d-Wizz Hankuk Travel Diary [2005]
Day 24 (2005-08-19) / Day 25 (2005-08-20) / Day 26 (2005-08-21) 
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Day 25: 2005-08-20 (Saturday)
I spent another easy day at the guest house. I asked the host there to help me book the ferry from Busan to Japan. My brother had been sending me details via e-mail about logistics, and I knew I needed to book early to get a place. I was hoping to get a booking on the “Panstar Ferry, which went from Busan to Osaka, at a price of W88,000. It was an overnight trip, departing Busan at about 1800, and arriving at Osaka early the next morning. I would then have to travel about 2 or 3 hours to my brother’s place at Odai.
Plan “A” came unstuck when I learned that this ferry was fully booked until 2005-09-02. An alternative means of getting to Japan was needed – quickly. My brother had fortunately sent a list of other options to try in the case of the Panstar not being available, so I tried one of those. I found one going from Busan to Hakata for only W70,000, so my host called the number to make a reservation for me. Their office was closed, as it was the weekend, so he suggested I call them back on Monday.
I went back upstairs to the computer and began preparing more MIDI files for the FX project. I had a big appointment at 1900 to meet Mi-Ra at her church for the final FX recording session. I knew this would be very different to the experiences with Jack, because I had already done recording with Mi-Ra for the first FX project in Brisbane the previous November and December, and the quality had been very high. I was looking forward to this session, and I prepared some extra backing tracks in case they were needed. I expected that the session would run smoothly and quickly, as Mi-Ra would probably be able to sing most of the songs in one or two takes at the most, and I anticipated recording a lot of songs in a short time.
At 1800, I left the guest house, and took a line 2 train to Sillim (230). Mi-Ra said she couldn’t meet me until about 1915, as she was in a prayer meeting, so I waited for her. She led me to her church, which was rather large. Every Saturday night, they have an “Amazing Grace Concert”, which is essentially a one hour non-stop worship session. The calibre of the musicians here (as in Korean churches generally) was very high. They changed from song to song seamlessly for at least the 30 minutes I was there. Among the songs chosen for this medley were “Above All”, “Lord I Lift Your Name On High” and “Still”, the latter being the song I had heard so many times in my first week and had been searching for.
When the “concert” was over, Mi-Ra took me to another meeting room where she said we could do the recording. She had asked one of her friends, Cho Kyu-Won (조규원), to play guitar, so the three of us went into the room and set up our equipment. I was glad that I had bought the extra plugs at Yongsan the previous day. The splitter plug was used to provide the signal from my CD player to a pair of headphones for each of my recording performers. I was able to use the extra canon – ¼” adaptor to put a second microphone into the 4-track recorder. Fortunately, the guitar was semi-acoustic, so it plugged straight in to its own separate channel. So I had three channels of recording. After about 10 minutes of setting everything up and testing, I was ready.
First, we tried “Still”, which I had learned was written by Reuben Morgan of Hillsongs, much to my surprise, as I had not recognised it at all. Mi-Ra and Kyu-Won listened to the click track through their headphones while he played guitar and she sang the song in Korean. It was very good right from the start, but we did not record it at first, as they wanted to practise and warm up. By the third or fourth time through, I decided it was getting good enough, so I began to record. After they had recorded “Still” to their satisfaction and mine, another of Mi-Ra’s friends, Jung Sang-Nam (정상남) came to see what was going on. He offered to play guitar and let Kyu-Won join Mi-Ra singing. Kyu-Won said that Sung-Nam was a better guitarist than he was, so they changed over. This was an unexpected bonus for me, so I was very pleased. The session was proceeding very well with very high quality.
For the next 90 minutes, my three Korean friends gave all their talent as they recorded about 8 songs for me, mostly sung in Korean language, but some were in English. The culmination of the session was a version of the hymn “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”, which was sung by all three of them in Korean first, and then again in English. They also recorded a Korean vocal for “Power Of Your Love” in three parts, with each of them singing a different part of the song. It was very beautiful to hear the harmony in their singing, although they didn’t really hear it themselves, because they were wearing the headphones.
While I was packing up, I played some of the recordings back for them to listen to. They were impressed and very happy with the results and I shared their approval. I thanked them for their efforts, and asked them all to record vocal tags in Korean and English. After this, we left the church, and Jung Sang-Nam walked with me back to Sillim subway station. I chatted with him and again expressed my thanks for his unexpected help with FX. I asked him if he would like to do more if I came back in 2006, and he said he was keen. I gave him a copy of the Fav Trax MP3 disc just before going into the subway.
I was on a big high as I returned to the guest house. The week had been a bit up and down for FX, with the not-as-good-as-expected results from Jack and the better-than-expected session with Mi-Ra, which had lasted nearly 2 hours, despite Mi-Ra originally telling me she could only spare 45 minutes. Now, at last, I had something very special I could take away from Korea. My efforts had been rewarded!
Day 24 (2005-08-19) / Day 25 (2005-08-20) / Day 26 (2005-08-21)
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