What I Learned Producing K-Pop

hey pop people 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 wild 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 Changa 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 so teiji 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 how Lou the birth of second generation kpop was followed with the successful debuts of bands like Super Junior BIGBANG 21 and SHINee to name a few elsewhere in the world the genre has rapidly grown in success especially after Psy's Gangnam star 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 beside note I'm from a small town in the Southeast of England and the mote 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 ozone and that would have been back in like Oh 708 waterbrush 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 BB M a 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 influence music I played a lot of video games like Final Fantasy and watched a lot of ku 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 bands coming at Japan as well around what I was hearing them about 2010-2011 like cross faith Crystal Lake 1up Rock I never 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 piata from the toon 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 BRT 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 dive 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 beast 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 emotional chin 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 to 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 20:18 came around and this was probably the biggest turning point for me I first heard heart shaker by twice the first point holy this song is awesome point two is 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

Channel: AZODi

Views: 38,123

Rating: 4.9236417 out of 5

Keywords: AZODi, Kpop Producer, Kpop Songwriter, k pop producer, k pop production, 이달의소녀, producing k-pop, music career, k-pop producer, k-pop, k-pop tutorial

Id: pcWyoACQdp4

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2019