How Japanese Artist Miyavi’s Amazon Music Series Fuses Global Creativity With Technology

With eight profitable world excursions totaling greater than 250 reveals in additional than 30 nations behind him, Japanese singer, songwriter and record producer Miyavi (Takamasa Ishihara) understands the distinctive energy of reside, in-person music performances. Recognized amongst followers because the “Samurai Guitarist,” the Los Angeles-based worldwide artist is thought for his unconventional guitar-playing approach that has constructed his reputation and caught the attention of manufacturers like Toshiba and Nissan for tv industrial music manufacturing. 

Now Miyavi is redefining digital performances which have grown mainstream throughout the coronavirus pandemic. His most up-to-date collaboration with Amazon Music
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final week resulted in a free, unique efficiency, “Miyavi Digital Degree 5.0: Synthesis,” on the Amazon Music app. Initially premiered final 12 months on Amazon Music’s Twitch, the archived efficiency was re-released as a collection of eight video clips, or songs, obtainable to stream on Amazon Music as both singular performances or a playlist much like a reside, visible album. 

As Miyavi evolves the methods by which ground-breaking expertise and music merge, his digital live performance series with Amazon Music is setting a brand new norm for reside music performances–one by which revolutionary creativity and worldwide collaboration thrive. 

“This 12 months, the unprecedented unfold of illness has reworked the worldwide financial system we had turn out to be snug in … consequently, it has turn out to be a 12 months for musicians to rethink the message we convey in our music,” Miyavi says. 

“Miyavi Digital Degree 5.0: Synthesis” was created utilizing Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D recreation engine developed by Epic Video games and used for Fortnite and The Mandalorian. Miyavi carried out in a green-screen studio with cameras, lighting and efficiency mirroring digital units and tracked in real-time by a Actuality Engine instrument. So, when a digicam moved on set, it additionally moved within the digital world. 

Producers additionally collected electroencephalography (EEG) knowledge, or electrical exercise of the mind, from Miyavi and integrated it into the visible efficiency. Since all units and results like explosions and fireplace had been digital, there was no bodily waste from set constructing. 

The complete manufacturing was produced by a global crew in quarantine with nearly all crew members working in tandem from their respective houses throughout the U.S., Italy and Japan. From his dwelling in Tokyo, Miyavi was in a position to carry out the identical kind of visible expertise he would in particular person. 

Miyavi and his crew produced reside digital performances utilizing numerous applied sciences together with VR and XR/AR. Much like the way in which by which listening gadgets have developed over time, the artist believes that it’s essential to evolve reside performances using new applied sciences to satisfy client calls for. 

“Will digital performances ever exchange reside reveals? Not solely, however this pandemic has compelled us into exploring new mediums and speed up innovation within the supply of reside music,” Miyavi says.  

Taking pandemic precautions, Miyavi halted filming a live-action music video and pivoted as a substitute to utilizing volumetric seize expertise for his observe “Want for Pace.” He filmed his efficiency in a Tokyo studio with the inventive crew directing remotely from their houses in New York, Los Angeles and South America with post-production accomplished in Unreal Engine. 

Miyavi loved utilizing Unreal Engine a lot that he selected it once more for producing his “Synthesis” present streaming reside on Twitch. Nevertheless, whereas audiences view an attractive digital world, artists solely see a inexperienced display screen throughout the efficiency and should face the problem of imagining performing in entrance of a reside viewers in a digital setting. 

“My job as a musician is to rock, but it surely’s the platform’s accountability to make the viewers really feel my vitality by means of the supply of the efficiency,” Miyavi provides. “I need to be on the forefront of that, persevering with to purpose increased to ship my performances in new ways in which nobody has ever performed earlier than.”

With no flights or tools transportation required for the making of “Miyavi Digital Degree 5.0: Synthesis,” the crew was additionally impressed to redefine reside manufacturing round a mindset of sustainability. The present provided Miyavi the chance to talk out on present social points world wide. As an actor (Unbroken, Kong: Cranium Island and Bleach) and philanthropist, he recurrently makes use of his music and messaging as a platform to bridge cultures throughout the globe. 

“Local weather change, refugee points, starvation, poverty, inequality and pandemic … how can we take care of the worldwide issues we face, how can we decide to the way forward for the planet by means of music and artwork? There could also be a restrict to what we are able to do, however we might discover a new lifestyle by fusing with expertise,” Miyavi says. 

The technical manufacturing lead for Miyavi’s Amazon present is David Cihelna, co-founder of Pyramid Three R&D studio and manufacturing firm with artist and filmmaker Dyan Jong (director and famend gif artist for Billie Eilish, Miyavi and Kali Uchis amongst others).

“Artists are pushing themselves to determine new boundaries for expertise. It opens so many doorways to how performers can work together with followers and the way audiences can really feel nearer to an artist,” Cihelna says. “We’re simply seeing the start of a lot of these experiences.”