Resizing of the Gayageum for Korean Elementary School Students based on Anthropometric Data

Abstract

The aim of this study is to resize the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument, for elementary school students who are not yet adult from the viewpoint of anthropometry. The gayageum has been used for musical education of elementary school students despite its size is inappropriately large for them. Due to the size disproportion, elementary school students are forced into uncomfortable playing postures, thereby making the instrument itself more difficult to play. Consequently, they have suffered from the inconvenience of these unnatural playing postures. In order to resize the instrument, the postures of expert gayageum players from the National Gugak Center in Korea were photographed and analyzed. Then we investigated the players’ trunk angle to compare with elementary school -aged players’ postures. The results yielded an optimal resizing ratio of 0.76 for elementary school students compared with an adult-sized gayageum. This study suggests that the gayageums redesigned by the ratio of 0.76 would be suitable for players from 5 to 10- year-old. We expect that this method could be applied to design other kinds of musical string instruments for young players.