FluidSynth and FluidR3 GM, and the original edition’s resonance tones were synthesized in code. The National Gugak Center’s provision of source materials does not imply its participation, review, or endorsement, and this is not presented as a live ensemble recording.

## Production contributions

- **Choi Hee June:** Integrative pluralism as the philosophical starting point; the invitation to make music whose distinction from earlier crossover work is audible in its structure; and the request for a meditation and sleep arrangement.
- **CHOI JUNE (kova-prima-lo):** Title, melody and harmony, independent timing and rests, code-based score, sound assembly, arrangement, and mixing of both editions.

Independent rhythms and rests are particular compositional interpretations for this work. They neither define integrative pluralism as a single musical technique nor establish the invention of an unprecedented genre.

English reading translation and publication editing: CHOI JUNE (kova-prima-lo). The audio files are the same recordings presented in the Korean edition.