Chairman of the Board of Directors, Yamaha Corporation
DT Yamaha
Kali ini Direct Talk menampilkan presiden nya: Takuya Nakata. Selamat menikmati Direct Talk yang menjadi familiar karena telah ...
Transcript (19 segments)
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Host0:09
Welcome to Direct Talk. Today we speak to Takuya Nakata, the president of Yamaha Corporation. The company started out by repairing organs in 1887. Today, Yamaha makes musical instruments used by people all around the world, along with its famous pianos. The company makes and sells digital... among over 100 kinds of instruments. Its synthesizers have played a pivotal role in modern music, and it has a lineup of so-called silent instruments. Yamaha says design with integrity cannot be achieved without a deep understanding of tools, culture, and people, as well as one's own unique perspective. We asked Takuya Nakata how the company comes up with its innovative products. This may sound like the voice of a female singer, but these vocals are actually being belted out by a computer. Songs like this are part of a new trend in global music. Yamaha created the first commercially available singing voice software. It's called Vocaloid.
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Takuya Nakata1:21
Vocaloid: you write your own lyrics and melodies, and then using samples of actual voices, the software generates the song. By using sampling technology, music synthesizing technology, and so on, we were able to mimic pretty much any instrument, but the final frontier was the human voice. We began a research project with a Spanish university, and it took about three or four years until the year 2000 to develop something. And now it's been over a decade; we're currently at version four of the software. People are using it to create songs that are too difficult for humans. Maybe the pitch is all over the place or the lyrics are tongue twisters, and people are singing these songs at karaoke. Young people have turned this into a part of music culture.
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Strings, winds, percussion. Yamaha makes and sells over 100 different kinds of musical instruments. It is known for being the only company in the world that makes every instrument used by a typical orchestra.
Yamaha got its start in 1887. Japan was modernizing and western music was becoming more popular. Yamaha's founder, Torakusu Yamaha, was asked to repair an imported organ and he had a flash of inspiration.
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Takuya Nakata3:04
Inspiration. At that time, organs were being imported from the west and the Japanese government led an initiative to distribute organs across the country. The idea was to educate Japanese people about western music. But these organs were extremely costly and they were always breaking and people didn't know how to fix them. One day, our founder was hired to fix one of these organs and as he was working on it, he thought, 'I can probably make one of these myself, and if I can bring down the costs, then more and more Japanese people will have the chance to enjoy western music.' That was his thinking. He wanted as many people as possible to enjoy music, and that's been our philosophy as we've continued to branch out from the organ to the piano, from the piano to wind instruments, the guitar, and so on.
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Yamaha is perhaps best known for its pianos. It boasts a 30% global market share and produces more than any other company. Musicians around the world, whether they play classical, jazz, or rock, love Yamaha pianos.
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Takuya Nakata4:17
Did you know all of Elton John's pianos have names written on them, like Anita? Each one of them displays a name. He really loves them. Very pleased to say he uses Yamaha pianos. At Yamaha, we aim above all for a natural sound, the most natural, the clearest. That's our number one concern. Also, top professionals have specific needs. I believe they choose Yamaha because we can meet those needs.
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In addition to pianos, Yamaha is famous for electronic instruments. The synthesizer in particular. It's an instrument that uses electronic signals to produce a vast range of sounds and timbres. In 1983, Yamaha released a synthesizer that many musicians said was highly innovative. The DX7. It was a digital synthesizer that you could connect to a computer and program, and it opened up new musical frontiers.
Grammy Award winner Ryuichi Sakamoto, a famous pioneer of electronic music, was one big fan of the DX7. You input a tough phrase in the computer and the synthesizer just plays it. You see that a lot in electronic music. You get this one perfect phrase and you loop it endlessly. People probably couldn't do it, but a machine can.
When you think about the sound of the 80s, it was really defined by the DX7. Nakata joined Yamaha in the 80s, the era of electronic instruments.
Since he was a teenager, he had been playing in bands. He wanted to work in music and set his sights on Yamaha. He still enjoys playing music when he has the time.
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Takuya Nakata6:46
When you're feeling good, playing music makes you feel even better. And when you're sad, maybe you play something in a minor key, but you start to work through the sadness to feel better. That's what I think. Since ancient times, I think music has been an essential part of human life. Whatever place you visit, you'll find the people there have musical instruments. And this isn't a recent thing; they've had these instruments in their culture as far back as anyone can remember. Music is something we all enjoy. It's something we can't do without.
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Now president of Yamaha, Nakata is focusing on bringing the joy of music to as many people as possible. 60 years ago, Yamaha began offering a series of music performance courses. They are currently available in over 40 countries and territories.
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Takuya Nakata7:46
We want to contribute to young people's development through contact with a musical instrument. We run all sorts of programs in South America. Some children who were delinquents joined our course and went on to play in orchestras. We helped them get back on track. In Southeast Asia, we recently started a new program. We do it with the cooperation of local schools. We give them the instruments and the Yamaha method, and they use them on their campuses. That way, the children get to experience the joy of music. This is one of our projects.
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Nakata is determined to enrich lives around the world through music and to get more people playing musical instruments. Yamaha is developing new models that suit a wide range of needs. This looks like a regular piano, but you can plug in a set of headphones. It's called the silent piano. You can practice your instrument without worrying about noise. Here's a silent violin. You can plug it into an amp and play at a louder volume, but without one, it's only about 10% as loud as a regular violin.
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Takuya Nakata9:31
If you think about living spaces for most Japanese people, you can't really play at night. But this gives people who want to play the chance to do so at any time without worrying. We met an important need. And even in the US, maybe the sound doesn't travel to the next house, but it does travel to the next room, and then your kids say, 'Dad, keep it down.' So people like our silent instruments, not just in the US but in many countries. We find that a lot of people think what a great idea and go buy one.
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Host10:06
Yamaha's motto is make innovative instruments, and an important part of that is what Nakata calls fusion.
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Takuya Nakata10:17
The key to innovation is bringing together people who have totally different viewpoints, different perspectives. Make them interact. If you do that, interesting things will pop up. Not everything will be a success, but there are some ideas that prove to be amazing when actually turned into products. At Yamaha, we have engineers with a vast range of talents. I want us to create a system where we bring together new technologies and, in a process like nuclear fusion, create new unprecedented products. I want to create an atmosphere where that seems possible, and I want to keep making that atmosphere stronger and stronger.
Where there's a will. In other words, you need the will to get things done. That doesn't mean you'll always succeed. It means that if you never try, you'll never even have a chance at succeeding. I always think about this phrase to get myself going, to get myself motivated. Think of the future. It also has that meaning. I really take this to heart. What do I have to do now to create the future? I have to act.