Even if you have watched one of Gehan Samuel’s videos before, you wouldn’t recognize the man himself without an introduction. It’s has to do with his cinematography. When he posted his first video, he simply balanced his camera on top of the piano. If that effectively beheaded him, leaving only an animated torso in the frame, Gehan was fine with that – “I’ve always been very happy with my anonymous, headless videos,” he tells me. Luckily, his modest fanbase comes for the music, not the face, and Gehan has spent years carefully curating his own youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/gsamuel99.
Online, he’s serving up the music he loves: from Pearl Jam to the Kings of Leon, from Dave Mathews Band to Staind, Shinedown, Snow Patrol and Tracy Chapman. There’s even some Rihanna in there somewhere. He reinterprets each track, stripping away the instrumental backing of the bands and their often iconic vocalists, and producing a clean take of his own.
“We’ve watched enough seasons of American Idol to know you’re supposed to make it your own,” he points out, laughing. His interpretations aren’t driven by a determination to “rock out,” instead they’re subtle and lean, lending themselves to a quiet listen.
In fact, it’s that very approach that might have scuppered his chances when he competed in TNL onstage. Though he describes the experience as being exciting, Gehan didn’t make it very far with his rendition of ‘Cry Me a River.’ In retrospect, he thinks it might not have been the showcase of his vocal range that was expected. Still, vocal acrobatic are seldom the point of his performance. Freely acknowledging that he’ll never shatter glass on the high notes, Gehan says reinterpreting a song can be a hazardous undertaking.
For starters, fans of the original track tend to have very decided opinions and then Gehan himself is not always certain of his objectivity. ‘Switching up a song and making it your own is always risky, and more often than not it ends in failure. Trust me, I’ve listened to this cover at least 50 times since I recorded it and I’m still not sure which category it falls into,’ he blogged about his cover of ‘Wherever You Will Go.’ If he has a rule of thumb it is this: the more he enjoyed working on a song, the better received it was. The quality of his recordings have improved over the years, until he’s comfortable offering you the chance to download the mp3 he lays over his videos.
They’re all up on http://darksidedaily.blogspot.com/. When Gehan first began blogging about his music, he realized he could find his collaborators within the same circles. Now on tracks like Ever the Same, he harmonizes with another blogger who posts her own acapella recordings on her blog. That they could collaborate without actually having to see each other was a bonus, Gehan felt like he had nothing to lose. Since then he’s invited the occasional guest star on – his younger brother was one – but for most part it’s just a boy with his piano.
Though he first learnt the instrument in classes with his grandmother as an eight year old, when she passed away he found himself going from class to class, with his interest declining all the while. He spent a few years evading piano practice altogether and when he finally returned to the instrument (to the great joy of his parents) it was as an adult determined to do his own thing. Of late, his updates aren’t as regular as they used to be – having taken up a job as a sustainable engineer at the factory of a big garment manufacturer, he doesn’t have the free time he use to, but there’s still the odd tune rattling around in his head, waiting to be recorded. With no plans to embrace rockstardom, for Gehan music remains a simple pleasure – a way to unwind, a channel for his creativity and a connection to the people who visit his blog to hear him sing.
|
E-mail
