My journey as an aspiring Youtube Pianist

Short Intro

I have a small Youtube channel where I post my piano arrangements of various songs, mostly from anime shows. You can find my channel at www.youtube.com/c/anipiano.

The following is a story of how I fell in love with anime and music.

The Background

I took piano lessons for nearly my entire childhood up until I graduated from high school. I didn't hate it exactly, but I never really felt a passion for it. I never had the urge to play for hours on end into the late evening hours, I simply played because my parents were paying for lessons and wanted me to continue.

Of course there were times when I felt like I really enjoyed piano, usually when I would find some cover of a popular song that I'd like to play on the piano. But for practicing my classical pieces required for my piano examinations, I just couldn't seem to find the motivation.

When I entered university, I basically just stopped playing piano and became absorbed in university life. I'd play the odd song or 2 on the piano in our lobby, but without the pressure of piano lessons and upcoming examinations, I didn't feel the need to play at all.

It wasn't until after my second year that something changed.

A Purpose

When I first entered university, I thought I wanted to go in for physics (it was my most enjoyed subject in highschool), but after first year I found that I might more enjoy going into computer science instead after taking an introductory course in it. The truth is I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just sort of picked computer science because it seemed like I could get a job out of it later. I didn't actually mind the course material, but I didn't feel deeply interested into it like some of my classmates, who would basically spend all their free time coding side projects.

I was missing something. A goal to strive for, a passion to completely immerse myself in.  I found it during that second summer.

The Discovery

Just a few days after finishing exams for my second year, I was scrolling through reddit and found some discussions about an anime show called Attack on Titan. Everybody seemed to be saying how great it was, so I decided to give it a go.

I was hooked immediately. I binge watched the series in a couple days and instantly started searching for more anime shows to watch. I felt the shows and characters bringing me through such a large range of emotions and it was just amazing to connect to them  that way. 

Because of my emotional experience during a lot of those shows, I became very attached to the music in them. I began listening to a lot of the songs from the shows in my spare time, because it gave me a memory of the feelings I had while watching them.

When I went back home later in the summer, I decided to try playing some of the anime songs on the piano. I hadn't yet begun creating my own arrangements, so I searched on youtube for the arrangements and sheet music for me to play. This is where I discovered two amazing pianists, The-Ishter and Animenzz. I was so amazed at their piano abilities, and how they took the songs from anime that I loved so much, and put them beautifully into notes on the piano.

I started learning many different arrangements from Ishter and Animenzz. I would probably go through 1 or 2 songs a week, practicing for hours a day. I had found a passion for piano that I never felt before. I had a goal now, to become as great as them.

The Start of a Journey

When I went back to school for my third year, I brought my digital piano with me. I kept learning new anime piano arrangements, now from a variety of youtubers. Eventually I started to be unable to find good piano arrangements (ones with sheet music provided at least) for the songs I wanted to play, so I decided to try making an arrangement of my own.

The very first arrangement I made was from the show Hunter x Hunter, seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJYyFmpybsw. It ended up taking me a while, since I never really had an ear for music. Despite playing for so many years, I was actually pretty bad at figuring out the notes and chords from a song. Eventually though, I did manage to figure it out. I did one other song and then decided to upload them to Youtube. My Youtube journey had finally begun.

Getting Lucky

I continued uploading piano videos for a while, but of course as any start up youtuber knows it's really hard to get very many views when you are just starting out. After the first month or 2, I think I was managing around 20 or 30 views a day, with maybe 100 subscribers total. The thing is I was mostly uploading older anime songs, that already had several other piano covers out, what I needed was something new.

My first big breakthrough was in January, when the 2nd season of Your lie in April came out. This time, I decided to be as fast as possible in uploading a piano cover of the opening song, so that I could get all the early views in.

I managed to upload it the day after it came out, and I was seeing success almost instantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3xq7O75lyQ

I went from around 20-30 views a day, to over 200-300. I know compared to the rest of youtube it's a relatively small success, but for me it was huge. After that I became really motivated, I became addicted to uploading videos. Everytime I would make a new arrangement I would just be so happy and excited to post it, and I worked harder and harder to try and make even better arrangements. 

Making improvements

I of course, still had my original goal in mind from my summer. To become as great as my favourite youtube pianists Ishter and Animenzz. While I was proud of my arrangements, they still weren't up to the level that I wanted. I continued trying to add new techniques to my arrangements, and improving myself as a pianist.

I think my biggest technical breakthrough was a bit under a year after starting my youtube channel, with my Arslan Senki arrangement on a grand piano I was lucky enough to use on campus

. I spent over a month on that arrangement, and it was only after creating it that I really valued how much I had managed to improve over the past year.

I just kept trying to make my arrangements better and better. I managed to have another popular video thanks to the league of legends reddit when I posted the Worlds theme song on piano there and got to the front page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN4Sbq2Bg2g. That was a really exciting time for me as I managed to get nearly 20,000 views in a day, which was incredible for me ( I was averaging around 300-400 daily views during that time). 

Since then my channel hasn't really been growing a tonne, I average around 600-700 daily views now. But I have dreams for the future to continue growing my channel and reach my goal. I have people to look up to, a passion, and a goal to achieve.

Thanks for reading