Ray Mak AKA MakHonKit
Even though he isn’t well known as some of the famous musician or performers on YouTube, Ray Mak, a Malaysian American, was still able to garner some popularity on YouTube through his love of his favorite instrument: the piano. He has made hundreds of piano covers of, surprisingly, famous pop songs over the years ever since he started YouTube career in 2008 and has even done live performances. Currently, he is still performing and posting YouTube videos and even starred in the YouTube FanFest 2014 in Singapore. Right now, he is a prime example that Asian Americans can succeed in the YouTube industry as musicians.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSpHxaaFxE0)
Not much is really known about Ray Mak other than what is stated on his website (http://www.makhonkit.com). He is from Malaysian descent, started YouTube due to the positive responses he received on his very first on YouTube, shown above, which was his live performance at UMASS 2007. Ever since then, he continued to make more videos showcasing his piano talent and, surely but slowly, gained popularity as he did covers of popular songs. Before that, he moved out of Malaysia to attend college and eventually worked at Microsoft Corporations for a while, then started up his own project known as T4Academy, which was a program that had the mission to “ ...provide empowerment and human resource value for the constant dynamic changes of today’s work place…”, yet had to drop it due to government issues.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrSCkZsDORA)
To this day, his most popular cover was his cover of the song Love The Way You Lie by Eminem and Rihanna. However, he was still able to achieve to get over one million views on several of his covers, which is a tall feat considering the fact that Ray Mak isn’t a famous pianist outside of Youtube. Some of his other popular piano covers include the famous Gangnam Style from Psy, Grenade from Bruno Mars, and Wedding Dress from popular Kpop Star Tae Yang. Even though he doesn’t have multi-million subscribers, his great piano work still allowed him to gain a lot of popularity and was even invited to play live for his Alma Mater, Pianoforte, and the KLCC, which will be shown below. He serves as a great example as a successful Asian American musician who is making a living off of YouTube by playing the very instrument he loves.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekJxLfrvikE)
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ab49zoDkBw)
For everyone one of the piano covers he does, he has a tutorial set up on his website at http://www.makhonkit.com/tutorials. If you want to learn how to play like he does, please listen to his songs and read the tutorials so that you can appreciate the hard work Ray Mak does and maybe one day you also achieve success by working in your own type of craft.