There… aren’t that many amazing YouTube channels out there on music, I feel. #ControversialOpinion. There are a lot… but very few that I personally rate. There’s a lot on technique, construction, kind of ‘hard theory’. But no one has really done an Every Frame A Painting take on music.
What Nahre Sol does, I think, is really interesting. She goes in a completely different and wonderful direction. She doesn’t do video essays, so much as video poetry.
This is a great example:
These videos don’t set out to teach you about How Music Works. They catalogue a constant process of enquiry. “This genre is interesting, and I know nowhere near enough about it… let’s explore.”
I think that something that really works in her favour, apart from being a very likeable screen presence, is that she is a Classical musician. That is how she approaches music. Whereas so many of the Hard Technique YouTubers come from a Rock background, and… I don’t know, maybe they feel the need to show every girder, beam, strut, nut and bolt of their music. Hard Technique is obviously the bedrock of a player like Nahre Sol, so her videos seem to be less interested in it. They seem to me to be more about where to find inspiration. What’s new? What’s left to discover.
And… they’re also refreshingly free from the Right Way and the Wrong Way, which a lot of the dudes claim not to push but… kind of do.
Current Favourite Thing:
This.