funtwo

propos recueillis par Paola Genone, mis à jour le 25/10/2007 - publié le mardi 5 septembre 2006, mis à jour à 08:1



Image floutée, visage masqué par la visière d'une casquette beige, un jeune homme inconnu présente, en janvier 2006, une vidéo sur YouTube, site qui met en ligne cent mille vidéos par jour. Aujourd'hui, il est une star. Rencontre



Intitulée simplement Guitar et signée d’un pseudonyme (FunTwo), la vidéo le montre en train de jouer, seul, dans sa chambre, le célèbre Canon de Pachelbel (compositeur du XVIIIe siècle), dans un magnifique arrangement rock. Sa virtuosité impressionnante et l’inventivité de ses phrasées attirent, en huit mois, près de huit millions de personnes sur le site. Cinq cent blogs se créent autour du "guitariste masqué". Tout le monde se demande qui est FunTwo, y compris le musicien Brian Eno qui se manifeste plusieurs fois, tentant, en vain, de le contacter. Enfin, le 27 août, l’auteur de ces fabuleuses 5 minutes et 20 secondes de musique, se manifeste. Il s’appelle Jeong-Hyun Lim, a 23 ans, est Coréen et vit à Séoul. Sa création a reçu le prix "Vidéo d’or" du site YouTube. Les labels comme Sony se sont empressés de le contacter et le New York Times vient de lui consacrer un article de trois pages. L’Express a réussi à le joindre à Séoul. Voici la première interview de Jeong-Hyun Lim - et son second opus en ligne, Ouverture 1928

Quand avez-vous eu l’idée d’enregistrer cette vidéo et de l’envoyer sur le site YouTube ?
Je me filme en train de jouer depuis 1988, mais je n’ai jamais montré ce matériel à personne. Puis, en janvier 2006, j’ai envoyé à un copain cette fameuse vidéo où je joue un arrangement du Canon de Pachelbel. Il l’a transmise, à son tour, à YouTube, sans rien me dire. Un jour, en surfant sur le web, j’ai découvert que des milliers de personnes l’avaient vue, que plusieurs d’entre elles cherchaient à me contacter… Puis elles sont devenues des millions…

Pourquoi ne montrez-vous pas votre visage sur cette vidéo ?
Parce que je crois que la musique ne doit pas être parasitée par l’apparence, par un visage. Pour moi, l’essentiel est que l’on voit mes mains, mes doigts sur les cordes, sur le manche et que l’on puisse se concentrer sur le son.

Mais pourquoi ne répondre à personne, ni à Brian Eno, ni aux internautes, ni aux labels qui cherchent à vous joindre depuis des mois ?
Parce que je jouais pour mon plaisir et pour une quête personnelle… Je craignais que le fait d’être contacté par des labels mettrait en péril la sincérité de mon parcours. En fait… J’avais peur. Peur de tout gâcher. Tout cela est arrivé si vite.

Depuis quand jouez-vous de la guitare ?
Il y a treize ans, j’ai découvert, dans le grenier de ma maison, une ancienne guitare acoustique. Elle appartenait à mon oncle. Je me suis mis à l’explorer tout seul. J’ai lu des livres de théorie musicale, j’ai posé des questions à tous les instrumentistes que je rencontrais, j’ai écouté de façon obsessionnelle des enregistrements de guitaristes classiques, rock, jazz et punk et, enfin, en jouant de trois à cinq heures par jours, tous les jours, j’ai avancé… Puis, à l’age de 15 ans, ma mère m’a offert une guitare électrique. A ce moment-là, j’ai pris quelques cours.

Vos concerts préférés ?
Je n’ai pas eu beaucoup d’occasions de me rendre à des concerts. Les artistes internationaux ne viennent pas souvent à Séoul. Mais, en 2000, j’ai assisté au plus beau concert de ma vie, celui de Dream Theatre, un groupe américain de metal-rock.

Quels genres de disques possédez-vous ?
J’ai écouté énormément de musique instrumentale, principalement des guitaristes comme Joe Satriani ou Jimmy Page. Mais je n’ai pas assez d’argent pour acheter leurs disques, donc je passe mes nuit sur Internet. Toutes mes nuits… De 23 heures à 3 heures du matin, je suis connecté. Souvent je joue en contrepoint des musiciens que j’écoute, j’improvise sur leurs mélodies, ou bien je cherche à repiquer avec eux, à l’unisson, leurs solos.

Avez-vous joué dans un groupe ?
Oui, j’ai créé un groupe à Séoul, en 2004: guitare, basse, batterie et une chanteuse coréenne. Notre nom est Lolita. Nous faisons du rock et je compose plusieurs des morceaux de notre répertoire. Mais, entre temps, je suis allé étudier les mathématiques dans une université en Nouvelle Zélande, ce qui a évidemment empêché au groupe de jouer en live. On s’envoyait des fichiers, mais cela ne me suffisait pas. Ainsi, cet été, j’ai décidé de consacrer l’année 2006-2007 à ma guitare. L’année prochaine, je reprendrai mes études.

Vous avez été contacté par des labels prestigieux… Avez-vous déjà accepté de signer un contrat ou d’enregistrer en studio ?
J’ai enregistré quelque chose, mais je ne veux pas vous en dire plus. Sincèrement, je n’ai pas encore décidé si je suis prêt à considérer la musique en tant qu'un métier. J’ai fait cette vidéo pour partager la musique avec des passionnés.

Y-a-t-il d’autres vidéos de vous en train de jouer qui circulent sur le Web ?
Il y en a une où je joue une reprise d’un morceau de Dream Theatre, intitulé Ouverture 1928. - L'express

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: August 27, 2006
EIGHT months ago a mysterious image showed up on YouTube, the video-sharing site that now shows more than 100 million videos a day. A sinewy figure in a swimming-pool-blue T-shirt, his eyes obscured by a beige baseball cap, was playing electric guitar. Sun poured through the window behind him; he played in a yellow haze. The video was called simply “guitar.” A black-and-white title card gave the performer’s name as funtwo.

The piece that funtwo played with mounting dexterity was an exceedingly difficult rock arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon, the composition from the turn of the 18th century known for its solemn chord progressions and its overexposure at weddings. But this arrangement, attributed on another title card to JerryC, was anything but plodding: it required high-level mastery of a singularly demanding maneuver called sweep-picking.

Over and over the guitarist’s left hand articulated strings with barely perceptible movements, sounding and muting notes almost simultaneously, and playing complete arpeggios through a single stroke with his right hand. Funtwo’s accuracy and velocity seemed record-breaking, but his mouth and jawline — to the extent that they were visible — looked impassive, with none of the exaggerated grimaces of heavy metal guitar heroes. The contrast between the soaring bravado of the undertaking and the reticence of the guitarist gave the 5-minute, 20-second video a gorgeous solemnity.

Like a celebrity sex tape or a Virgin Mary sighting, the video drew hordes of seekers with diverse interests and attitudes. Guitar sites, MySpace pages and a Polish video site called Smog linked to it, and viewers thundered to YouTube to watch it. If individual viewings were shipped records, “guitar” would have gone gold almost instantly. Now, with nearly 7.35 million views — and a spot in the site’s 10 most-viewed videos of all time — funtwo’s performance would be platinum many times over. From the perch it’s occupied for months on YouTube’s “most discussed” list, it generates a seemingly endless stream of praise (riveting, sick, better than Hendrix), exegesis, criticism, footnotes, skepticism, anger and awe.

The most basic comment is a question: Who is this guy?

If you follow the leads, this Everest of electric-guitar virtuosity, like so many other online artifacts, turns out to be a portal into a worldwide microculture, this one involving hundreds of highly stylized solo guitar videos, of which funtwo’s is but the most famous. And though they seem esoteric, they have surprising implications: for YouTube, the dissemination of culture, online masquerade and even the future of classical music.

JOHANN PACHELBEL, the great one-hit wonder of the baroque period, originally composed his Canon in D Major for three violins, at least one chord-playing instrument (like a harpsichord or lute) and at least one bass instrument (like a cello or bassoon). With its steady walking rhythm, the piece is well suited to processionals, and the bass line is extremely easy to play, a primer on simple chords: D, A, B minor, F-sharp minor, G. A sequence of eight chords repeats about 30 times.

The exacting part is the canon itself: a counterpoint played over the bass, originally by the three violins. The first violin plays variation A, then moves on to B, while the second violin comes in with A. By the time the first violin gets to C, the second starts in with B, and the third violin comes in with A: like three people singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

With 28 variations, the piece becomes supercharged with complexity only to revert to a simpler structure as it ends. If you hadn’t heard it a thousand times before — in the movie “Ordinary People,” in commercials, at all those weddings — it might blow you away.

Last year Jerry Chang, a Taiwanese guitarist who turns 25 on Thursday, set out to create a rock version of the song, which he had been listening to since childhood. It took him two weeks. Others, like Brian Eno, had done so before him, and some listeners say his arrangement is derivative of one composed for the video game “Pump It Up.” But one way or another, his version, “Canon Rock,” rocked.

Once he had his arrangement on paper — and in his fingers, since sweeping is above all a function of motor memory — Mr. Chang decided to publish his work. In the arena of high-speed guitar heroics, though, an audio recording is not enough; the manual virtuosity is almost like a magic trick, and people have to see it to believe it. So he sat on his bed in front of a video camera, fired up his recorded backing track and played his grand, devilish rendition of “Canon Rock.” He then uploaded the video to a Web site he had already set up for his band and waited for a response.

Before long he was inundated with praise, as well as requests for what are called the “tabs,” or written music, and the backing track, or digital bass line, which fans of his work downloaded and ran on their own computers. They then hoisted up their Fenders and Les Pauls to test their skills against JerryC’s. One of these guys was funtwo.

By following a series of clues on JerryC’s message board and various “Canon Rock” videos, I was able to trace funtwo’s video to Jeong-Hyun Lim, a 23-year-old Korean who taught himself guitar over the course of the last six years. Now living in Seoul, he listens avidly to Bach and Vivaldi, and in 2000 he took a month of guitar lessons. He plays an ESP, an Alfee Custon SEC-28OTC with gold-colored detailing.

A close analysis of his playing style and a comparison of his appearance in person with that of the figure in the video, left little doubt that Mr. Lim is the elusive funtwo.

Recently he e-mailed me an account of how he came to make his YouTube video. His English is excellent, from years spent at Auckland University in New Zealand, where he plans to return in March.

“First time when I saw JerryC’s ‘Canon’ video, it was so amazing, I thought I might play it,” he wrote. “So I practiced it by myself using tab and backing track from Jerry’s homepage.” On Oct. 23, 2005, he uploaded his video to a Korean music site called Mule. From there an unknown fan calling himself guitar90 copied it and posted it on YouTube with the elegant intro: “this guy iz great!!!”

Repeatedly newcomers to the comments section on YouTube suggest that the desktop computer visible on the right side of the video is doing all the playing, and that funtwo is a fraud. They point out that there is a small gap in timing between the finger work and the sound of the video. These complaints invite derision from those in the know. (Funtwo’s use of a backing track is no secret, and as for the gap, he says he recorded the audio and video independently and then matched them inexactly.)

Guitar fanatics are perplexed: “How the hell does he gets his harmonics to sound like that?” Some praise specific components of the performance, including the distortion, the power chords or the “sweet outro.” Overall a consensus emerges: This guy iz great.

“I’m shocked at how much you rock,” one fan said. “Funtwo just pure ownz the world,” said another. “Somebody just beat JerryC at his own song,” tinFold44 said. Carrie34 gushed, “funtwo’s version makes me want to hold up my lighter and *hug* my inner child! :)”

PACHELBEL’S CANON, at its essence, dramatizes the pleasure of repetition and imitation. It should come as no surprise, then, that JerryC and funtwo have both attracted impersonators. Over the past year, as JerryC’s and funtwo’s videos have been broadly distributed on every major video-sharing site, hundreds of other guitarists have tried their hands at JerryC’s “Canon Rock.” Many copy the original mise-en-scène: they sit on beds in what look like the bedrooms of guys who still live with their parents. They make little effort to disguise their computers. And they look down, half-hiding behind hats or locks of hair.

Some imitators have gone further than that. A Malaysian guitarist claiming erroneously to be funtwo briefly set up a MySpace page, then shut it down. And this month, in Washington, a 12-year-old classical pianist named Alfonso Candra played “Canon Rock” for a small crowd at the Indonesian Embassy. He too claimed he was the guitarist in the “guitar” video. That was untrue, but Alfonso played his heart out.

This process of influence, imitation and inspiration may bedevil the those who despair at the future of copyright but is heartening to connoisseurs of classical music. Peter Robles, a composer who also manages classical musicians, points out that the process of online dissemination — players watching one another’s videos, recording their own — multiplies the channels by which musical innovation has always circulated. Baroque music, after all, was meant to be performed and enjoyed in private rooms, at close range, where others could observe the musicians’ technique. “That’s how people learned how to play Bach,” Mr. Robles said. “The music wasn’t written down. You just picked it up from other musicians.”

In this spirit, JerryC told fans on his Web site, “I don’t plan to make tabs anymore. The major reason is that it takes lots of time, and I think the best way to learn music is to cover it by ear.”

That educational imperative is a big part of the “Canon Rock” phenomenon. When guitarists upload their renditions, they often ask that viewers be blunt: What are they doing wrong? How can they improve? When I asked Mr. Lim the reason he didn’t show his face on his video, he wrote, “Main purpose of my recording is to hear the other’s suggestions about my playing.” He added, “I think play is more significant than appearance. Therefore I want the others to focus on my fingering and sound. Furthermore I know I’m not that handsome.”

Online guitar performances seem to carry a modesty clause, in the same way that hip-hop comes with a boast. Many of the guitarists, like Mr. Chang and Mr. Lim, exhibit a kind of anti-showmanship that seems distinctly Asian. They often praise other musicians, denigrate their own skills and talk about how much more they have to practice. Sometimes an element of flat-out abjection even enters into this act, as though the chief reason to play guitar is to be excoriated by others. As Mr. Lim said, “I am always thinking that I’m not that good player and must improve more than now.”

Neoclassical guitar technique has fallen largely out of favor in American popular music. It’s so demanding that many listeners conclude it has no heart and lacks the primitive charm of gut-driven punk and post-punk, which introduced minimalist sounds in a partial corrective to the bloated stylings of American heavy metal.

In the YouTube guitar videos, however, technical accomplishment itself carries a strong emotional component. Many of the new online guitarists began playing classical music — violin, piano, even clarinet — as children; they are accustomed to a highly uneven ratio of practice to praise. Mr. Lim’s fans said they watch his “Canon Rock” video daily, as it inspires them to work hard. When I watch, I feel moved by Mr. Lim’s virtuosity to do as he does: find beauty in the speed and accuracy that the new Internet world demands.

Even as they burst onto the scene as fully-formed guitar gods, they hang back from heavy self-promotion. Neither JerryC nor funtwo has a big recording contract.

At a moment in pop history when it seems to take a phalanx of staff — producers, stylists, promoters, handlers, agents — to make a music star, I asked Mr. Lim about the huge response to the video he had made in his bedroom. What did he make of the tens of thousands of YouTube commenters, most of whom treat him as though he’s the second coming of Jimi Hendrix?

Mr. Lim wrote back quickly. “Some said my vibrato is quite sloppy,” he replied. “And I agree that so these days I’m doing my best to improve my vibrato skill.” - New York Times

He’s no rock star, but a video ‘god’

March 14, 2008



Lim Jeong-hyun stands alone onstage in a tiny basement rock club in Seoul, noodling out notes on his guitar as he waits to play the song everyone has come to hear. It’s a young crowd and it’s edging closer, cellphone cameras held high, getting ready to video the video star.

But first Lim feels the need to reassure them he really is the kid in the famous YouTube video: The wild, virtuoso rock version of Pachelbel’s Canon; 5 minutes and 20 seconds of distorted solo guitar played over a heavy metal backtrack that has been viewed about 40 million times.

It’s the video played by the skinny guitarist known as “funtwo,” sitting stoically in a bedroom, his face hidden in shadows cast by ethereal backlighting and the brim of a ball cap tugged low over the eyes.

“Don’t be confused because I’m not wearing the hat,” the soft-spoken 23-year-old South Korean tells the crowd.

“I am that guy.”

The proof that Lim and funtwo are the same person comes in the playing. Lim’s fingers fly as he coaxes the familiar melody lines from an ESP guitar, which, come to think of it, looks just like the guitar in the video.

Then Lim closes the deal. He hammers out power chords and pulls off the incredibly difficult flurry of notes produced by a complex technique called sweep-picking. These are the signatures of “Canon Rock,” a remake of the 17th century classical piece that has become a cyberspace phenomenon and YouTube’s 14th-most viewed video of all time.

The rise of “Canon Rock” is a defining story of the digital age. Since it was posted in December 2005, the video has been seen roughly as many times as some of the top-selling albums have had copies sold worldwide, including the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975).”

It shows how user-generated websites such as YouTube have altered the way musicians learn, teach and exchange ideas, perhaps even changing the way we appreciate music.

Lim, for example, believes that the video’s popularity lies as much with its look as with the music.

“The bad lighting, the cap, the shape of the guitar,” all that made a difference, he says.

To a generation for whom reality is that which is digital, Lim seems surprised that anyone would even be interested in how he plays “Canon Rock” at a live venue.

“I really didn’t think people would be impressed with it live,” he says.

Lim describes the staggering exposure from “Canon Rock” as mostly “a good thing,” though he has hardly tried to turn his online fame into fortune. His answer to cyber-stardom was to take a break from his computer science studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and travel the world, mostly as a busker.

Carrying a small 15-watt amp, he visited 42 countries over 300 days, playing onstage at the Whisky a Go-Go on the Sunset Strip and in public squares from New York to Amsterdam. “Canon Rock” always drew a crowd, he says.

“But I had to put on the hat or they wouldn’t believe it was me,” he says with a laugh.

Lim says he had been playing guitar for five years and was merely looking for audience reaction to his style and technique when he posted his version of Canon, also known as Canon in D major, on a Korean website in 2005. He had been practicing the song for about three weeks. The posted video under the name funtwo, which was copied and uploaded to YouTube soon after, was his second or third take that day.

“I don’t think I’m technically that good a guitar player,” he says. “I watch the clips of others playing Canon, and so many people play it better than me. Anyone can do it.”

Most comments on YouTube suggest others disagree. “Dude you are a GOD!!!!” is a typical post. And though there are some who remain disdainful of Lim’s playing, his Canon has triggered a deluge of requests from others for advice.

“Canon Rock” was arranged by Jerry Chang, a Taiwanese guitar player. He took Johann Pachelbel’s overexposed Baroque piece for strings and harpsichord and gave it a major heavy-metal twist. The killer hooks are in the series of arpeggios – in which the notes of a chord are played in sequence instead of together.

In the days before user-generated websites, JerryC, as Chang calls himself, might have been just one more lonely guitarist, sitting in his room trying to master a riff.

Instead, he posted his arrangement on YouTube.

Since then, thousands of guitarists have downloaded his backing track and posted their own attempt to match JerryC’s virtuosity. Not even the original has come close to matching the popularity of funtwo’s version.

At first, the assumption was that funtwo’s anonymity was driving the video’s appeal. But even after Lim was unmasked in a New York Times story and subsequently exposed to South Korean media overkill, the online hits kept coming.

Lim says he has no plans to become a professional musician. He makes a face as he recalls the drudgery of childhood piano lessons. “It’s something I like to do casually,” he says.

So home in Seoul this month before returning to school in New Zealand, Lim put together a garage band called Hurricane. Mixing pop, rock and punk, the group put on a performance at Seoul’s tiny Sapiens 7 club, an almost underground gig. Lim himself sold tickets at the door. And the crowd of about 60 was made up mostly of family and friends.

The band sounded under-rehearsed as it ran through a set of Korean rock songs, a couple of originals, and cover versions of Radiohead’s “Creep” and the Knack’s “My Sharona,” though Lim nailed the solos, sounding note for note like the originals. A single smoke machine puffed thin clouds across the stage, and midway through the gig the bass player stepped to the mike for what he described as “the first time I’ve sung in public other than at karaoke.” He got laughs but perhaps unsurprisingly had to read the lyrics off a piece of paper.

Only Lim’s searing guitar breaks elevated the band’s sound. The video kid can play live.

Yet even Lim acknowledges getting a little sick of Pachelbel’s opus. “Sometimes I hear those opening notes, and I just go, ‘Oh no,’ ” he says.

bruce.wallace@latimes.com - Los Angeles Times

12:00AM Saturday September 09, 2006
By James Ihaka


Despite the acclaim, Funtwo, aka Jeong-Hyun Lim, rates his playing as terrible.

A Korean guitarist whose playing has wowed millions of cyber viewers worldwide says living in Auckland inspired his music.

A video of the guitarist, who goes by the pseudonym "Funtwo", has become the sixth-most viewed clip on the website youtube, attracting more than 8.2 million visitors.

The clip depicts Funtwo - Auckland University student Jeong-Hyun Lim - playing his interpretation of Johann Pachelbel's composition Canon, a piece of chamber music often heard at weddings.

But despite his new found e-fame, Lim said he felt embarrassed by the attention.

"I was so surprised and was wondering how my video could attract so many people even though my playing was so terrible. I think my vibrato is quite sloppy and I think I need to improve it to sound better."

The 23-year-old, who studies computer networking and loves trance music as much as Bach and Vivaldi, is at his home in Seoul but plans to return to Auckland to continue his bachelor of technology degree next year.

He said his time spent in Remuera was a musical catalyst.

"I think the quiet and peaceful circumstances of Auckland really helped my musical motivation."

Self-taught, with only "one month of acoustic guitar lessons" but more than five years of playing, Lim said he saw the Canon played by another guitarist and thought he could go one better.

He took a month to learn the composition before posting it online. He said his main reason for recording the piece was to receive constructive criticism of his guitar playing.

While he is a beacon in cyberspace, Lim laughed at suggestions of a recording contract and would never leave the band - Lolita - he is in.

"Not even for Metallica."

"I just want to play music with confidence and I'm not really planning to make it as a musician." - New Zealand Herald