Music transcends all cultures, races, and genders. I don’t understand 99 percent of the lyrics in OSTs, but it never matters. It’s the music, the singer’s emotions while singing, and what the drama is portraying that gives it meaning.

This was a beautiful piece @ally. I'm no musician but I'm definitely music obsessed. I really related to what you said here because to me music really can portray so many emotions in a way that relates to universal human experience. It allows us to feel connected to others when we feel alone, and it gives shape to our emotions when we can't find the right way to express them. Thank you for sharing this story with us.

It was absolute HEAVEN listening and watching you play those pieces from Goblin! I think you've described your love for dramas and their music better than any of us could. Thank you so much.

enjoyed reading this, I enjoyed Round and round/amnesia - brings back my feels from goblin.

What is this? Thank you for allowing me to share this with you! I’m still in complete and utter shock! And thank you for making me sound so much better than what I originally penned!

Wow, I am soooo impressed with how beautifully you played that piece! 👏👏👏

I definitely agree with you that music is very therapeutic and transcends the limits of language!
Thank you for sharing! ❤

Gorgeous, @ally-le. Applause!

This is a very nice write-up @ally-le and thank you for sharing that lovely video of you playing the piano:)

This is incredibly lovely. I'm glad you and music found one another once more :)

Woww I haven't (yet) watched Goblin but this post boosts up the temptation. ❤❤
👏👏@ally-le

I am here because I read that Ally played the piano! Simply magnificent! Both this write up and the playing.

I have hardly talked about OSTs in my comments but it's impossible not to be touched by the music when I watch a drama. BGMs are easily my favorites while OSTs bring you into the world that the characters live.

If I am hooked on a drama, the OSTs will be played on loop especially when I am driving. OSTs are also the quickest to bring me back to the time when I was watching the drama. Instantly, the story, the characters and emotions all come flooding back. That's the power of music.

"And these are just thoughts from an amateur musician who would have been a professional if she weren’t too afraid that she wouldn’t be able to eat if she chose music as a career."

I feel you! :( Oh well, nothing to do but to accept the fact. Anyways, so beautifully written and that play makes me want to re-watch Goblin all over again. FANTASTIC! Thanks for sharing!

First, what a great piece, @ally-le! I could relate to it so much. Then you also played music for us and we have a winner! Haha! You're so good at playing it too!

Now that I've read this and you've told your story, I remember that kpop, specifically Big Bang songs back then, made me want to touch my keyboard after a long long time. (I quit my lessons very early because I realized as a 10-year old that I'm not really musically gifted/talented/inclined (in terms of playing instruments/tones/pitch/rhythm)). I am great though at appreciation! Hee

Aloha, Ally...

The best thanks that I can bestow upon you and DramaBeans for posting your essay -- and your rendition of “Round and Round” and “Amnesia” from GOBLIN -- are the tears that fall freely as I read and listen. More than once, music has saved my life and my sanity. It has enabled me to feel emotions for which there are no words in my native language -- or maybe any human language. The capacity to feel emotion is hardwired into most of us, and music is the shortest path to it.

Music may just be the hook that grabbed me early in my Kdrama career. I don't need to know the meaning of Korean words because emotions are conveyed by the music. But translations of lyrics add even more layers of significance, particularly when turns of phrase deftly reinforce mood. I find that it's often the incidental instrumental passages of soundtracks that burrow deeply into my consciousness.

I'm not much of a musician myself, but music has held a special place in my heart for most of my life. I learned to play guitar when Latin dirges gave way to vernacular folk music so I could "make a joyful noise" in church as a kid. Although my spiritual path has lead me away from institutional religion, some of my best memories are of "praying by playing" with the folk group during practice and at Mass. Then I would trundle off to my part-time job at a radio station to babysit the transmitter during the weekly Sunday night remote live broadcast of a local church's gospel-infused worship service. On Saturday nights, I was the operator on duty during a live Korean culture program. I heard “Arirang” for the first time when I was working there, and it stuck in my mind.

As in the film SUNNY and the currently airing LINGERIE GIRLS' GENERATION, whose first episode I watched earlier today, music supplied the soundtrack of my young life. It only took a couple of notes for me to recognize “Sealed with a Kiss,” although I admit that I mistook Bobby Vinton's version for Brian Hyland's. ;-)

For about 10 years I spun platters at a college radio station, and music truly was the soundtrack of my life as I navigated young adulthood. My fan wall is crammed with music, some of it from Kdramas, much of it from my radio days.

When I started watching Kdramas, I never expected music to touch me so profoundly. Not every OST reduces me to a blubbering blob of protoplasm. But many fill my being with majestic awe, inspire sunny optimism, remind me that no matter where we're from, we're all on this planet at this time for some mysterious reason. If I listen closely enough to the music, I might just hear the “red stings” that connect me to my fellow human beings. I'm as Irish-American as Paddy's pig, but cannot tell you how many times I've heard a Kdrama OST that hits my Celtic soul hard. I have long sensed a kindred-spiritedness between my ancestral homeland and Korea. Chalk it up to han.

Thanks again!

Very entertaining read ally. You sure know how to write as well hehe. I think I saw this clip on your fan wall and you are pretty much awesome! Now I want to play piano just to be pencil skinny lol. Btw on goblin I love round and round, and the theme song, but the one I love the most is "I will go to you like a first snow". The music is soul touching and aelee's voice is so mesmerizing that it evokes certain emotions from God knows where. 😍

Drama OSTs are a tricky one for me. On one hand, I can't understand what is being sung because I'm not korean. On the other hand, the soundtrack is so powerful and moving that you kinda get the tune stuck in your head for a long while..playing over and over again. But by the time I finish that drama and start a new one, I pretty much forget the music and move on to the next one.
Then I fell in love with Goblin. Like every part of the drama. The story, the cast, the emotions and most definitely the music.
Truth to God, I have all the OSTs from Goblin. All of them. And I don't understand the language!!!. For the first time ever, I had korean music on my playlist, over and over on my phone. And every time I played the music, it was like i was reliving the drama.
Goblin's Stay With Me has been my ringtone for close to 8months now and I dont see myself changing it for the rest of the year.

Oh Wow @ally-le, your playing is amazing. You really could have been a professional musician.

Thank you also for reminding me of how amazing Goblin's soundtrack was - I think I'll just watch the series again. I do agree with you about how music lingers, and hearing an OST long after a drama has ended will remind one of how they felt while watching it. I've found this to be true of all aspects of my life - certain songs will always take me back to a certain moment, or feeling, or time. Be it Backstreet Boys' "Show me the meaning" taking me back to the school choir, "Aik Alif" to my early, lonely days as a student in London, or Goblin's OST to the last days 2016 and also to your post.

Enjoyed reading your post, Ally. Thanks for sharing!

Wow @ally-le! Is there anything you can't do?! A doc who can tickle the ivories? Lol...

Great post and love the little guy who sits atop your piano.

Great post, Ally! The Goblin OST is fantastic. I also have always loved soundtracks and musicals too, the music enhances the emotions, and then the music becomes the emotions. Whenever I love a drama, I listen to its OST constantly to stay in the emotional state of the drama. And even later, hearing OST songs brings those feelings back.

Wow! That's seriously so good Ally! Really love that u took the time to practise and play that piece so wonderfully. I've always wanted to learn how to play but alas never had the chance. This just reminds me of my love for music back in the day which medical school and residency did not allow to grow. Ur write up about music is so on point and beautifully expressed, thanks 4 sharing.

By some coincidence I was already listening to a piano compilation of Goblin's OSTs before coming to your article. The screen capture of Goblin should have clued me in. 😆

I am delighted to find another lover of Goblin and it's OSTs. I too am so taken with the music of Goblin that I can listen to it repeatedly, although I do not always link the music to every scene in which they played, but the emotions they evoke will come flowing back and I sometimes have to stop what I'm doing because I get lost in the music and lose concentration LOL.

I just heard at least one piece of music when watching Temperature of Love that I felt was wonderful for setting the mood and giving us clues as to the type of personality we were dealing with. I'm going to look for it and add it to my playlist. 😋

Thanks and much happiness in more music 'practice'. 😃

dear @ally-le
I watched/listened to you play "amnesia" and it brought tears to my eyes (I'm not exaggerating). O, how I LOVED Goblin during its running time! I would re-watch each episode about 2 - 3 times for each release!
Thank you for sharing your talent!

BRAVO!!!!

Ally, beautiful essay and beautiful playing. Many years ago, kdrama brought me back to the piano as well (back in the days when you could even buy ost sheet music books from YesAsia). Not starting with your level of talent, my reintroduction to the piano was more like 'chord-chord-expletive!' but I enjoyed it all the same because even through the mistakes I could still "hear" the songs. People tease me too for listening to songs all day when I don't understand the lyrics. I tell them I can't understand most of what's being sung in Western songs either, so what's the difference?

Beautifully written! I loved when you stepped into a little of the technical connections with the brain and music. It's truly fascinating. My step-grandfather has Alzheimer's and as he's progressed music has been the only thing to remain with him. When we put his music on there's a spark back in his eyes. Music is incredibly powerful.
Goblin was a fantastic choice to really focus on because it's almost other worldly with how absolutely gorgeous the OST was. Thank you for once again bring it back in our lives. <3

Aw, Ally. I'm happy you've found your passion again and acted on it this time. Sometimes, we need to give up on things for really good reasons but some dreams stay in the deepest part of us until they've been awaken. Yay for passion! Yay for music! Yay for kdrama!

I recently started listening to the Goblin soundtrack again before I saw your article. All the tracks on there bring back so many flashbacks of the drama. I really enjoyed what you wrote. Unfortunately, work has blocked all my videos, so I will have to wait till I go home to check out your musical piece! Thanks for sharing! Music really is therapy!

Oh! What a wonderful treat! Thank you, @ally-le for the music and the writing. I also felt that Goblin set a record for soundtrack music, more so that Descendants of the Sun ... and most of the time it surpassed the story itself, stopping me from abandoning Goblin when I felt it lacked character depth & story development. It was all thanks to the OST, hands down!

This piece made me tear up like a Kdrama OST, reading how you put precisely into words why I always feel strongly connected to soundtracks.

A wonderfully written article, Ally. Thank you for conveying some of my feelings on music in drama, so well at that.

And also, thank you so much for that link to the composer's youtube channel! i've been a big fan of OSTs since i was in elementary school, but those days it's very hard to get my hands on those film OSTs that i love so much. Now thanks to the internet, i can listen to them whenever i wanted, and be lost in my own world.

Thank you for reminding me of the music in Goblin - I immediately rewatched my favourite parts of the drama.

Lovely.

"Music transcends all cultures, races, and genders."
Yes, it does! There are many songs that I love that aren't in my native language. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I didn't listen to a song because I couldn't understand the lyrics.
"Music is directly connected to the limbic system in the brain, the area that is responsible for our emotions. Without getting too technical, most music bypasses the decision-making parts of the brain straight to this emotional part."
I never new this but it makes so much sense. Music is truly one of the greatest gifts given to mankind. Thank you for this post @Allly!

@Ally: I always love OST with piano as a dominant instrument (sorry I'm no musician). You did an amazing covers of Round and Round, and Amnesia. Millions of hugs to you!!!!!

"And these are just thoughts from an amateur musician who would have been a professional if she weren’t too afraid that she wouldn’t be able to eat if she chose music as a career." This is as though you're speaking my mind. The exact same thought has gone through my mind billions of times, as someone who has studied music since the age of 5, but could never bring myself to surrender completely.

This was a beautifully written piece! I loved reading it, and enjoyed your piano playing too!

I like your comment about music and therapy, and music being connected to emotions. A skilled musician can make you - as you say - a blubbering mess one minute, or make you smile another, and more!

In the forms I am most familiar with (Indian Carnatic and Hindustani classical), music its deeply tied with the navarasas (crudely put, nine flavors, or nine kinds of emotions), time of day, and seasons. All of these come into play during a performance (which is best enjoyed live, of course, rather than recorded), and influence how you feel and what you take away at the end of it. There are even "rules" about how you should end a performance - certain scales/ragas are preferred over others as concluding pieces, so that audiences always leave in a happy and uplifted mood.