KPOP
Guys, today I'm here to talk to you about a brief history and
the origins of kpop and a few of the lessons that I learned writing kpop over
the years. Of course if you want me to dive deeper into the theory side of kpop
structure, potentially harmony, melody writing and some cool production
techniques let me know in the comment box below and I will make that video for
you
kpop abbreviation of a Korean pop is a genre of music characterized by a wide
variety of audio-visual elements the history of kpop can be traced back to
1885 when an American missionary Henry Appenzeller began teaching American and
British folk songs at a school these songs were called Ch' angga in Korean and
they were typically based on a popular Western melody sung with Korean lyrics
plus for an entire century to the early 1990s and kpop began to evolve into what
we know today integrating life style fashion choreography and culture so
often considered the legends of the modern kpop movement Seo Taiji and Boys
were a huge part of that and lay the groundwork for future k-pop groups.
Kpop was on the rise until the beginning of the 21st century the kpop market had
slumped and early k-pop idols that has seen success in the 90s were on the
decline however the success of the boyband TVXQ
after its debut in 2003 marked a big resurgence of idol groups and the growth
of kpop as part of Hallyu the birth of second generation kpop was followed with
the successful debuts of bands like Super Junior BIGBANG 2NE1 and SHINee to
name a few elsewhere in the world the genre has
rapidly grown in success especially after Psy's Gangnam Style and we all
no that song pretty well the video for that song was the first Korean YouTube
video to reach 1 billion views achieving widespread coverage in mainstream media
PSY - NOTE (lol) I'm from a small town in the Southeast of England and the moment where
new Gangnam Style and kpop was gonna be really big was the point when one of the
pub nights the DJ played Gangnam style all the hammered guys were trying to
pull off that dance and were just making a complete mess of it and the last song
to be played in that pub that was not English was probably from that Romanian
boyband called O-Zone and that would have been back in like '07 '08 BUT I DIGRESS
several failed attempts had been made by entertainment companies to break into
the English language market including Wonder Girls, Girls Generation and CL it
would be until BTS's win for top social artists at the 2017 Billboard Music
Awards making them the first k-pop group to win a BBMA. K-pop began to gain more
international coverage and if you're in the UK they were on that Graham Norton
Show fairly recently and that was massive just to go off-script by this
point I had already started writing kpop far more frequently and was already at a
pitching stage I remember telling friends of friends and family members
about kpop and I would often get a confused or vacant look or glazed-over
eyes and after that point BTS are on that grand Norton show those people
started coming to me and started talking to me about kpop and everything that
they knew about it because they were just made aware.
so originally I didn't actually know that much about kpop I was definitely more of a j-pop person and
I'd grew up listening to a lot of Japanese sort of influenced music I
played a lot of video games like Final Fantasy and watched a lot of cool anime
and Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away in Howl's Moving Castle and as we
know they were the soundtracks were created by Japanese composers and I just
loved everything about Japan I thought it was really cool and I used to
integrate a lot of Japanese influenced art and branding for my old bands as you
can see here my old band MiMi Soya there's some really really cool band
coming at Japan as well around what I was hearing them about 2010-2011 like
Cross Faith, Crystal Lake, One OK Rock I didn't really know what k-pop was until
Gangnam style came out so it's 2013 and I get a random message from a producer
friend over in Norway called Bjarte from the Tune Park Studio and he was like hey
Chris we got this request from a Korean publisher do you want to try and pitch
some k-pop because we don't have the time and we want to focus on the Western
and American markets and Bjarte just started a new boy band in Norway called
The Main Level and I had absolutely no knowledge or any experience with it by
just dived straight in. So a lot of the time when you get a call out from a
publisher they tend to send you a very short email saying this person is
looking for this style of music and they'll copy and paste a couple of
YouTube links and that will be your reference material the rest is up to you
really to figure out what they want and to create that piece of music now the
references for my first pitch ever was one from Bea2t here, and one from Hyuna
here now a bit of a lesson here that I learned that it's very very important
especially when writing kpop and general pop music is you have to be relevant you
have to be up-to-date because it's got to be cool it's got to be young and all
these sort of things now check out the dates of these videos now bear in mind
we're in 2013 now these videos are two years old and I was referencing these
songs now the problem with that is songwriting yeah it's pretty much okay
doesn't change too much but the choice of instruments I was using the
production techniques I was using and all this sort of stuff it wasn't
relevant and that's really important you have to be using sounds that are
relevant now and a fresh. 2014 hands down was the hardest year I've ever had as a
musician if I had ever quit music it would have been in 2014
I failed consistently on every single pitch very entire year I did so much
wrong and it was such a steep learning curve I would finish production before
even writing the melodies or getting the emotion
down first, I would sink 30 - 40 hours into a song and then send it off and
then A. not hear back or B. just get rejected and you know it's literally
like being punched in the stomach several times when you put that much
energy into something and get rejected you can point your finger and blame
anyone you want I could have done that but the fact is I just wasn't ready I
wasn't good enough and no one's gonna tell you that you're not good enough and
you know what why should they? You should have good enough self-awareness to
realize that you're not ready for this opportunity yet another thing as well as
you can't do it by yourself you have to have collaborators you have to come from
a place of the strength and have someone else who can cover your weaknesses this
is the reality of the situation you can definitely do it but you have to keep
going you only fail if you stop I just want to manage your expectations you
know and I just want to be completely transparent with you for the next four
years I kind of dabbled with the odd pitch but I kind of deep down knew that
I wasn't good enough and I was getting some good success composing music for
film, television and game I landed some cool commercial spots with the BBC I got
a cool comedy horror film that kind of got aired in indie cinemas across the
U.S. and they've got a Japanese DVD release which was pretty cool actually
the most important thing is I didn't give up even though it was a completely
different genre and style of music I was still writing and mixing regularly and
you know what I always had kpop on my Spotify playlists and always checking
out the latest stuff on YouTube so it was always there in the background one
thing I want to mention as well is that I would not be here today without the
great online communities of producers and musicians out there
I had a few Discord groups that I could send music to and get feedback from
other producers who are far better and more talented than myself and it's
always really good to be around people who are just better than you sit back
and listen to them because you're only going to get better as a producer
because they're just more experienced 2018 came around and this was probably
the biggest turning point for me I first heard Heart Shaker by TWICE the first
point holy shit this song is awesome point two
is shit yeah you know like I can do this like I can write this this doesn't sound
too different from my old band maybe remove like the heavy guitars to replace
it with cleaner guitars have a few more poppy synths and add a bunch of more
harmonies but actually ultimately the structuring the feeling all of that I
can do pretty easy so I just wanted to test it because my confidence have been
pretty knocked from before and had given it a few years so yeah I was ready to
give it a go I did the song and I sent it to some old collaborated friends who
still working in kpop and yeah they were like dude this is awesome can you send
me anymore so I was like right I'm gonna triple down I'm gonna focus on just kpop
that happened in April/May time of 2018 and by the time it hit August I had
signed a publishing deal two years to specifically write for Korea and Japan
and now we are here so Real Talk I created and uploaded this
video in January 2019 and I still haven't officially had a cut in Japan or
Korea yet I have been consistently pitching since May 2018 and I have had
songs accepted I've had songs pitched and I've even had songs held but
technically I have not had a cut I'm saying this to you because I want to
manage expectations and this only strengthens the reason why you have to
be in it for the long game you have to be patient and you have to be persistent
and it's kind of cool because I wanted to share all my experiences with all of
you and you can see that I'm not quite there yet and hopefully over the next
few months and next hopefully next few years you can see the progression and
the story of my way in kpop I just want to say thanks so much for watching this
video and it really means a lot to me to see the comments and conversations if
you want anything covered in a future video let me know in the comment box
below and I'll make a video for you
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