We unconsciously thought it would be great to make music like a light; that’s how the name ‘sounding light’ came from. Of course it is obvious the light does not make any sounds, but that was the charm for us thinking this concept doesn’t really exist in reality. We want to be artists like lights; those who firstly consider to deliver music like a light to public audience instead of considering commercial purpose. These are reasons how we named our team.

Aug. 16th, 2016 – Digital single ‘A way to a library’ released

Jin-yeop Jo(Leader, Main vocal)

Jae-kwon Kim(Base)

Young-Eun Kim(Key board, vocal)

Yes! Hello, we are a band named ‘Sounding Lights’ with trio composed with main vocal(Jin-yeop Jo), keyboard(Young-eun Kim), and base(Jae-kwon Kim).

We unconsciously thought it would be great to make music like a light; that’s how the name ‘sounding light’ came from. Of course it is obvious the light does not make any sounds, but that was the charm for us thinking this concept doesn’t really exist in reality. We want to be artists like lights; those who firstly consider to deliver music like a light to public audience instead of considering commercial purpose. These are reasons how we named our team.

Each member has a bit of years apart in age, and this took us time to get used to each other. After overcoming this difficulty, we realized the matter of age difference was not a weakness but rather an advantage. There is a huge gap between different generations in our society, and we thought we would do music that could cover all of those different generations. Haha.

Jin-yeop Jo: It was rare that someone sings pops back in years of elementary school, but I naturally start to sing influenced from my older sister’s playlists. One day, I was singing along as I was listening to music alone, and somehow I started to cry with no reason. At that moment, I thought ‘I should be singing. I am my happiest when I sing’ and I started music.

Jae-kwon Kim: When I was attending middle school, I was told that ‘A man should know how to play at least one instrument’. That’s how I started music.(laugh) At that time, I had 2 good friends; one played drums and another one played a guitar. So I learned base to make a band with them. Haha.

Young-eun Kim: I went to private piano class following my friend when I was 7 years old. In high school years, I found out there was a class for ‘applied music’. I felt like there was a new world opened up for me, because I only knew classical music genre back then. Since then, I chose applied music as my major in the university and keep continuing my music.

We opened up a meeting to recruit artists at the end of 2013; the goal was to make a ‘good culture’. During that process, all members of the team successfully gathered up. Jae-won Kim(base) was scout by original member of our team. Members continuously increased up to 12 people, but there were many happenings happened with different opinions of each other. As a result, we ‘Sounding Lights’ are trio members now. 

Jin-yeop Jo: Everyone has their own colors in their music. Young-eun is very fluent in composing songs by majored in keyboard, and having many experiences making music. I also compose a lot of songs too. Jae-kwon(base) recently received a lot of inspiration, so he learned the keyboard to compose songs. For harmony part, I think we get a lot of influence from Young-eun; she has jazz feelings, and often this result her in making songs with jazz-style harmony. She also covers various music in different generations. These became good reference sources for her. Our members actually like all music in different genres. We don’t pursuit certain genre, but we compose songs talking about our life with suited atmosphere.

We put our best effort composing a song called「A Way to a Library」; we spent a long time to make this song with best quality while running a concert at the same time. The song we love the most is called「Let’s dream」. We often opened up concerts for university students. In the concert, we want to talk about dreams and deliver a lot of stories to those students. We also love the song itself and put a lot of effort to it. This song will be our next song.

Young-eun Kim: [A way to a Library] is written when I found a couple playing rock-paper-scissor on the stairs of the library. I thought it was a bit childish, but then thought the love originally is to be childish. I envy them a bit on the other side and I felt I want to do many things if I am in love with someone. I wrote the song with these feelings. It is a cute duet song of a couple, and I applied swing-jazz style to add fresh feel to it.   

I believe the most important thing to keep when we compose music is to have less pressure in making art. Often many people suffer by heavy pressure, thinking to make popular music or making song with the deadline. We have a belief that good art of music can be made in unconstrained atmosphere. Our goal is to compose music of our own comfortably. Our members have chat on how we can talk about story or heavy subject through music, then we compose music after. 

Young-eun Kim: I still remember the moment when I had solo concert for graduation ceremony. I communicated with audience, and they only focused on me. It was so much of fun. I could act pretty when I am on the stage(laugh)

Jae-kwon Kim: I love every each moment when we are on the stage. Well, personally, I get so impressed when I find public audience sympathized with our songs.

Jin-yeop Jo: I planned to start my music activities in 2009, but I had to immigrate to other country and came back to Korea. It was very difficult to adapt the culture again, but I successfully solved the problem and started ‘Sounding Lights’ solo concert. It was very fun and impressing.

Young-eun Kim: I want to run solo concert of my own with having certain theme. Also, I want to give a song to a person who has same music color as mine and go up to stage together.

Jae-kwon Kim: I am preparing to compose songs by learning harmony instrument. 

Jin-yeop Jo: I had many thoughts about indie and major music, and felt that we need to be well off to continue our music color which is differentiated from major music. My goal is to run a business to make various musicians work together and keep their livelihood. Also at the same time, I want to continuously keep doing our honest music.