1. Chase Holfelder
Chase Holfelder is a talented musician who puts his spin on normally peppy and upbeat songs by transposing them into the minor key. While you would not think that songs like “Over the Rainbow,” “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” or “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” would sound cohesive in the minor key, Chase masterfully covers these songs with enchanting charm.
2. Fresh Big Mouf (FBM)
Fresh Big Mouf coined the term beat scout and truly embodies the term. His fresh takes on songs captivate, especially once you realize he is making the beat entirely out of a train station – or whatever environment he is currently at! FBM makes his journey to creating songs from seemingly ordinary sounds and beats look effortless and like a given everyone should have been able to see from the beginning.
3. Asher Au
Asher Au is a college student who has a passion for film, acting, and music. Although Au creates piano and ukulele coves on occasion, his unique style of music is a method known as pen tapping (with the occasional hand drumming). Although some may think that pen tapping and hand drumming are really easy and should not be considered music, the timing and different types of taps necessitate a strong grasp of rhythm and a talent for choreographing each song, not to mention the need to be ambidextrous! Au is undoubtedly talented and does not hoard success to himself, uploading occasional tutorial teaching new pen tappers different methods and taps they could use.
4. Tushar Lall
Tushar Lall is the arranger, composer, and producer of The Indian Jam Project, which recreates popular songs – often TV show theme songs – with traditional Indian instruments. Lall created the project in order to share his love for Indian instruments such as the sitar, Indian flute, mridangam, and table just to name a few. He covers everything from Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar track to the Game of Thrones theme song. Lall recently released a tribute to the RMS Titanic’s band, who all sacrificed their lives to continue playing music as the ship sunk in order to keep passengers calm as they evacuated.
5. KRNFX
Terry Im, known professionally as KRNFX, is a beatboxer from Canada. His most notable act is a collaboration with Mike Song known as “Dance Box” where Im narrates through beatboxing the going-on’s of the character that Mike Song plays while dancing. Everything is incredibly well coordinated and timed, and Im’s vocal range and ingenuity is unparalleled.
6. The Piano Guys
The Piano Guys is composed of producer Paul Anderson, pianist Jon Schmidt, cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, and songwriter Al van der Beek. The Piano Guys originally started as a project by Anderson who was experiencing slow sales in his piano store. However, as soon as the project took off, Anderson discovered that he – along with rest of The Piano Guys crew – were more passionate about sharing their mutual appreciation for classical music in a way that a mainstream audience would also be likely to listen to. Thus, they began making mashups of classical music, pairing each classical song with a popular one, or creating original compositions with classical influences. Along the way, Nelson, a classically trained cellist was added to the team, and The Piano Guys became a pioneer of modern instrumental music.
7. Alex G
Alex Gronlund truly embodies the word songwriter. While she makes enjoyable covers of pop songs as much as the next youtuber with an especially amazing English-Spanish mix, her real passion lies in writing songs. Gronlund has created a service for her fans entitled Share Your Story where fans can buy a song from her written about whatever experience they wish. She debuted the project with an EP by the same name which included tracks about six lucky fans. The creation of this wonderfully intimate service is something that simply makes Gronlund even more special.
8. Andy Wu
Andy Wu is a Taiwanese DJ creating themed mashups, rather than simply time-based mixes like most DJ’s summer smashes. Instead, Wu mixes songs based on a central concept, including both older, more obscure songs as well as current, popular songs. Wu does not simply remix songs together and leave it at that; he also remixes the respective music videos of each song that is included in his mix into a cohesive storyline, which are sometimes more easily understandable than the original videos. Despite struggling with copyright issues on YouTube, Wu perseveres on in order to share his passion and art.
9. Triptyq
Triptyq is made up of Pentatonix singer and beatboxer Kevin “KO” Osula, song writer and vocalist Antoniette Costa, and talented pianist and violinist Tara Kamangar. Together, their mission is to synthesize classical and hip-hop music create a unique new sound. The name Triptyq comes from the word triptych, which, according to Costa is “three individual pieces of art that are framed together.” Their music creates this ethereal, other-worldly atmosphere with the masterful combination of cello, violin, piano, vocals, and beatboxing.
10. Kurt Hugo Schneider
Kurt Hugo Schneider always has something unique to bring to his music – and the music videos. He does everything from looped one takes to crazy beats created by patty-cake style choreography. With a flair for creative takes on pop music, he creates songs in motion, applying virtually every style in existence to create his own exceptional twist to well known melodies. Name an instrument, and Schneider knows how to play it! Guitar and piano? No problem! Coke Bottle? Been there, done that! Bicycle? Easy peasy. M & M’s? You already know it. Schneider is an indisputable music god. Recently, Schneider has been working on a show on go90.com called “To The Beat” where he works with both up and coming and established artists to create unique twists on their hit songs.
