Aug 25, 2021
Masayoshi Takanaka - Guitar Legend
As mentioned in the previous post; much of my time over the past few months has been dedicated to creating content for youtube. Yet, when I say creating content, I don't just mean shooting the video footage and editing it down to scenes for a final production. Beyond the actual video production and it's various stages, there are also youtube specific administrative tasks that are a part of the process. Youtube provides it's content creators with a suite of tools called the Creator Studio. This "Studio" is filled with information and statistics that provide insite into each video. Creators then use this information to make decisions about future content based on who's watching the videos. Ideally creating content that is tailored to it's audience. One the many tools is "Channel Analytics", which provides information on user location (don't worry though, it's just general information like country/city). So I can ask the question: Who's watching? And actually find an answer!
So, where are the people that are watching my videos?
For my most successful video, the stats are as follows:
South Korea - 11.6%
Japan - 6.1%
USA - 2.5%
France - 0.9%
Other - 78.9%
What I find interesting is that the majority of comments for that video are from Brazilians (likely because the song has a Bossa-Nova Groove). It's pretty cool that a Canadian guy can create a video lesson for a song by British guy that people in South Korea and Japan are interested in learning, yet all the Brazilians are commenting on!
Another one of the Creator Studio features is that: I recieve notifications when another content creator subscribes to the channel. One such subscriber caught my attention last month and made me choose a slightly different path for the video I was planning. The subscriber is an excellent guitarist, who, re-introduced me to the music of Masayoshi Takanaka, a well known Japanese guitarist. To be clear, Takanaka is the Japanese equivalent of America's Eddie Van Halen, or Steve Vai. Seriously. Not that his music is in the same style, but his reputation, his abilities, and influence as a guitarist are of the same calibre. Style-wise Takanaka is more Jazz influenced, but the difference between Japanese and American Pop music make for a difficult one to one comparison. I hope to dig further into his music in the future as material for online lessons, and of course, just to learn from his music and guitar playing.
After having that memory of Takanaka revived, I decided to look into current Japanese Pop music, to see if there was any music that might make for an interesting guitar lesson. One of the songs that grabbed my attention is "Fukakouryoku" by Vaundy. It turns out that Vaundy is a rather big star in Japan. While this song isn't really a guitar focused song, it sounded like it could be. So I decided to arrange the song for guitar, and do a lesson video based on it, with an accompanying backing track video, of course!
So, just to clarify, I don't actually think I'm turning Japanese - I just needed a title for this blog post. What I do think I'm turning into is more of an international music fan, at least more so than I had previously allowed myself to be. Vaundy's most recent album is actually very guitar focused. I don't know that he is playing the guitar parts, I suspect not. Either way, he and his talented team are making some interesting music. And, it presents me the opportunity to interact with new guitar enthusiasts (via youtube), as well as the opportunity to expereince new kinds of music. I dig that.
How To Play: 不可幸力 Fukakouryoku (Vaundy) and The Backing Track
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As a quick aside, I spent several hours going through Middle Eastern Pop music the other day, to see if I could find a similar "Guitar friendly" piece for a lesson video. While I didn't have luck selecting a song, it was fascinating to see the influence of stereotypical western Male/Female roles presented in Middle Eastern music videos!
Check out all of the Cringey Goodness on my youtube Channel.
~Cory
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