We recently connected with Kai Ono and have shared our conversation below.

Kai, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Learning the craft of creating music is a constant balance of experimentation and imitation.

Experimentation is how we form originality. Although it might be impossible to generate truly and entirely novel music, personal experimentation can help us generate somewhat of an “x-factor”, giving us the chance to create a sense of ownership over our sound. Another significance of experimentation is the aspect of play. Especially as a professional, it can be consuming to regard all creation as some sort of work, but finding pockets of time to experiment and create for creation’s sake without any specific goal can give us an important relief, saving ourselves from burnout. Despite many artists’ pursuit for originality, however, music is steeped in deep cultural and historical contexts, built upon familiar melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. It’s only upon these foundations that elements of experimentation can flourish. Imitation, therefore, is not only necessary for building craft, but also accounts for a large majority of what makes most successful music successful.

While artists endeavor to infuse their work with innovation and novelty, the audience’s connection to the familiar can’t be disregarded. The dynamic between creators and their audience forms a relationship that shapes the trajectory of artistic expression. The reception of music is not solely based on its sonic ingenuity but also on the audience’s ability to connect emotionally and culturally. Straying too far from established norms might alienate listeners, yet adhering rigidly to conventions can lead to stagnation. The interplay of imitation and experimentation, therefore, extends beyond the confines of the studio and stage and becomes a conversation between artist and listener, tradition and evolution.

A broad equation to creating successful music(and art in general) has somewhat been figured out already — it’s largely familiarity with a small element of novelty. Deciding on the specific proportion to reach for, deciding on what context to dedicate one’s imitation towards, deciding which personal habits to question in experimentation — these are choices creative artists must make at some point in their career, be it deliberately or not.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Kai — I’m a singer-songwriter composer-pianist based in New York City. My songs and shows sway between the cathartic and the intimate, and my music comes from a background of some experimentation, some academia, and some raw intuition. My sound is steeped in jazz and classical roots, and innervated by neo-soul/JRock/folk influences. I create art as gifts for people in my life, though sometimes they may not know that they are the recipient.

As a working artist, I play support for various bands, write pieces for commissions, and teach some lovely students around the city. Recently, I even had the chance to combine these skills and write a piano book for kids and got that published nationwide. And play my songs around Europe.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Upon graduating from music school, I promptly moved to New York, seeking likeminded people to start a group with. In the process, I found myself playing with some of the best jazz singers, playing in incredible avant garde jazz groups in top venues, and saving a ballet performance by sight reading and improvising a piano part when the violinist’s string broke mid performance. All the while, I was writing song ideas, influenced by all of my musical experiences. I was meeting more and more people. Projects were culminating, and I was invited to bring a group to perform my songs in Germany —

And then COVID hit. And then I got carpal tunnel from playing too much piano. No performances, no piano for months. My songs were just sitting with me, in my home, with no band to play them with. No singer to sing them.

With not much options for me musically, I decided to take matters in my own hands and focus on my singing and learn how to produce. Singing had been on the back burner for years at this point. I started singing back in high school, and throughout college I practiced singing jazz standards and R&B tunes for fun whenever I wanted to take a break from my classical piano and composition. With my foundation, I knew that if I put in the time to practice, I could sing at a much higher level. I was fortunate that I was still able to teach online piano lessons throughout the lockdown, so I had all the time to practice. Six hours of production and singing every day — looking back, I’m surprised that I was able to cast aside my disappointment in all the lost projects and the uncertainty of my hand condition, but in any case, I was able to find great satisfaction and improvement during a time where so much was taken away from me musically.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My primarily successful social media has been TikTok. My main successful videos are tutorial videos of me explaining musical concepts as I play along. Although I’ve accumulated 30,000 followers in two years, I have to be honest and say that I don’t feel like I understand it well enough to be able to give general advice beyond what already exists everywhere. I can at least give my story, though.

When I began my TikTok in 2021, I started off by playing simple covers, making short tutorials, and posting about my music. With my friends, I set a goal: hit 10,000 followers in 10 months or I make an apology video for my friends. My primary strategy was observing successful music Tiktoks that were similar to what I was hoping to make and achieving similar goals as what I was hoping to achieve(accurately placing myself in my jazz-adjacent pop niche, avoiding the purely pedagogical niche and instead cementing my identity as an artist first). I focused on quantity, iteration, and reflection — making as many videos as possible, making sure there were measurable differences between each instance of a video, and making sure I looked back at analytics to see if I can gain any insights from the performance of each video. Personally, I spent little to no time watching videos on “how to” make a social media campaign and more just focused on creation. As mentioned before, I can’t say that this is what I would suggest for everyone as I still very much feel like I’m learning about social media presence, but I can say that I was able to just barely hit my 10k mark at 10 months, sparing me from making the apology video. I had a small celebration with my friends online who kept me accountable through that process to commemorate the occasion. Since then, my social media presence has led me to interesting places, including a partnership with Avid Technology and a modeling gig with Bonobos.

It’s been fun.

Contact Info:

• Website: kaionomusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisiskaisinsta/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thisiskaisyoutube
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisiskaistiktok

Image Credits
Tommy Krause, Bettina Chou, Eli Edwards