The following is an auto-generated transcript of the Brazn Azn podcast Episode 23. It also includes affiliate links that do not affect the price you pay, but allows me to recoup some of our costs. Please excuse any mistakes or misspellings as we do not have the time nor bandwidth to edit.
Show notes
In this episode of the Brazn Azn podcast, co-hosts Stella and Virginia Duan chat with improvisational pianist GKO about his unexpected path from tech to becoming a full-time musician. GKO shares his journey of discovering a sudden ability to improvise during the pandemic, building an independent music career, and breaking away from traditional Asian American narratives.
- The Magic of Musical Improvisation
- Navigating Life as an Independent Artist
- The Current State of the Music Industry
- Breaking Free from Asian American Stereotypes
- Finding Authenticity Through Therapy
- Taking Risks and Pursuing Passion
Listen to Brazn Azn Ep 23
Transcript
Stella: [00:00:00] Hi Brazen Nation, this is the Brazn Azn podcast. I’m your co host Stella.
Virginia: And I’m your other co host, Virginia Duan, also known as Mandarin Mama. I’m the entertainment editor for Mochi Magazine, which is the longest running online Asian American women’s magazine, a freelance writer and an author. Yay. My books are on Amazon and if you like stories about messy people, angst, found families, all set in the K-pop backdrop with sexy times, that’s the book for you.
Stella: Today we have a guest with us. Virginia, you want to introduce our guest GKO?
Virginia: Okay. Since the release of his first album, Sonic Sanctum, in 2020, GKO has been pioneering what’s possible with the piano. Critics describe his playing as performing wizardry, flowing yet bright, lively and heroic, with moments of nostalgia, reverie, and reflection, he combines decades of classical training with a gift for improvisation to speak with a candor all his own.[00:01:00]
So everyone, please welcome GKO, yay!
GKO: Hey everyone, how’s it going?
Virginia: We’re so excited.
We’re so excited.
GKO: Excited to be here.
Stella: Yay! So, Virginia, you met G on Clubhouse. And I’m gonna let Virginia describe what it is.
Virginia: I got dragged in by Korean women and they introduced me to some Korean dude, Joe Park, shout out. So I met him through those rooms, and I think you were working at Caltech at the time?
GKO: Yeah, I had a day job at Caltech.
Virginia: Yeah. And then so there would be open mic nights and he would play the guitar. And he would sing. He can sing guys. And then he sometimes would play piano and then he would take requests. And I think you do this, some version of this at some of your concerts, right?
GKO: Yeah.
Virginia: He would take a request, like, tell me a mood, tell me a genre, tell me a style, and then he’ll play something. And it’s really fun. So that’s how we met. And then we met in [00:02:00] person and now I forced him to be my friend.
GKO: Happy, happy to be forced to be your friend.
Stella: G, I read that a lot of your concerts are improv. Is that still true? Is that like what you’re doing?
GKO: Yeah, so I would say, like, all of my concerts are completely improvised. I, I basically, any song that I write that’s kind of an original, I just have the main melody and kind of a basic structure.
The structure’s like beginning, middle, and end. It’s like that kind of abstract. But I kind of just play how I feel. So, no show’s the same, every time I play is different and I’m a pretty lazy writer, I just kind of remember what the songs are in my head and I don’t write it down, so to me that’s just a faster way to work, cause if you write down everything you compose, you’re gonna spend most of your time just notating and so I just try to tell myself, I either try to remember it in my head or I’ll take an iPhone recording.
There have been instances where like [00:03:00] I’ll go to a show and then a fan requests a song that I haven’t played in like two years and I don’t remember what it sounds like and then I’ll have them play my own song on Spotify on their phone so I can listen to it and I’m like, Oh, okay. I don’t remember how I did that, but let’s try, you know Yeah, everything’s improvised, so anything can happen.
And now what I do in the second half of my show is I ask people for a story or a mood and I kind of compose a live soundtrack for them in person. And sometimes people request crazy stuff, so anything can happen. But yeah, I improvise everything at all my shows
Virginia: I would think that would make me panic but also freeing at the same time Right,
GKO: I mean when you’re raised by an abusive Asian American family, your panic is kind of normal So I just feel like it’s a normal state of fight or flight.
It’s just kind of like breathing at that point So it’s not scary at all. I can’t drink alcohol when I perform because I noticed the quality of the improvisation goes down. So, the [00:04:00] panic is full, sober, you know, like you experience that sober.
You can’t experience that with a nice couple glasses of a Manhattan or old fashioned. So, it’s like full, full panic. But actually it’s not so bad compared to doing math homework at five years old at midnight, it’s actually not that bad. So yeah, it’s, it’s fine.
Stella: Right. Like the trauma changes your baseline for what’s an acceptable level of stress in your body.
Virginia: So since we’re talking about your concerts how do you go about planning your tours and everything? Your tour kicks off. In March, right? In the UK?
GKO: Yeah, I have a new tour for the spring. It’s called Color Studies, and it’s the exploration of all the possible colors the piano can make.
It’s starting off in the UK, we’re doing four cities there and then we’re going across the U. S. By across the U. S., I mean the West Coast because the New York show, it’s coming, but not in the spring. I’m doing four cities in the UK, including London. And then on the West Coast, I’m doing Paso Robles, Newport Beach, [00:05:00] Seattle. There’s going to be a show in LA, but we don’t know when it is.
Cause that’s the life of an independent artist, the unknown. I’m an independent artist. I’m not signed by a talent manager or a label. I kind of book all my shows on my own or with volunteers. How I do that is, you know, early days of touring when I started doing music full time three years ago, I had a lead sheet of 500 venues in the U. S.
Virginia: Oh, wow. And
GKO: I cold called or emailed all of them. That was in the beginning, it was just grinding, like being a sales rep, but instead of for a pyramid scheme vitamin company, it was for my own music. So I felt a little bit better about myself, and I made the exact same amount of money.
And yeah, it was great not really. My rejection rate was like 98%, but the 2 percent that stuck out, that’s what mattered. That’s kind of similar what I do now. What’s really cool though is because it’s been a few years and I’m really grateful for amazing supportive fans is now they reach out on Instagram mostly, and [00:06:00] they tell me they want me at their venue.
It’s super surreal or I’ll find out about venues. Just in person, one of the craziest things was I was in line. It was very nerdy of me. I love Formula One. And I was in line to try to win a shoe at the F1 race in Vegas at Caesars Palace. And I waited three fucking hours in this line.
I did not get the shoe, by the way.
Virginia: I wanna
GKO: just tell everyone I was one person away cause this motherfucker cut the line. And we, I don’t know why I’m getting so angry I shouldn’t, I’m not an angry person, but he cut the line, I waited three hours for this shoe, he cut the line, I was one person away, but anyways, while I was waiting in line, this guy was looking at the back of my head very intently, and I was like, what is going on, it’s very creepy, and then he asked me, are you GKO, and I was like, Yeah, are you stalking me?
He’s like, I’m a fan. I’m like, no way. And he showed me he followed me on Spotify. And I was like, Oh, dude, thank [00:07:00] you. And he’s like, I live in Paso Robles, you should play at this place called libretto. I’ve never heard of it. And I was like, okay, whatever. Dude. And I checked it on Instagram and it’s actually this amazing jazz piano venue.
Oh. In Paso Robles. And they’re like partnered with all the vineyards in Paso Robles. And so I reached out to them and I did my first show with them last year. It was super awesome. That fan came to the show. It was just super surreal and what’s even more crazy is the piano that they have.
I played on that piano when I was 13 for the Chinese American fundraiser in LA. Chinese American Museum fundraiser. I’m like really grateful for those interactions and that’s kind of how I book my shows now. But obviously it would be awesome if I had a management team behind me to do all the work, but when you’re independent, you just kind of do it on your own and pray for the good graces of really awesome fans to help you out. So yeah, that’s that was it. [00:08:00] Yeah,
Virginia: that’s not so hard So do you how do you prep for tour? Like do you is there like do you have certain things you have to have is there like,
GKO: oh, you know I’m basically just like BTS and Billy Eilish and Charlie Puth.
I have a whole entourage, I gotta have my Dom Perignon in the green room ready to go I got my stash of weed for before the show, during the show, and after the show. No, actually I’m known in the industry as pretty straight. I guess preparing for tour, there’s a couple things.
Honestly, the easiest part is preparing for the playing part of the show. Since I improvise everything, I kind of just like run through the songs before the show. I don’t practice too much anymore. When I was doing classical music, I was practicing six to ten hours a day. Oh my gosh. And now sometimes I don’t practice at all because I’m constantly playing music in my head.
I can’t turn it off So my head’s just music playing non stop. Sometimes [00:09:00] even when I’m in the car, I’ll practice in my head. I’ll just play piano in my head. So now that I can do that I don’t really need to physically practice but I probably practice two, three days a week and the practice can range from 20 minutes to, if I’m really inspired, I could sit and really play six hours straight.
Virginia: Oh, wow.
GKO: So it just depends. That’s kind of how I prepare on the music side. And then on the business side, that’s for me the most time consuming part. Right now, I probably spend 80% Doing business stuff for my career and only 20 percent making music. Oh, I wish it was the other way around But that’s what happens when you’re independent.
I’m doing emails to venues, setting up photography, Doing Facebook ads. I’m running 20 Facebook ads and doing optimizations Then I’m interviewing with journalists or I’m reaching out to promoters or fans, like if they can help spread the word for shows I’m making merchandise.
And then I have to pack all of [00:10:00] that and ship it to wherever I’m touring. If I’m like working with a stylist or a clothing company, so like I’ve worked in the past with Maison Kitsune and Hugo Boss, and then these past few tours I’ve been working with Fundamental in Tokyo. I was in Japan and we talked about the outfit for the next tour, and so I had to spend time doing that.
And then I have to plan these trips and schedules. So I have to organize all the hotels, travel, trains, buses. Sometimes I have to rent a car and drive on the wrong side of the road. Terrifying. Flights, like I, I have like, Like 15 different credit cards, so I have to point swap to try to pay for tour without paying for tour.
Virginia: Oh, yeah. So
GKO: yeah, it’s a lot of work on the logistics and business side and marketing side to prep for tour, but the actual playing parts, I mean, that’s ready to go. That’s the fun part, like playing on stage. That’s the.
Stella: I was gonna say, at least, at least that’s the fun part, right?
That’s the [00:11:00] enjoyable part of, of touring.
GKO: Yeah. I mean, touring, the best part of touring for me, which is really interesting, musicians are so different. I know musicians who hate. touring because they hate traveling with the grilling schedule. I know musicians who hate fan interactions.
I know people who like the business side more. I know people who hate practicing, which if you hate practicing and you’re a full time musician, that’s kind of problematic. But that explains why there’s so much auto tune. For me, the best part of touring is playing on stage.
And meeting the fans that care enough about your music that they bought a ticket and they could have gone to go see Jacob Collier at the O2, but they decided to come to your Rinky Dink show and they buy merch or they wear merch to your show? Or the best part is always hearing how your music move people
Virginia: Hmm
GKO: and like you can’t That’s why we do this, right?
I mean, obviously it’s kind of selfish, like I am doing this because this is just what I believe in and how I want to express. But then [00:12:00] when what you want to do selfishly for you to fulfill yourself as an artist impacts someone enough where it changes their lives, there’s not many careers that let you do that. So I’m very grateful. Do I wish I had enough money to buy, like, a Ferrari? Yeah, of course, but that’s material, right? It doesn’t matter.
Stella: So, you discovered your ability to improv kind of magically, right? I read that it kind of came out of nowhere. You want to tell us about that?
GKO: You know, it’s like a movie and people say, like, that’s kind of like bullshit. But I honestly have, you can put a polygraph hooked up to me, I, this is exactly how it happened, I don’t know how it happened, it is like a movie, I’m not a religious person. I’m maybe agnostic. I was raised Christian. I will say the one thing that made me question, like maybe there is some higher being out there.
To all the people who grew up playing classical music, when you study classical music, you basically just read very complicated sheet music and you try to replicate it. [00:13:00] And at the end of the day, despite how amazing of an art it is, and I love classical music, you are still playing someone else’s music.
You’re not playing necessarily what your music, you’re playing Beethoven or Chopin’s music. And your job is to communicate that music in the most visceral way that you can to be part of the human experiment of emotion and spirituality. That’s kind of your job, but it’s not you 100%. It’s like 90 percent someone else.
So, when you’re a classical musician growing up, you kind of envy people who can play how they feel. Like you envy jazz musicians, or you envy blues players, or you even envy hip hop musicians who are just reacting and existing and how they feel at the moment. And that’s something you envy, but you don’t have that skill because you spent all your time perfecting your craft of playing things very perfectly and exact and at a very high level.
So anyways, during COVID, [00:14:00] we were all locked up. I kind of told myself I really want to be able to improvise because I’ve never been able to do it. And I just was like, I don’t know how to do it. I was watching YouTube videos, but I was like, you can’t think about theory when you play.
It’s too slow. And I’m like, this is going to take 20 years to figure out. And I was like, Oh man, this sucks. And I don’t know. One day it was like March, 2020. I woke up. And it’s funny enough, this is at the same time I started therapy and shout out to betterhelp. com. You know, betterhelp. com offers one on one therapy from the comfort of your home.
You can go to their website, go to betterhelp. com slash Conan to receive 20 percent off on your first therapy session. This is not an ad. It’s not paid advertising. This is just something I hear on a Conan O’Brien podcast. I’m not sponsored by betterhelp. com, but betterhelp. com, if you are listening.
I am available. But anyways so I started therapy. And I literally woke up one day in March in 2020. And I said, you know what, I think [00:15:00] I’m just gonna play whatever’s in my head. I went to the piano and I don’t know what happened, but my brain and my heart and my ears and my fingers were all connected instantaneously and I can just suddenly play whatever I wanted and I was like, ah, this is crazy. This doesn’t happen This is like a Disney movie Or this is like some weird anime movie where he had no superpowers and then one day he did and then his Job was to go save the world. But of course he doesn’t because you get seven seasons of animes from that.
So then I ask my mom for requests like request some old Chinese folk tunes that I’ve never learned their music I’ve only listened to and she would say all these Teresa Tang songs and I would just start playing them and my mom’s like, this is weird. And yeah, so that’s kind of how I just got into improvising.
It was just came suddenly. I don’t really know how to teach it. A lot of fans or I’ve given masterclasses at university about conservatories about improvisation or piano performance [00:16:00] and students will ask me how, well, how did you improvise? And I can’t. Tell them in a lesson, like, oh, you just do it.
I don’t know how it happened. And to this day, it’s a mystery. But for me, if that’s evidence that there’s a higher being who was really obsessed with the number seven.
I don’t know what happened, but I’m just grateful. I don’t know how to explain it, like, for me improvising is just like, that’s just what I hear, or it just makes sense. If you explain theory, like if I’m playing F chord, I’ll maybe move an inversion up, and then I’ll go to the 4, and then I’ll move the bass down so that’s a 5, a 5, and then maybe, like, I don’t know, like that’s how you can explain it through theory, but then, really how I feel is just, Ah, it feels really uplifting.
And this is what uplifting sounds like. And yeah.
Virginia: Is that different than playing songs by ear?
GKO: Playing by ear is pretty hard. It is different. Playing by ear is you’re listening to something and you’re reacting after for me It’s it’s [00:17:00] in real time.
Virginia: Oh,
GKO: and that’s that’s why it’s not like playing by ear. For example when I play a cover of a song I’m not listening to the song and then playing what I hear. What I’m actually doing is I’m internalizing the entire song into my body And my body’s just reacting to it as if I’m playing the CD for the first time.
Stella: I kind of see it as playing by ear is trying to reproduce what you’re hearing. But improv is really about recreating what you’ve experienced. It’s not the same. As somebody who played the piano and never learned to sight read, playing by ear was my only option. But it was entirely about reproducing and not about recreating.
GKO: Yeah. And the other thing too I learned about improvisation that I don’t think a lot of people know is most improvisation is not genuine creation. This is what I learned because then I realized this world is really small. Cause I don’t know how to play [00:18:00] jazz, but I love listening to jazz and my favorite artists, like in my top five favorite artists, three are jazz musicians.
I play alto saxophone growing up. And I can play fake jazz. I would just recite red solos and played in big band and read the charts. But when I was trying to figure out, like before. Had my weird epiphany during COVID. I was going on YouTube trying to figure out how do people improvise.
And I learned very quickly that most people, when they improvise, they actually learn a very rudimentary system. It is very regimented. So there’s a harmonic system that they follow. And then in terms of their solos, it’s a lot of the time planned. And I didn’t know this. So there’s something called Omnibooks, where it’s very complicated transcriptions of the best soloists in history in jazz.
And you study them. And unless you’re a creative, like you’re doing your own music and you can truly, genuinely [00:19:00] improvise creatively. You’re copying all their solos and then you’re playing them in all the different keys. So you have the muscle memory. And then I also found out a lot of jazz musicians will plan their solo before they solo.
So they’ll have a motif or something. They literally line it up. And I didn’t know that. But I thought they were just having fun, but then I started going to shows of certain artists in multiple cities And they were playing very very very similar solos And then I realized like okay genuine improvisation is actually kind of rare which makes sense because the jazz greats that everyone bought tickets to or had illegal recordings of because there were there were witnessing Magic, right?
And that’s when I realized that whoa, genuine improvisation is actually kind of rare. So when someone says they improvise, I sometimes think the better clarifier is are you improvising in the moment, or are you improvising with a set of [00:20:00] tools? In some respects it helps also dispel the audacity of improvisation, like there is a systematic way of doing it.
But if you want to be genuinely expressing yourself in the moment, you gotta find the way to break through that. And if you think about the rolodex of jazz players, specifically in the jazz genre, that can actually do it, like you listen to or buy tickets to, it’s not that many compared to the whole world.
I mean, you got, what, 8 billion people on the planet? And only a few thousand can do it. It’s not a lot. Anyways, I know I just did this whole tangent on music theory and improvisation, but yeah, it’s interesting.
Virginia: When you’re talking about people memorize certain solos or progressions, most music, depending on the genre, follows a certain progression, so if you’re just fucking around on the piano and just playing whatever’s in your brain, you might just follow a certain structure. It’s not anything particularly new, I guess. You know, how Nirvana is the same four chords over and over again, like all [00:21:00] their songs are the same, pretty
Stella: much. Yes, and it’s just disco drums. That’s just a disco drum beat.
Virginia: Right. Or I’m thinking of vamping, so when you improvise, you’re not falling back on those tools or you are using those tools and transforming them or transmuting them or completely differently.
GKO: Yeah, I think for me, I have all the tools cause I’ve learned theory before composition, or I’ve just listened a lot or played a lot, but you’re kind of just forgetting about it.
I mean, there’s always going to be a structure to whatever you do musically, if you want it to sound quote unquote good, because it has to make sense. And it doesn’t have to make sense for like, this is how it should sound, but it should make sense in that I can follow it. And in that sense, yeah, there’s going to be something you quote unquote rely on.
But for, for me, and I think for musicians that I admire, they’re not thinking about the structure at all. Like when they’re playing, there’s just no, you’re not thinking about, I need to do this and that. You’re just like, this is [00:22:00] just happening right now. And that’s the thing that separates that from the idea of structure.
So to the audience, it may sound like there’s a structure, but the experience you’re having as an artist on stage, you’re just playing how you feel. And because of years, decades of training and taste building and listening and playing great works of music, your vocabulary gets better and better and better and better and better and then you also get more adventurous because you’re more confident and then your improvisations get more wild But also contained because you have a such a sophisticated level of taste and technique that it doesn’t matter what you do you’ll always go back to the thing like you’ll start from the beginning You’ll do something crazy in the middle and you always go back to the end and all it’ll make sense as a song I think the best example of improvisation or incredible sound songwriting is we’re so lucky.
We have video of this is Peter Jackson’s documentary of [00:23:00] Of the Beatles the last record they record together on get back like when they forced a song out of nothing That’s kind of the best way to describe it because they weren’t writing down a structure They weren’t like, okay, it has to have an A section, B section, there needs to be a pre chorus, there needs to be a bridge.
They didn’t even write down the lyrics, they were just like, this feels right. And they forced the song through. And that’s how they wrote. And that’s why I think Beatles songs, have endured forever because those are truly these are guys who really listened who loved making music who had something really strong to say and sounded good.
They were technically very good. And yeah, they couldn’t read music. None of them read music Oh, really? None of them read music They all play by ear But they knew what they wanted and they were so adamant on expressing it and to force the song through so I think that’s like a really good example of the process
Stella: Speaking of taste building, who are you listening to these days?
GKO: Oh okay. I’m kind of [00:24:00] boring right now.
Well I listen to, I kind of listen to everything. Who am I listening to? I mean, I always listen to Hiromi. Uehara Hiromi. She’s like my favorite jazz pianist. She’s such an icon. Just a trailblazer in the piano world. Like, my improvisational god, I hope to play 1 percent as good as she does.
I listen to I’ve been listening to Jazzmatazz a lot, both volume 1 and 2. Great record. From the East Coast it’s a hip hop jazz experimental record from the nineties. It’s awesome. I was very lucky I got an original pressing of it. I haven’t played it on vinyl. I haven’t played it yet cause it’s I’m too scared.
Who else have I been listening to recently? Listening to a lot of Japanese music cause I’ve been going to Japan a lot There’s this new band that my friend helped me discover. They’re an old band, but they performed during his fashion show.
It’s called The Band Apart. And they’re a rock Funk fusion Japanese band and it’s a good [00:25:00] vibe like their music so happy And it’s technically really impressive. It’s like if you took if you took five Juilliard kids and you told them you have to play Japanese Funk music for the rest of your lives.
It’s like that level of execution, but it’s a good vibe, too So yeah The Band Apart. Who else am I listening to I used to listen to a lot of Top 40, but to be honest, recently, it all kind of sounds the same. I think aside from Kendrick, I don’t really listen to Top 40 right now.
But if there’s any artist recommendations, I am open to it. But
Virginia: You need to listen to Right People Wrong Place, RM’s album from last year.
GKO: Okay. Of course, of course, we’re getting a K pop suggestion from Virginia,
Virginia: but it’s not K pop. It’s a, it’s like,
GKO: it’s not K pop.
Virginia: It’s because RM is a rapper and it’s very it’s cool.
I think you’d, Oh, I
GKO: dig, I dig the visuals.
Virginia: Yeah. All right.
GKO: Yeah. This is like the music I [00:26:00] listened to.
Virginia: Yeah. I think you would like it. And I think you might like the documentary too.
Stella: Are you a fan of thundercat? Yeah. Yeah. Blood on the dance floor. That’s like the vibe of RM’s album, like just a little.
There’s, there’s, there’s like that feeling.
GKO: I like Thundercat as a musician. The song he, yeah his songs are like 50 50 for me. Honestly, I just don’t like sometimes the way he processes his bass sound. I also don’t like the way they engineered the drum machine.
It’s a music nerd thing. It just doesn’t sound good to me. Nothing against the musician. I think it was just an artistic choice they made. And for me, it sounds like when you have, I don’t know, sometimes when artists talk about their musical tastes, you just sound like a sensitive asshole.
But the truth is when I don’t like certain sounds, my body feels really uncomfortable. I can’t control it.
Stella: So, a lot of music and pop culture critics like to talk about the death of the album, or death of music as [00:27:00] a long art form. Which to me feels really alarmist, but on the other hand, I do feel there’s a lot of disposability in music, like the fast fashion of music is also a thing, right? So what’s your take on that conversation?
GKO: Okay, I think there’s like a couple of things that are happening. One is music now, like the opportunity to get your music out there is way more impressive now than any other time in history. it just is. Like, you can post anything on social that’s how I got my start. I went viral on Clubhouse, this random app during COVID.
And if it wasn’t for that, I would I don’t know, if it wasn’t for that and my epiphany improvising and having gone through a lot of things that led me back into music, I would probably still be in tech or working some other day job. So, I think one thing is, music, in terms of opportunities, is the most it’s [00:28:00] ever been in human history to make it as an artist.
What’s amazing is you can find your audience now. How big is that audience? I don’t know, but like, You can find them with the power of social so like, that’s crazy I think because traveling now is so relatively cheaper than before, I had to go to Japan to do a label meeting, and I could just go on a plane.
I bought a $600 ticket round trip, right? That would be unimaginable even like 10 years ago. And so the accessibility to get your music out there to meet people who support your music to find opportunities is definitely amazing. What is happening though is I mean, it’s just the natural process of capitalism with technology and efficiency and money is that , the people who have controlled the industry for so long, they’ve figured out how to maximize all of the amazing things that [00:29:00] technology in the world offers now with the availability of music to their advantage.
Now that they’ve figured out how to efficiently monetize on streaming, they figured out how to get. the most efficient use out of paid media. They figured out how to manage relationships with streaming platforms and brands to a level that’s unprecedented too from history. Because of the amount of money that they have and control of the market, they can now cannibalize all of the opportunities.
So for example, I don’t think a lot of people know this, but the artists you see on late night television, like when they perform, it used to be back in the day, everyone kind of had a say who could perform on a late night show. It would be the host, the producers, the writer’s room, or agencies in LA that would propose artists or it could be very famously, a lot of artists got their start with they’re just a local band and they’re playing at the Whiskey A Go Go and Jay Leno or Conan would be like, [00:30:00] Oh, they sound great.
Let’s put them on the show tonight. Those opportunities happen more frequently than you think, like from the 60s until the 2010s, early 2000s. Now. All of the big talent agencies have booked up every opportunity on network television. So everyone you see, almost all of them are signed by big agency.
And that’s just the way it is now. So even if you are really successful on TikTok or Instagram or you have your own strong following, it does not mean you’ll get onto a television show to expand your reach. Another thing that they’ve done is cannibalize playlists. So every major label right now has control of almost every playlist that you listen to on every streaming platform.
And they have a Rolodex of artists that they’ve negotiated with all the big tech companies that they have to go through on the playlist. So if you’re an independent artist and you’re trying to [00:31:00] pitch your songs to a playlist, the probability of you getting on that playlist is already one billionth of a percent.
The stars that break through, which is awesome for them. If they can break through, I’m like, dude, that’s amazing. I wish I had that luck, but if you broke through, dude, congrats. It’s just like an editor at Spotify or Apple music was like, you know what, I decided to give this person a break, but 99. 99999 percent of the time, it’s a pre negotiated deal with Universal, with Atlantic Records, with Sony. Another thing is because of COVID and the pandemic and also the current administration, a lot of funding for the arts, specifically funding for developing talent. That means venues that support sizes of 15 people to 150 people.
Or educational programs that help artists get better from their craft or scholarships or services that help ease living costs for artists to have time to write new songs and develop their community of [00:32:00] supporters and fans. Those are all of being eviscerated. I forgot what the National Independent Venue Association, I forgot the report was like something over 40 percent of venues have closed in the last three years.
Oh
Virginia: my gosh.
GKO: It’s completely eviscerated. And so and now we’re losing even more federal funding. And we lost,
Stella: we lost the Kennedy Center. The Trump Center.
GKO: Oh yeah, Kennedy Center’s gone. It’s gone.
Ben Folds, famously, publicly resigned.
Stella: I saw that.
GKO: Yeah. So that’s what’s happening right now in the music industry.
And there’s also a reason why, you see a lot of top 40 artists now are just, a lot of them are quote unquote, nepo babies. If you do the homework, they all come from incredibly wealthy families that have Deep industry connections that put up a lot of capital upfront for paid media spend or relationships with certain brands.
And so you’re as an independent artist now, now you’re fighting all of that. You’re fighting all that noise. And so that’s why it’s hard. And going back to like fast music and fast [00:33:00] fashion going off of the capitalism movement they’ve also started doing this with the music they produce. So it’s not just the business side.
Now it’s now how they weaponize songs. to act like fast fashion. And so, you say the death of the album. An album used to be anywhere from 18 to 30 minutes, like 29 minutes. Now basically it’s EP culture or singles. And the reason why they do that is because it costs less money to produce but they make more money from plays.
Also, pop music hasn’t had a shift in the style in, I think, over 16 years. This has also never happened, where pop music today sounds exactly the same as pop music 15 years ago. I think the reason why Gen Z has fallen into, listening to eras music, like, right now, pop music’s top 40 still top 40, but the most popular playlists are all eras like 90s and early 2000s are really really popular playlists like top five [00:34:00] in the world And the reason is because pop music then was different every five years tastes changed audiences grew. Artists grew and so you had different music, but now it all sounds the same because these companies are weaponizing songs to hit certain social media or marketing or profit targets as fast as possible so songs have gotten shorter the average song used to be three minutes and 35 seconds for radio play now it’s about 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
Like the habit of how you write in a studio has changed. I’ve been in recording sessions from indie artists all the way to like, I think in the room, there was a collective 30 platinum records. I obviously don’t have a platinum record, I was just lucky to be there. But, the way they write music now is literally like, we have to write in less than 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
You have a four to eight bar intro, and then you would have one verse, a pre [00:35:00] chorus, a chorus, the pre chorus again, the chorus, and you’re done. And everyone writes the song in the exact same formula, and it’s just crazy because 10 years ago or 15 years ago, you go into a studio the label books the studio for like a week or two, and then you’re just like, write whatever the fuck you want.
And maybe one or two have to be hits, but it’s more of like, let’s just see what happens. And that part of music making is also kind of dead. And then, you have Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are growing up in an era where they’re not obsessing over music because of records, or collecting it, or listening to new things.
They’re obsessing over music for fame. And hype. And so now they’re not interested in making music that is about expression or about themselves or the culture, like the punk rock movement or the hip hop movement in LA, or, the jazz movement in Harlem, they’re, they’re more interested about.
How do I get famous? How do I get rich? And so [00:36:00] they’re learning how to make music in the way that these companies are making music for monetization. So they’re writing songs that are less than two minutes and 10 seconds. And then they’re now relying so heavily on electronics that they’re not developing the musicianship and the skills and they’re not taking time to develop taste.
And that’s why the quality of music just keeps going down. And so you listen to stories of the Beatles, where Paul McCartney and John, they were trying to figure out how to play this one chord on the guitar, and they didn’t know how to play that chord, and they, their friend called them and said, hey, I have a buddy who knows how to do that, and they took five different cabs to get to that guy’s house so they can show him, right?
Like, that kind of era of discoverability is gone. And so that’s what I think is happening to music right now, is the inevitability of wanting to become famous and make money, it’s so invigorating and tempting [00:37:00] that the entire process of making good music is now being thrown out the window because it’s not necessary.
And so, the question is not, is music dead? The question is Is good music dead? and I don’t think it is because the world is so big But I will say good music. It’s harder for good music to break through but when it does, it breaks through hard and I think one good example of that is Silk Sonic that, that’s like the only album that hit multi platinum and won, I don’t know, like 14 different Grammys.
And it’s the last, it’s been the last album that’s been produced at that level of engineering and musicianship and instrumentals. It’s the last
one.
Stella: It’s also because of, it’s also because of Anderson and Bruno, the references, musically, that they understand and have taken in, the music that they grew [00:38:00] up with, the taste that they’ve built over the decades that they’ve been immersed in music, means that they have a much larger breadth of things to pull from. than a lot of other people.
GKO: Well, yeah, but, but the, the record that they did from a compositional and engineering level was like, no one’s done something that complicated in pop mainstream in the last 10 years, that’s why it swept the Grammys because it was just the perfect storm.
It was catchy. So I hit all the pop stuff, but then from like an audiophile musician perspective, it was masterfully done. Now, you could argue it’s not original,
Virginia: It is not.
GKO: Right? You could argue that.
But it’s executed
Stella: All music is variations on a theme.
Right, like,
Virginia: sure.
GKO: To, yeah, to a certain extent, but like, There are artists that have unique sounds.
You listen to a David Bowie record, you’re like, [00:39:00] that’s David Bowie. You listen to a Beatles record, that’s the Beatles. If you look at K pop, you look at Big Bang. Big Bang was incredibly unique. I would argue all of modern K pop is just a big variation of Big Bang, like they, they changed the landscape, they figured out a way to lyricize trap music, they changed trap music, they changed dubstep, like lyrical rap sing, like that became popular.
So certain artists who have really broke through like there’s an original song But yeah, one thing I will say about Silk Sonic, it doesn’t sound original, but there’s just been no other record that’s been produced with that kind of level and meticulousness. It just hasn’t happened and it’s because you know in other ways like Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak have the luxury to do it and they had a marketing reach enough for like I would say more Bruno Mars than Anderson Paak.
Stella: Yeah. Right.
GKO: That like Bruno Mars was already, I mean, he did the halftime show at the Super Bowl, right? Like he’s, he’s already big. So it’s just like, [00:40:00] he could finally do a passion project that, whether you liked it or not, it’s still going to hit top 10. Because he’s so famous, but it was good. So, but yeah, I will say it’s not original sounding.
Virginia: But I guess I get canceled and I’m like, I hate,
Stella: well, you don’t like disco, you don’t like disco.
Virginia: It’s true. Yeah. I don’t know.
GKO: That makes sense. That makes sense.
Virginia: I cannot stand it. Okay, I wanted to ask you, we talk a lot on this podcast about how we don’t always relate to common narratives about Asian American experiences. And would you say this is relatable for you as well?
GKO: Oh, totally. I mean, I think my upbringing is somewhat relatable, like the immigrant family put all the pressure on you, first generation thing.
But I never fit into the typical Asian American mold. Despite having done all the Asian American things, I got good grade school, I went to [00:41:00] Harvard, I worked in the family business for a little bit. But I, I never felt like I belonged. I think I always had a unique view of the world.
I was always very open to speak my mind as if you couldn’t tell on this podcast already. And our culture, especially as someone who of Taiwanese Chinese heritage is to be very pious, we’re a Confucian culture. We’re from a culture where 98 percent of society were farmers and 2 percent were controlled by the noble class and the emperor.
And you just did what you were told. And what’s so unique about the Asian American diaspora is that we’re in a modern era where we don’t have to follow that. And mind you, this is the first time it’s happened in over 4, 000 years. So we’re living in an unknown era, especially as an Asian American.
And so, yeah, I don’t find my story to be relatable at all to the cookie [00:42:00] cutter version of whatever the model minority of our culture is projected on in pop culture. We have the freedom to choose not to be and everything I’ve gravitated towards growing up, whether it’s music or like reading Giant Robot or skateboarding or listening to punk rock or, you know, my mom had no idea.
I listened to hip hop all the time. I don’t see myself relating to the guy who works for Facebook and has a Tesla and has a Corgi with his girlfriend who goes to boba shops on the weekend. But the thing is, I live in the experience of I can choose who I want to be and I’m susceptible to.
Be observant and accept what is new and different and try it out at least. Except cocaine. Never done hard drugs, so haven’t tried that. Don’t plan to, but, you know.
Stella: So I listened to your EP, Nomad in the Sky,
GKO: because Aw, thank you.
Stella: Because it’s like right, Chopin, Studio [00:43:00] Ghibli, jazz, anime, I was like, oh my god, these are all the things that I love.
So Virginia and I have talked before on the podcast about how we’ve evolved and changed a lot over the course of our lifetimes. And we feel like we’re always in the process of becoming. I think we’re honestly a lot happier now with who we are today than who we thought we were in the past or who we were in the past.
So I guess my question is, how do you feel about who you’ve become and who you’re becoming?
GKO: Wow. I like who I am now.
Of course, people might think that’s crazy listening to this. They’re like, you’re very problematic. But no, I’ve been to therapy for five years now. I feel like I’m very comfortable in my skin. I’ve kind of mostly accepted my past.
I used to be a pretty angry person. I feel like I played into the stereotype of an angry Asian person. And it’s like, quote unquote, justified. I [00:44:00] mean, when you grew up and you’re dealing with identity and difficult parents and needing to achieve a beyond everyone and racism and classism and all that fun stuff, whoop de doo.
But now I’ve just kind of accepted more of what the world is and focus more of what I’m doing. I’m happy that I took the advice of my therapist and people I found to really care about me to like tighten up my friend group. I found a really good support system. And now I find myself when I spend time with people, I’m spending time with people I enjoy sharing my life and energy with.
So, yeah, I’m very happy of where I am now. I’m excited for where it goes in the future. If you ask me like five years ago, could I see myself being here? I would be like, there’s no way. I wouldn’t think I would be happy doing music full [00:45:00] time.
I would have never imagined myself in this position. I always thought I was going to be in some. Tech startup married with a corgi going to boba shops on weekends. Now I’m, I’m, I’m happily dating, but I’m still in an apartment making a musician’s salary and going to bars on the weekend.
So a little different.
Virginia: Yeah. Well, before we close out, I just want listeners to know that I really wanted him on the podcast because I super admired the fact that he wanted to pursue music, was in a super stable, great job.
Maybe you didn’t feel great in it, but on paper it was great. He worked for Caltech, and then prior to that, you did Giant Robot you just know a lot of people, you have a lot of expertise, you’re really good at a lot of things. But then I think G is one of the few people I know who said, you know what?[00:46:00]
I don’t like the way my life is going right now, and I’m going to take a big risk. And then you pursued music. Now you’re touring like the UK. We met online January ish 2021, right? Yeah, and just in the four year span you went from like super unhappy about your job to doing shit you want to do and I just think it’s so So cool and so admirable because as someone who is also often angry and unhappy about the way my life turns out, I’m glad someone is doing what they want to do.
It sounds so cliche, like, oh, he’s so brave, but he’s so brave. Can you imagine, just throwing away your comfort and pursuing something that, statistically, it doesn’t have great odds, especially as an Asian person.
I think you’re so fucking cool and I’m just really, I’m just really happy that you had time to hang out on our,
Stella: on our [00:47:00] chaotic little podcast.
GKO: Yeah. I’m grateful I really appreciate our friendship Virginia and your support and those are really nice and kind words, yeah, thank you. I’m just happy to spend time with you guys and be a brazen Asian as no one could tell. It’s still a wild journey and there are a lot of ups and downs. I’ve been through so much, the fear thing, is kind of like, you know that burning elmo gif?
Stella: Yes!
GKO: That’s kind of my spirit animal, and when I wanted to pursue music, I was like, whatever, Let’s see what happens.
And yeah, sometimes I miss the comfort of stability, of course, like I have to pay for health insurance out of my pocket. It’s like paying for a car. It’s crazy. So no, there are risks, right? Like those risks are real. But I appreciate you acknowledging whether it’s stupidity or bravery I, I’m very grateful.
So, no, thank you.
Virginia: Both, both.
GKO: Oh, yes, both, both. Both, both. Yeah.
Stella: So, G, where can people find you on the web?
GKO: [00:48:00] Yeah so you can just Google me, GKOPiano, or you can follow me on all of the socials. I’m just @GKOPiano. That’s at G K O P I A N O. I’m on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Audio Mac, Amazon Music, YouTube Music. God, there’s so many of them. Tidal! We almost forgot about Tidal. I’ll be touring in the UK at Eastleigh, London, Yarm, and Hull. And then in the U S Orange County, Seattle, Paso Robles. So if you want to come to a show, say hi.
Please do. I will give you a high five. And if you buy merch, I’ll give you two high fives. So,
Stella: yeah,
GKO: thank you so much.
Stella: Well, Brazen Asians. Thank you for joining us for this episode. We’re so glad that we could have GK on here. I was your co host Stella.
Virginia: And I was your co host, Virginia
GKO: and I was your guest, GKO.
Photo of GKO by The Social Trust.
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