Lim Jeong-hyun stands alone onstage in a tiny basement rock club, noodling out notes on his guitar as he waits to play the song everyone has come to hear.
It is a young crowd and it is edging closer, mobile-phone cameras held high, getting ready to video the video star.
But first Lim feels the need to reassure them he really is the star 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 almost 40 million times.
It is the video played by the skinny guitarist known only as “funtwo”, sitting stoically in a bedroom, his face hidden in shadows cast by ethereal backlighting and the brim of a baseball cap tugged down 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 that, 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 18th-century classical piece that has become a cyberspace phenomenon and is YouTube’s seventh-most viewed video.
The rise of Canon Rock is a defining story of the digital age. Since being posted in October 2005, the video has been seen roughly as many times as the Eagles have sold a copy of their Greatest Hits, the best-selling album ever.
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 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”, he says, all made a difference.
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 live. “I really didn’t think people would be impressed with it live,” he says.
Not for fortune
Lim describes the exposure from Canon Rock as mostly “a good thing”, although he hardly has tried to turn his online fame into fortune.
His answer to cyber stardom was to take a break from his computer science studies at Auckland University in New Zealand and travel the world, mostly as a busker.
Carrying a 15-watt amp, he visited 42 countries in 300 days, playing everywhere from onstage at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles to public squares from New York to Amsterdam. Canon Rock always would draw a crowd, he says.
“But I had to put on the hat or they wouldn’t believe it was me,” he laughs.
Lim says he had been playing the guitar for five years and was merely looking for feedback on his style and technique when he posted his version of Canon on a Korean website, in 2005 (it was copied and uploaded to YouTube two months later).
He had been practising the song for about three weeks. The posted video under the name funtwo was just 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 although there are some who remain disdainful of his playing, Canon has triggered a deluge of requests from other guitarists for advice.
The original Canon Rock was arranged by Jerry Chang, a Taiwanese guitar player. He took Johann Pachelbel’s over-exposed baroque piece for strings and harpsichord in D major and gave it a major heavy metal twist.
The killer hooks are in the series of arpeggios — where the notes of a chord are played in sequence instead of together.
In the days before user-generated websites, JerryC, as he 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 around the world have downloaded Lin’s backing track and posted their own attempts 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 the mystery of 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.
