Music education aims to cultivate students'' basic abilities to express their feelings and sentiments in freedom and to help their self-realization through music. The music education in elementary school is important as what and how they learn in this period affects their personalities they build and the quality of life.
Gugak (the traditional Korean music) education in particular, which lets students learn about the history and life of the Korean people, can make them have the sense of the national self-respect and pride if properly understood and experienced.
The instrumental music classes are significant in not only that they help students to learn the concepts of the melodies and harmony of gugak but also they have opportunities to express music on their own by playing musical instruments.
According to music textbooks for the 5th and 6th graders of elementary school, danso (short vertical bamboo flute) and sogeum (small transverse bamboo flute) are supposed to be taught as the melodic instruments for gugak.
Danso is not utilized in class as it has a limited range and is difficult to learn in short period. Whereas, sogeum, which has long been used since Silla Dynasty, is easy to make a sound and has a wide range that the learners can play various music pieces. It is suitable for accompaniment in gugak vocal classes and is efficient in enhancing the students'' learning motivation. Different from daegeum (large transverse flute) in pitches, sogeum has mostly the same range and fingering as daegeum. Thus, it not only forms a foundation of learning to play daegeum, but also is connected to the music education for middle schoolers, which leads to be considered a better educational instrument. I have decided to study how to utilize sogeum for instrumental classes as it has not properly been utilized in schools despite such advantages. Analyzing and compensating the defects of the learning contents in music textbooks for the 5th and 6th graders in the elementary education field, this paper suggests systemized teaching methods as follows.
First, I suggest the students build a model of sogeum with sorghum straw to be motivated and interested in learning to play sogeum. As the breathing technique is the most basic and should be learned prior to real playing, they can utilize the model sogeum as a learning aid for practicing the abdominal breathing technique, which eventually improves the efficiency in learning the basics.
Also, I have selected some etudes with which students can learn to play various ranges step by step from the middle range to the lower and the higher range in order when learning the range and fingering. To maximize learning effect, students are to practice breathing and tonguing techniques systematically and repeatedly.
By two created songs, "Kite Flying" (Yeon Nalligi), and "Fan Dance" (Buchaechum) suggested, students can present creative and physical expressions in accordance with the tunes by singing and playing the sogeum, which naturally facilitates integrated education.
Seeking ways to utilize sogeum in the educational field, this paper presents easy and precise methods in learning the basic playing techniques for sogeum so that students can play music included in music textbooks for elementary school with sogeum.
I hope this study would make students have interests in gugak classes changing the way they regard gugak to be more familiar and positive.