If there's 40K likes on Ling Ling 40 Hours... - Yup.
- We will do a review on... Oh, do I have to do it... We will do a review on Henry Lau's violin playing. Ugh... And we hit forty thousand in two days. Yeah. I kinda don't wanna be destroyed by his fan base... I know you guys want it, but don't. We - We're not a roasting channel. The universe wants this to happen... The video that we didn't want to do... But we have to. The person we are going to talk about... Is... Henry Lau. So many fans just wanted to us to review Henry Lau. Review, review his violin playing. People do say Henry's fans are really chill. But I am very well aware that this video could be... The end of us. But before we get into too much into it, we just wanna clarify first of all... That uh... That uh, Henry is an idol, first and foremost. If you go onto his Wikipedia page, it says: idol, singer, dancer, musician... He does a lot of things. Violin playing is just a small part of what he does. We're not criticizing him as an artist. I'm sure Henry could probably make a roast video on our singing and dancing anytime we've attempted to. So in this video we'll be talking about uhh... His violin playing in particular. And also the current situation with... I'd say media and how they portray music. I think especially for you core classical fans out there watching... We - We all understand there's a discrepancy between what TV portrays and reality a lot of times. So... Um, stay tuned as we'll talk about that a lot. - We should be -
- Enough of this - We are really protect - Trying to - This is like the longest intro we've ever made. Ling Ling insurance, guys. Alright, I think a good place to start is... With the performance that... Sparked this entire thing with the Reddit parody. This was Henry playing... ...I guess arrangement on Michael Jackson. Yeah. Alright, that's out of the way. Don't judge. Don't judge, Brett. Don't judge. (The song goes around the theme of dangers of crimes) (which has been #1 on many charts.) (It is famous for its moon walk dance) (and Henry has composed the introduction of this medley.) (He seems like a Professional...) Um... - Why are you laughing?
- Why are you laugh - I don't know. Why are you laughing? Why... I'm just hoping my insurance protects me. Before we go too technical... For a pop celebrity, that is... Pretty good. Yeah. I don't think we've seen... An idol perform violin that well. Not even just an idol, actually, many pop violinists. - That's true, that's true though, yeah.
- He's better than... Like cover violinists or, like, Dubstep violinists *cough* Not naming any names, but... But he's actually... Pretty good. I'm actually quite impressed. But having said that... From a classical perspective... Yeah, and this is why I accidentally laughed, I just didn't - Come on. Come on. So, the notes there. I thought you played the fir - I was like... "But you played it right the first time." Yeah. That was me trying to play it right. But what we heard was a series of miscoordination with the left hand and right hand. The notes didn't speak cleanly because his string crossing and his bow changes didn't coordinate with his left hand. - And so you hear a little bit of unclarity.
- Yes. Any unclarity usually stems from the coordination between the left and right hand. I mean, there're so many different factors. You guys probably can tell from the other videos, but this is one of the main ones. Yeah. - So, for those of you that can't hear the difference...
- The intonation. That, to a classically trained ear, is not in tune. I mean, small things... But it's very obvious to classical musicians. Well, not even classical musicians, just - musically trained violinists.
- Musically, yeah. And I think this is why it sparked that video on Reddit. Again, the run was too fast. Yeah, his bow didn't keep up. The notes. Yeah. So either his fingers didn't lift off quick enough, or the bow was also too slow to follow the left hand. That was good. - Maybe he's nervous, I don't know...
- Yeah. But it's very out of tune, that chord. And he's not adjusting it. I mean, we don't really know. There's any variety of things that could be going wrong. - Yeah.
- In a live performance. There's a loud backing track, he's got an earpiece. Maybe it's not feeding back enough? So, as a trained musician, even... When you perform... We're all trained to adjust to what we hear. Generally we try to fix it straightaway. - My hands are cold.
- Yeah. So, yeah - *laughs* You do it. Yeah, I don't even know what he's trying to play. Also, I will say, um... This, like, ricochet, kind of bow string crossing thing. It's impressive, for a non-classical musician... But it is also easier than it sounds. Yes! It's one of the tremolo things we've talked about, how... You could learn this in a few months on the violin. String crossings. All four strings. And then you move it really fast. And the bow will naturally bounce. Usually, it's over-glorified. Well, yeah. To - To the mainstream. You could also say, like... Henry's doing a good job at picking... Showy stuff. Exactly, so he's choosing the right parts to show off to people. (Fancy start.) (100% live performance.) I think actually what probably sparked the parody and the annoyance from the classical musicians is not Henry's playing, but the reaction. I - It's just the same - It's the same thing with America's Got Talent. It's so, like, why are you trying to exaggerate when it's so blatantly, to the trained ear, out of tune and - Either way, like... Maybe they just don't know anything about violin. (Even Vanessa Mae will be crying over this.) Yeah, okay, see, again. His bow actually skid a bit. But this reaction. Generally if that happens, it's not a... It's just a... In the classical music world. Yeah. But let's keep going. We're spending a lot of time on 30 seconds. (When was he able to practice this?) He hit that high note. In tune. Very good. (Even dancing?) Can I just say I can like visualize that Reddit video? - Ohh, with the chicken?
- It's so funny! And the dancing move. Whoa. It's so good. It's not, like, a classical thing, but I guess he's being an entertainer. I think maybe that's just the job as an idol. I didn't say that... Uh - Insurance. - I don't know.
- We're - - I don't know.
- We're just jealous. - We wish we had his dance moves
- Yeah, I know. - and his beautiful looks and his white suit.
- I know. I know, I know... I'm just... I mean, it's all right. I think the main thing is just... it's a bit out of tune. A lot of people were pointing out that this was one of the worst performances. Yeah. So there's actually another performance of him playing the same thing. And this one actually has a lot more views on YouTube so let's watch it. Okay, so some parts were definitely better, like intonation. - Yeah.
- Maybe not that last note. Umm, but, as a whole... It's proof that, that other clip, he maybe just had a bad day. Cause as a musician, you do have bad days. Definitely if you were just to see that, it looks like he's a lot of a better violinist than the other one. Yeah, but, there's something else that did capture our interest. But keep watching. So here's another video of him playing Czardas. Can I just say that's such bad syncing. So bad. (Starting with Henry's playing.) Nice, some good things. Uh... His vibrato is, like, in the tone. And he has phrasing. Which is very rare to see idol violinists... Do. Yeah, or like people on, uh... Like, shows like America's Got Talent. Yeah, everyone's just playing notes, they're not really playing the music. He actually has phrasing. (Amazing work despite the short practice session.) (You can always trust Henry & Shin Ji-ho's playing.) Did he just skip the hard one? - He just skipped - Yes.
- The hard one? He skipped the hard part. He skipped quite a few bits, actually. Yeah, he skipped some notes. Like, tricky bits. - He's very clever.
- He skipped this bit as well. Yeah. I don't think he did - - The...
- He didn't do the grace notes. But I will say, like... He can do spicatto. He can do sautille. It seems like he has definitely been trained... Musically. Musically. He can play with the piano as well. - Ensemble.
- Yes. Exactly. It wasn't, like, perfect but that's fine. - It's a live performance, right?
- Yeah. Oh, yes, this piece, Michael Jackson. I think he has some nice moments in his tone. He varies his bow speed too. It's not just like mweh mweh it's... - Yeah, he has some good stuff there.
- Yeah, it's not bad. (Henry's special moves.) *sigh* - You gotta do what you gotta do, man.
- Yeah, you gotta do - (Hitting those moon walks.) Did you see that? Yeahh. What was that? The bow stroke was short but the note was long. You see that... You don't see... In his defense, it could be an editor's fault... - Yeah, that might also be the case. Yeah.
- The editor didn't sync it properly. I mean, I could think of all the thousands of times where TV has fake performances. - Yeah.
- But I don't want to say anything yet. (Intense playing that his bow is about to go off.) (Hitting the moon walk again.) Again. - Da da, daaa -
- Look, dude, he didn't even play! But that can't be a syncing problem. That isn't a syncing problem because he's actually playing Re, Fa. And then he just stops playing. - That's weird.
- What do you think that is? Do you think they pre-recorded the music? - They might have, actually. Yeah...
- And then they did a live concert. But then that doesn't make sense... Cause then in the live concert... That means he would have not made a sound. Yeah, but the live audience wouldn't know. - That's true.
- The live audience might've just heard... - Yeah, that's true, that's true, that's true, yeah...
- And the piano's still playing, right? Interesting, hmm. But it makes sense because you often see... People dance and play the violin. But the music they use is from... A studio recording where they're not dancing. Yeah, like, it sets such a false expectation... Of what violin actually is. Like, it's not impossible to dance and play. Yeah. But it is severely much more difficult to play well. - And it is because you're moving,
- With good sound and contact. your contact point is changing. The weight distribution is changing so much at a rapid pace. Yeah, the best example is like, imagine dancing while performing surgery. - Yeah, like, literally -
- Like, yeah, it might be possible... - But, you're just not upping your chances.
- Yeah, no. I don't think it's possible! If you perform surgery the way you practice your scales, the patient already dead la. Look, I mean his dance moves look cool. That clearly was - There was something suspicious. Yeah, I think that was dubbed over or something like that. Anyway... Here we found another recording of his Czardas. Now it's a fan cam so you know that there isn't any dubbing or anything that's happening. - It's not bad. Everything slightly sharp.
- Yeah... Sharp. I think Henry tend- You tend to play- if you're watching this... - Henry, if you're watching this...
- You tend to play... Tend to play a little sharp. But that could also just be a series of nerves, you know. - Sometimes when you get nervous,
- Yup. your intonation slips. And generally, you do play sharper. I'm sure you guys can dig through our videos and find - plenty of incidences where we play out of tune.
- Oh, yes... All the time. Yes He's getting sharper and sharper. It's like global warming. - Dude, it's getting almost to a... like-
- Quarter tone. quarter tone higher. Um... Well, look... Again, for an idol to play like this, it is pretty epic. What? I just feel like we're just holding back. Because- okay, well... Okay, f*** it. Guys. F*** it! You guys want the truth, and here's what I really think of his playing. - I think we both knew that was...
- Yeah. - That was a f***up.
- Like, like... Like the left hand and right hand AGAIN didn't really connect. Like that. - So-
- And also like, the down bow... It was a bit like... Yeah... Like a lot of his notes... The contact doesn't connect. Could have a bit more care of the string crossing. And then... He's like... Kinda slip through that. Again, I think he might just be nervous, so that's fine. Also, one thing I wanted to say is he's being... mic'd. When you're mic'd, there's already so many advantages. Because to be able to project with a resonant and loud sound without a microphone actually requires so much more skill. A lot more skills because we practice actually in... We practice projection. - Part of the prerequisite of being good violinists.
- Yeah. He plays a bit... few wrong notes, right? Yeah, a few wrong- I think he also panics a bit with his bow placements. There's a part where he literally skipped a bit. The... He does it like a catch-up. - It's not bad.
- I mean there's a bit afterwards here. Whoa. I mean that's why the other clip the pianist plays. - Because it's the hard part. It's the hard part.
- That is the hard part. Yeah. What he missed actually, for those of you don't know, - is the... what do you call like a...
- Grace notes. Grace note. Or the mordents, yeah. And the last F was sharp. - It's fine.
- It looks like he's nervous, so it's fine. I get nervous as well all the time! Let's watch this one last bit. Is the violin like... - Baroque tuning? It's like a semitone flat.
- Is out of... yeah. Yeah... To be fair, he hasn't warmed up probably. He just took it out. Yup. The thing about this clip that bothers me a little bit, is actually not Henry's playing. It's how the TV dubs the subtitles. This girl they dub like - "He's playing so well!"
- "So good... (Chinese) So well!" Like these people are musicians, so I'm assuming they know. - I know-
- I think Henry knows himself, like, if you look at him, he's like... I mean it's not terrible, but it's not like "Whoa! Our ace." - I mean, you know what I mean?
- They're overpraising it, to be honest. From a violinist's perspective, he probably should have warmed up. But we don't know what it's like being an idol. - I can only imagine how hectic it would be.
- Mhm. And to even try and keep up with violin playing. Like we said, it's already pretty impressive. My guess... He probably was a talented, hard-working student that was definitely classically trained in the beginning. And just chose to focus on being an idol. And I think the reality of it- With like... With everything, if you don't spend time practicing, things do slip. That level of playing, definitely be not enough for any professional orchestral gig. Not that he couldn't be an orchestral musician if he practiced and focused on it. - Yes.
- But just based on what we heard. And then from orchestra, - there's still so much level above that.
- Oh... If you look at the Ling Lings we talked about, - the Menuhin Competitions, that level-
- That's still plenty of years and hours of dedication, some talents, a lot of hardwork. And then even AFTER that, there's still like the... - The Janine Jansens, the Kavakos, the Hilary Hahns.
- The Janine- Hilary Hahn. - It's like the spectrum is so big here.
- Mhm. Henry Lau's playing. That's probably acceptable in the mainstream world, but not something we generally would look up to. I think it's the details. - Yup.
- The details in the clarity, and the tone, - and the intonation.
- Yup. That's what really separates it. We're just trying to say the truth, guys. - Don't, don't-
- Yeah. But! We then did come across one interesting footage though. Something that I've never heard of, but also explained a lot of the stuff we have seen, and movies trying to portray violin playing. But that's so true because when you get a rehair, - there's no rosin to create the friction.
- Uh huh. So it just slides, but makes a little bit of sound, - Yeah.
- almost no sound. But with oil, it slides completely. Knowing what we know about TV production in the world, there is a possibility that one of the reasons why one of the Michael Jackson's sounded so much better than the other was because they could have been dubbed. Mhm. We're just speculating in a theory. It could work. With classical music, it's not possible to dub because we don't have a stereo system. The sound comes from here. Remember we were confused when we saw the fake Chinese girl... But then we were like... - Why?
- How do you fake playing the violin? - Cos violin makes a sound.
- Yeah. Well, he basically just explained how. - You rub oil on the thing.
- Yeah. I find it interesting that he knows this. Classical musicians watching this, I don't know if you have heard of this. We don't do this. I was pretty shocked. I was like "wow!" And the way he said it just sounded like it's industry secret. - Like standard- like everyone in the industry-
- I know. everyone's like "Hey guys, there's a little trick here." Look, I don't think Henry does it in most of his performances looking at most of the live ones where he's playing with the mic. Yeah. But that one Michael Jackson one, they- - He could potentially...
- It's a possibility. I mean yeah. Okay, yeah, so... We're being very picky now. Visually, his fingers made a really heavy gliss. So technically we should've heard... But in the audio, you hear... Yeah, the gliss is much shorter. This is very tiny. You know what's the other thing that's suspicious now after hearing that? Look how much his bow's sliding! - Oh yeah!
- It's sliding from- - Do you think it's possible to make that sound?
- It's literally... Cos if you wanna make that sound... You can see the contact point is very straight. And I'll also say- cos look, look... look here, right? This other performance where it was... - I'm assuming live because it was out of tune.
- Yeah. - See, his bow contact was straight.
- Yeah, his... - That's a good point.
- See? So his bow contact there is actually in the right place. Here he's obviously doing real contact cos it's required to make a good sound. And obviously he's trained, so he wouldn't be sliding that much. That's why! - With oil it slips!
- That's why it's sliding! With oil, it's actually much harder to keep the bow straight. Yeah. That makes sense. You won't even know if your horse hair is touching the string if you have so much oil. And cos he can't hear, so there's no feedback. I don't even have to look, I can hear my contact point's off. Yeah. And then... Is that straight now? Yup. I can hear it. I don't need to look at it. Yeah! But because he's not mak- We have no hard evidence, but assuming that he knows this piece of information, the story kind- it kinda fits. - It kinda does make sense, yeah.
- It makes sense. And the last thing that was slightly suspicious... Dude, nice catch. Dude, my violin's nervous. Your violin's like "Don't oil me! No!" Okay, so listen to the live performance... He doesn't play when he does a huge body swing. - Makes sense because it's hard to play.
- It's impo- I don't know if it's impossible, but- I don't know, let's try! Nah, it's... What's most likely gonna happen is this type of sound. - Yeah.
- When we move like this, there's a circular motion. And unless the hand is moving, it's actually too hard to catch the string. But look at this- The really good performance, 10 million views, right? You can hear the "bump," and it's just clean "bump." Why- If you could do it here, why don't you do it in the other live performance? Is it because he's doing that dance move, and he knows it's not doable? But now that it's dubbed, he added it in. I don't know. Could be a TV thing where they re-edit the stuff, right? Yeah. They could change things. Well, you never really know. Let's make this clear. Henry can obviously play. Even if it is dubbed, and we don't have hard evidence. - Yeah.
- But even if it's dubbed, - he played the dubbed version himself.
- Yes. He knows when to use the vibrato. - He knows when to change the bow. He knows-
- When to slide. When to slide, and also which string, when to shift. I think some people might be like... "It's so hard to sync it so well." "It must be a real live performance." But if you look at his Ariana Grande 7 Rings cover, - it's pretty much perfectly synced, visually and aurally.
- Yup. But any sound engineer will tell you... You can't record like that outdoors. Yeah, it's close to impos- - You just can't because there's wind.
- You just can't cos there's wind. There's other noises. The sound of the violin - cannot be picked up that accurately.
- Mhm. And so the fact that Henry did that there, - it's not impossible...
- It means... that he could do it in a live performance, if he knows the oil trick. - I didn't know the oil trick.
- Yeah. - That's why I thought it was impossible.
- That's why! That's why! But it looks also possible that he did play. Who cares, right? Yeah well, who cares? But you guys wanted it anyways, so here you go! - I will say that gliss was very suspicious.
- Yeah, I think... That glissando. Anyway. Despite all what we said, I think Henry is a great guy, probably. I have never met him. I think it's cool how he's bringing violin into the mainstream. And I'm sure if we met, he'd probably be just a chill guy. Who knows? Henry, if you're watching this... Feel free to roast us back. Yeah. We hope this was enough for a in-depth- - In-depth review.
- Yeah, in-depth review. We tried to be as objective as we can. And obviously it's clear there are 2 different types of standards. We're a classical music channel. We're trying our best, and we want to inspire you guys keep practicing. Don't let everything distracts you. Just practice because that's the most important part in being a classical musician. Yeah. What else do you guys want now, huh? Hm? If you made it this far, we encourage you guys to listen to some classical music. You can check out our top 10 recommended music for people that want to get into classical music. I would hope it's a good introduction. And once again, this is a long video. Thank you so much. We'll see you guys next time. - Practice!
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