Exchanging Mozart for Mario Brothers | Rob Landes | TEDxSaltLakeCity

I started studying the violin at the age of three practicing daily with my mom at the piano [Music] she and I had a deal for every hour a violent practice I would earn an hour of video game time now I love video games so by the time I was 13 years old I was soloing with orchestras winning competitions and practicing three to four hours a day that video game time really paid off people said I had a gift and at 18 I experienced a burst of inspiration something deep inside me knew that the violin would become my life's work but when I began auditioning for professional orchestras four of them I never even made it past the first round I was devastated well we all have to pay our bills and eventually I put music on the back burner and I took a job in sales one unremarkable day working the grind I saw a video of a musician online using a loop pedal to create a complex pop music arrangement now I've been studying music for 27 years but I had no idea this type of technology existed because it was designed for guitarists not violinists I immediately purchased my first loop pedal and began experimenting with it now what a loop pedal does is it lets you record what you're playing live play that back while you add other loops on top watch this [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's probably the most applause I've ever gotten for twinkle twinkle little star now I've been studying classical music my entire life 27 years but the music I wanted to learn first with the loop pedal is not by baito in her Bach felt a little more fire for the music of Led Zeppelin [Music] however I was a little nervous to go public with my new hobby a close friend of mine had told me that you could not be successful in the pop world without lyrics also what my peers and teachers from music school think that I was playing lesser music than I've been trained to perform would I be rejected by both the pop and the classical worlds after nearly a year I decided that I would rather risk disappointing the elite than wondering what if for the rest of my life I decided I would rather break from people who didn't support me than sit still in a dream I decided to make a youtube video and you know what I don't receive any criticism the way that I had expected I immediately began to think about my next song something by ac/dc enter mom again she desperately wanted me to record Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah no mom ac/dc she said well what if I pay for the video production said mom hallelujah let's do it [Applause] [Music] well mom knows best that video went viral and has since racked up eight million views so I quit my job and I signed with Ark Studios where we tried to replicate the success of hallelujah we made dozens of videos similar to hallelujah but nothing would stick it wasn't until we combined the interests of my audience with my passion that we began to find some consistency and that audience came from an unlikely place [Music] there's a 15-minute video of that on YouTube if you want to see more the classical music world rejected me but I was embraced by video gamers I broke through a barrier and reached an entirely new audience that was eager to hear me play my violin my early years were spent practicing the violins so I could play video games now video games helped me earn a living by playing my violin but I still get to play a little ac/dc now and then [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 466,392

Rating: 4.9588819 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Entertainment, Music (performance), Video Games

Id: FFK8NKfLp1Y

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/blublub69]

out of curiosity, why?