THE FIRST TAKE has become a well-known name in the Japanese music world with its special videos on their YouTube channel where mostly Japanese musicians and singers perform one (or more) of their hit songs in just one take. Want to know how that looks and sounds like?
The description of the channel goes as follows: “A microphone and a white studio. And one rule. You’ve got one take. Perform anything you like. Show us everything you’ve got for that 1 moment.” It is loud and clear, the deal is that the musicians will perform in just one single take. The videos are shot and released in 4K and are filmed and directed by photographer Kazuki Nagayama.
With the recordings of THE FIRST TAKE, the musician makes sure that they will do everything to get the song’s perfection, giving a 10,000-pound weight on the shoulders, but also gives room to capture the pure emotion and spontaneity. With the emphasis on high-quality sound and pristine image quality, where the focus is only on the musician and nothing else – since the recordings take place in a white space – there is no possibility of distraction.
The channel has been running since November 2019 and hosted many well-known performers, such as LiSA, Cö shu Nie, TK (from Ling Tosite Sigure), miwa, YAOSOBI, MY FIRST STORY and many more. On 15th of November 2019, the first video with adieu got uploaded. Almost a year later, the video has been viewed 3 million times.
At the moment of writing, almost 65 episodes got published on the YouTube channel of THE FIRST TAKE. Within eight months of its launch, the number of subscribers to the channel of THE FIRST TAKE had surpassed the 1 million subscribers.
From May 2020, there have been several video publications done under the umbrella THE HOME TAKE, since Japan was in a state of emergency due to COVID-19. The songs were delivered from musicians out of their homes and private studios. But at the moment, the videos are being recorded again from the permanent studio.
