Sound Thinking with Hooktheory
Hooktheory's "Sound Thinking" podcast is a series featuring interviews with musicians, composers, and creators who discuss music theory, songwriting, and creativity in an accessible way.
Sound Thinking with Hooktheory
Sound Thinking with Howard Ho
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Hooktheory co-founder Ryan sits down with playwright, composer, sound designer, journalist, and YouTube creator @HowardHoMusic to talk about the magic of musicals. They dive into Howard’s self-taught piano journey, his breakthrough Hamilton analysis videos, and why Broadway is one of the most powerful storytelling mediums. They also explore film scores, representation in theater, and Howard’s own creative projects.
One of the things that I love about musicals is how they use music differently from almost anywhere else. A pop song can like live in one emotion for three minutes, but in musical theater, the music has permission to be more adventurous. And that's because characters can change and conflicts can build and revelations can happen, and the harmony and the melody and the rhythm have to change right alongside them. That's also why I think that musicals are so rich to analyze. They borrow from every genre, from rock to hip-hop to EDM. And the same tools that we might use to explain a Bach fugue or a John Williams theme or a pop song can tell us why Hamilton and Frozen hit us so hard. My guest today has really made a career out of showing us these connections. Howard Ho is a playwright, a composer, and the creator of a YouTube channel that has introduced millions of people, including myself, to the inner workings of Broadway scores and film music. He's probably most popular for his videos on Hamilton, but his own story is super interesting, from being basically a self-taught pianist where his mom was his first teacher, to chasing down theory classes at UCLA, um, taught by the same professors that taught James Horner. In our conversation, we talk about why musical theater is such a powerful medium and what made Hamilton a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, and really how he goes about blending his rigorous analysis with his own storytelling. Finally, we talk about his own creative work and why it's important to bring Asian American stories to the stage. Here's my conversation with Howard Ho. Hope you enjoy. Hey Howard. Thanks so much for uh for sitting down with us. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Yeah. It's so cool to to you know get to chat with you. You know, to start, a lot of people that that follow your channel, um, including myself, are, you know, familiar with a lot of the really great work that you do breaking down show tunes and in particular like all the work you've done with the Lynn Munell Miranda stuff. But actually, like a lot of your early videos were actually of you playing the piano, of you doing kind of these keyboard covers um of hip-hop beats and theme songs. And I don't know if a lot of people know that about you, but maybe we could just start by talking a bit about um how you got into music and and your background there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, thanks. Um thanks for watching those old videos. They're sort of like not as well, one of them is well loved, and then the other ones are kind of like there. But yeah, no, I mean I, you know, obviously, you know, I I study piano, but when I say that, it was it was not traditional. I I think a lot of people, you know, the stereotype of of like the Asian kid is like, oh, you like learn piano, violin, right? But the the thing with it was that I didn't have a real teacher. My mom was my teacher, and you know, it could have been just to save money or whatever, but it really like she studied piano when she was younger, and so she was just trying to instill in me some of the things she learned, but she was not a professional teacher at all. So so the irony is that I didn't actually learn music theory for most of my childhood, but what I did learn was this fascination with the piano with music, and she would just kind of let me do my own thing, which I think was a greater teacher than I think even having like a real professional teacher, because then it allowed me my mind to roam. I sort of was self-taught in a way for most of my childhood. So, not knowing music theory, I just invented my own sense of music theory and like, oh, these chords go together well. This melody seems to want to resolve this way. And I didn't even know it was a resolution or whatever, it just felt like that's how it worked. And then so when later I learned, you know, I got to college and I was like, no, I want to learn it for real this time. And when I got there and I learned the names for everything, and like, oh yeah, it's like I'm not the only person who thought of this, right? Like that to me was a huge revelation. But really, it was my mother kind of instilled in me, like, oh, you can just kind of go off and do your own thing with music, which you know, I'm sad to say a lot of people didn't have that experience. They were told, like, you have to practice this way, and if you didn't play these certain pieces, then you're just not it wasn't valuable. Um, and so I I thank my mom, you know, a certain way for not giving me not giving me lessons. But having said that, I you know, I got to college and was like, yeah, I wanna I wanna learn from the best. And so I my theory teacher in college was kind of a genius. Uh he was a he was a real genius in the sense that he knew music theory backwards and forwards. Um, he was this guy, Paul Realli. One of the reasons I wanted to study with him is that he was James Horner's teacher at UCLA. Wow. And I was big into film music, and so I wanted to learn from somebody who taught James Horner, who was one of my heroes, right? So I I and I went to UCLA and um got into that class. It took a while to get into that class because I wasn't a traditional music major, I was uh music history or musicology major, and Paul Realli was like, No, I just want to teach, you know, the composition majors. I don't want to deal with these other people. And I was like, no, no, no, I have to be in your class. Like I would go sit in on his class and be like, I have to be in your class. He's like, Yeah, if there's a spot that opens up, sure. And I would just like bug him so much that he let me in. And that that really changed my life. Cause um, because when this guy talks, you know, it was like like me struggling to keep up with everything he's saying is like mile a minute genius that just made me feel like, oh wow, like I'm getting the keys to like unlocking this entire kingdom. This this man changed my life and gave me those keys. And so to this day, I I you know sort of look at that lineage, and like not many people know about that lineage, but like, yeah, I got music theory from the best, and like the person who taught him was Cho Wenjung, who from Colombia, who's like a well-known classical composer, and he was taught by uh Edgar Varez, you know, who's like wow, this this class. So so like there's there's like this tradition that I feel like I'm a part of in a way, just through just through learning through him. And then later on, I I even visited Paul Realli's house. He was such a genius, he like designed his own house from scratch, and he was he was also an engineer, and in his house he had a a piano that it was a replica of Chopin's piano that he like figured out how to engineer it so that it would sound exactly like how Chopin had it. You know, he was like a he was like a physics major as well. And like this, this it just it was just like being around this guy just made me feel like, you know, um anything was possible.
SPEAKER_00That's really great. It's like some of these these crazy artists just have like such attention to detail. I think it's kind of what makes them obsessed in their normal life, but also what makes them so great sometimes. So I want to I want to get to to your time at UCLA, but but first I'm I'm just like really amazed that you're you're basically a self-taught or mom-taught musician without. I mean, if you if you watch in these videos, I mean you have like really good like finger technique on the keyboard. Was she making you like practice, or you were just really pumped to play because you were playing the things that you really loved?
SPEAKER_01So if you want to talk about technique, I actually had to learn technique a little late. Like I had the technique of watching her play, and then I would just mimic her fingers, but I had horrible technique that I had to completely relearn in college. But again, she instilled in me this idea like, oh, I could just sit down and and play stuff. And if I didn't like the way it sounded, I could just change the notes and play it the way I liked, right? And and there was no supervision. I still did learn a lot of classical sort of repertoire, so like Moonlight Sonata, but I I never got beyond like a very basic level, and I really wanted to play Rachmaninoff, you know. I really, I really aspired to these things that were like very complicated. And so it was really college that brought me there. The other thing my mom did was like take me to concerts, and like man, the the diet of music that I had, I would go to concerts. She took me to see films, like R-rated films. Like, you know, you you see like kids like or or parents today, like, oh, they can't go see R-rated movies. I was like, what's the big deal? Like, I was seeing all these things that like do you remember this movie, The Piano? Maybe, maybe it was a little um It was like Anna Pack. Anna Packwin won the Oscar, and it and it had a piano, so my mom's like, let's go see this movie, and it'll inspire little Howard. I was I was like 10 or something, it's like full of nudity, right? It was like it was like a romance, but like like full of these sex scenes, you know, and and it's just like what is my mom doing? But that score was incredible, and it did inspire me.
SPEAKER_00It was, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh so so you know, my mom just like and she would take me to see Broadway shows, and that's another huge thing. Again, like going to see Rent as like a kid, and you know, my hero, Lin Manuel Miranda, talks about going to see Rent like on his 70th birthday or whatever. And I was I was like, yeah, I will I like I remember when the uh when the tour came to town, and I would I went my mom took me to see it, so I I had that in me, like these these experiences going to see John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl. And that was my huge aspiration was to be a film composer. Obviously, like you know, it's not quite as big of a uh career thing for me now, um, but it's still it's still there in the back of my head. And one of the people that really drew me in uh to learning music theory also besides Paul Reality was um was another student of Paul Reality, Christopher Wong, who was at UCLA at the time, and I just saw like an ad like, hey, do you want to learn music? Like, call me up. And um, I was like, okay, sounds cool. He was a student of Jerry Goldsmith, who you know is this like legendary film composer. I mean, I mean, it used to be like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, and like the people who really knew film music were like Jerry Goldsmith is better. Uh but that's that's how amazing he was. So when I went to study with Christopher Wong, it was like, oh, like I'm learning, I'm learning all these things, and he encouraged me to go study with Paul Realli as well. So that that kind of like all funneled in there. But uh fun fact, Christopher Wong has become sort of the John Williams of Vietnam. Like he is the go-to film composer in Vietnam. Like it's a kind of a strange story of how that happened, but it was again like that lineage, right? It's like from the very beginning, I had these amazing teachers and you know, random meetings that became these like lifelong friends and uh mentors, really.
SPEAKER_00You know, I think one of the really amazing things about your background is it sounds like you know, a lot of us that for instance I played piano, but I didn't really study music. I just studied piano, right? It was like I went to the piano lessons and I played the pieces that my piano teacher um wanted me to play and had recitals, but it sounds like your education really was a music education. Like you were being exposed to all these different things you were able to explore and kind of decide what types of music that you liked and you didn't like. And I'm curious, not everyone just goes into college thinking they want to study musicology, but how aware were you of your own kind of love of music at that time?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I I think I was pretty aware of it. I think I had a little bit of like that snob thing going on where like I know the names of these people and you don't, right? Like I know who John Williams is, I know Jerry Goldsmith is. But I I think that in a certain way, um, I was also pretty far behind because I didn't have that like theory training that a lot of my peers were getting, and I would go see them play recitals. I never had a recital, you know, like that's still a thing. Like, I still want a recital because like they all got them. Um, but I would see them and they would play all these like complicated pieces, and I sit there like, man, you know, I'm missing out. But of course, many of them don't play now, so it's it's sort of this this kind of sad thing. But for me, yeah, I really was got the love of the music. I mean, I remember my mom, I had a birthday where my mom took me to like a record store. It was like, hey, like pick out a your favorite record, and you know, that'll that'll be your your birthday present. And I picked out James Horner's score for Star Trek three, and my mom was like so confused, she's like, No, pick out like a pop record, like what's your problem? And she made she made me almost return it, and it was I was like kind of kipping kicking and screaming, like, no, this is actually what I want. And to this day, like, you know, again, that like I talked about James Horner earlier, but yeah, no, but she gave me that freedom, and she had a piano at home, which we were not a rich family or anything, but she would invest in this piano, make sure it was in tune, and so in a lot of ways, like that was like my main toy, you know. Like, I didn't we didn't have that many toys, and I kind of grew up like I was a single mom, only child, so I didn't really have that many people around me to like hang out with, and so the piano kind of was like what I hang hung out with, and I would like literally just like play keys and like listen and just like it was in a certain way it was like sad, but it was also just very instrumental and making me feel like I I could belong to that world.
SPEAKER_00I have a similar story where I I like ran into a kid, like it was like at a warehouse or something, and I was picking up this the soundtrack to the Titanic because it was like, you know, James Horner. Yeah. It he it's like he had done something, you know. I had like watched the movie kind of um reluctantly as like a 16-year-old or something, but I just remember a moment thinking like that he just did something in that score, and I have to know what it is. So I need to go like buy the soundtrack and like listen to it and like clunk it out on the piano. It's just like so incredible what film music can do sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and to me, like I would really my first things that I composed were like horror film scores, like not to any movie, but just because the chords are so weird, right? Like, like you can wrap your head around like a major chord and stuff, but like they were all full of these like diminished chords and you know, exotic like dissonances, and I was like, oh, like I I just want to like play these dissonances and play like really loud bass notes. And the way I would play Moonlight Sonata was like really loud with like these bass notes, and people would tell me, like, you're playing it wrong, man. Like, this is really like it was supposed to be really soft. I was like, no, this is like you know, I'm I'm like playing like you know a bombastic organ, and and it was completely wrong, but yet I just felt like no, this is this is the way I feel about it. Later on, I I met a friend who could play the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata.
SPEAKER_00That one's intense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's really it's actually bombastic, and it's like, oh, that's that's what I think I'm playing when I'm playing the first movement. And when he played that, I was like, Oh, yeah, you you have the training that I don't have, and so you can play that, and I can't. So again, like it was in my head that like I had to learn the real thing. Oddly enough, there was a a fellow student in college who was like this opera singer and conductor who's like was my peer. He wasn't even a teacher or anything, but he sat me down and gave me the keys to the keys to an uh like the actual piano technique that I use today and said, like, you know, practice this way, practice slowly, practice each finger at a time, you know. I must have been already like 20 years old or something at that point playing the wrong way. So I had to remake my entire piano technique. After that point, it was like, okay, I could finally play like Chopin Audes and stuff like that that I only dreamed about earlier. So when you see those those piano uh cover videos, it's like it's I really thank that guy who was just now now he's like a big conductor in Hong Kong, actually. I owe it to that guy who it was a free lesson too. Like I didn't pay him, right? But it was just it was just nice enough to do that.
SPEAKER_00So I want to talk a little bit about your time at UCLA. I mean, you know, for for listeners who may not know like what musicology is, like if you go to a standard kind of music program at a university, you'll likely, you know, study some composers, maybe classical composers from a period, you talk structure, talk form of their music, maybe their influences, maybe like the social and cultural context for their work. In a way, your channel, you're basically taking these same musicology concepts, but you're applying it to present-day culture and society and music that we all love and recognize. How did you come up with the idea to kind of make this connection?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a great question. You know, I I actually attended one of the more innovative musicology programs in the country, which I I'm so grateful for, and I didn't know this at the time, but they were just on the cutting edge. The professor that I studied with the most, Robert Fink, he was known actually as the electronic dance music professor. Interesting. Because he had the history of electronic dance music class, and it was even fit featured in like spin magazine, and it was just I just lucked into it, right? Like I went there to study with Paul Reality, but the fact that that he was there and you know he was teaching about all these like EDM subcultures, that was mind-blowing in a different way. And the idea that you could apply academic rigor to these sort of like modern and like frankly kind of fun topics, right? Like, like you go, like, no, the this is over here, the class goes over here and like pops over there, and they they can't meet anywhere. That was something that right off the bat I had uh in my education was like, no, no, no, we can apply the tool, the same tools across the board. There was like a class on the Beatles, right? My other professor that influenced me, um, Susan McLary, was sort of known back then as like the sort of big bad feminist of music theory because she would she would analyze Beethoven but put like a feminist lens on it, and people were like, How dare she, you know, you know, ridicule Beethoven or whatever, and she's not, right? Like, I I remember attending a lecture on Beethoven by Susan McLary, and at the end of it, I was like, Oh, that seems fine. And then I went up to her, I was like, like, where was all this stuff, this controversy that I heard about? And she's like, Oh, no, I talked about it. It's just, it's just, it's not controversial. It's just I just talked, you know, she was talking about like a chord in like first inversion, but the way she described it was like, oh, it's like an ejaculation. Um, it wasn't to like demean the music, it was like to actually talk about the feeling that we're having when you listen to it. You know, she was like a conservative punching bag, right? Um so you know, that was that was kind of one of the one of the ways in which politically I was like, oh, this is interesting because if I didn't attend that class, I would just assume like, wow, what an evil person to try to demean Beethoven, and it wasn't at all. So right off the bat, I had uh one of the most innovative and also the programs that were the most conservative were on the East Coast. So these were the programs where like you had to study 12-tone technique and you know, all these like very esoteric concepts that really didn't have any application, like it was just people kind of like creating all these complicated looking diagrams and being like, look at how smart I am. Whereas on the West Coast, you were like 3,000 miles away, and you could be a little more iconoclastic and kind of study, you know, compare opera to like Madonna, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah, it was super exciting to me to be part of that. In fact, my my honors thesis as an undergrad was this piece called The Perfect Fifth. It was like a 30-page honors thesis. It was like my proudest achieve. I'm still very proud of it, but just talking about the perfect fifth throughout history, and I relate it to like Bach to Pike Pythagoras, and then it goes down the line to like all the John Williams themes use the perfect fifth, right? But then comparing that to how Ellen Sylvestri used it in Forrest Gump or James Horner in Field of Dreams, you know what I mean? And like, like to me, that's where I was at was just like I wanted to quote unquote conquer the world in the sense of like talk about music, not in like a certain period, but just across all periods. So that was where I started, you know.
SPEAKER_00Like, I mean, that's really amazing. That to me, that's like really like the heart of like what musicology is, right? Talking about like the lineage of a technique and and it's you know, obviously the natural conclusion to that is its current manifestation in the music that we're all familiar with. The disconnect for me was always that, you know, we all love music so much, and yet not a ton of us really dig into it. And I think that there's really opportunity um for people that love music to understand a little bit um more. And I think that that's one of the reasons why um, at least I think um that your channel's been successful, because you've you've really been able to connect a music that people love and and talk about it in interesting ways that people haven't heard about.
SPEAKER_01I think one reason I'm able to do that is because I was self taught. You know, I did have all that time where I had to just think about it on my own. And so I feel like because I'm self taught, I can bring in people who don't have that training, but I don't have to use the language of the training. I can use that language of like when I was a kid and didn't know anything and communicate it. People know how music makes them feel, right? Like they that's why they listen to music. But the fact that I can explain it in a way that they understand what I'm talking about without using terminology and just going straight to like this is sort of the mechanism in a non-scary format, such as using visuals or just using non-technical language, that just makes you know, I get comments on my videos about that, about how like I didn't I didn't know anything about music theory, but yet I could follow what you were saying, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's uh there's this great moment in your 10 dual commandments video where you start like listing like the roles of Baroque Counterpoint and then you like cut to someone sleeping and like on their desk. And I remember I remember watching that and thinking like this is literally what I actually learned in my music theory class. And like, and you're right, at the time I was thinking, yeah, this is this is pretty dense. I love that by the way.
SPEAKER_01I I love doing species counterpoint, that was so fun for me.
SPEAKER_00It just got me thinking like they don't need to talk about like a Baroque piece to talk about because these ideas do exist other places, and and maybe it could be more exciting. Maybe you could talk about the these these popular songs because it's the same ideas, right? It's not like Bach invented it, so it's only Bach.
SPEAKER_01But I mean, I I actually love getting that traditional education um because that's what I was craving. Yeah. But yeah, I I think it does a huge disservice to be like, oh yeah, we don't compose like that anymore.
SPEAKER_00And I exactly that's the point, I think.
SPEAKER_01I actually point back to you know, knowing music history, I point back to a moment where Bach was doing such uh complex things that like have not been equaled, frankly. And then right after him, you had like Mozart and Haydn, and it by comparison, it's so simple, you know. I mean, it's structured, it's yeah, it's yeah, it's just like 1-5-1, you know, like like completely sort of the opposite of like these complex things. I mean, they I mean Haydn wrote fugues and stuff, but comparatively, it was like almost like writing these like very simple pop songs compared to what Bach was doing, but we don't denigrate Mozart for that because I think we like look at that and go like, oh, that he was a genius in his simplicity in like parrying down what was essential. And I feel like a similar thing happened today where we have you know, not that pop music is simple, but that that like there's a genius in like ordering these things just right, even just in a pop song that doesn't seem to have anything going on, but like there's a reason why it's catchy, there's a reason why, you know, they have staying power over like decades, even if they didn't know what they were doing, they were still applying those rules or the those, you know, the kind of logic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to talk a little bit about your videos because the thing that I think makes them so incredible is that you just go like huge lengths uh to really tell every aspect of the story in like extremely high quality. And I it's like it's like a every video was like a documentary that um was perfectly mapped out. And I'm you know, from the infographics to the background research, and I'm just curious, like how long does it take you to do all of this prep work for a video like that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it used to take me a lot longer when I in the earlier days, but um it takes anywhere from like two weeks, which is which for me is fast, to something like I don't know, like two months or three months at like the longest period. But really, it depends on how inspired I am. Like oftentimes I'll work on a thing and be like, oh, I missed something. Like I just realized something, so now I have to re-record a bunch of stuff, and that process just keeps happening where like I'll go move forward and then have to go back and then move forward. And so these things just take a while, but I I know I'm on the right track if that happens. Like, if if I just go through and I make no changes, I'm like scared because I'm like, oh, I'm probably missing a bunch of things. So over the course of like let's say a month or a month and a half on average, being able to put together something, you know, and I do I'm glad you said it that way because I do think of myself as a storyteller. Um, I know that, you know, oh, you're just music theory, you're just spewing out a bunch of facts. Some videos do do that, and that's fine. But I think of myself more as a storyteller, and I I really focus on songs that tell stories because to me that's sort of where I think music meets the kind of uh thing that I care about, which is which is storytelling, which is emotion. Like how what what do I feel about this and why do I feel that? You know, I I think sometimes I see channels, and this is not a knock against them. I mean, I mean, um, but sometimes I'll see channels where they just play a chord and they'll be like, whoa, that isn't that chord amazing. And I'll just be sitting like, yeah, but like why? You know, like like what makes that amazing? Like I could just play an amazing chord, but if it's not surrounded with a purpose, you know, it's going towards something, it's making me feel something about that chord. Um, then like I don't I don't know why, why if it's so cool, right? Like any chord can be cool if it has the right context. And so I do think of myself more as a storyteller. And on YouTube, YouTube frankly rewards you for telling stories. I think that's another incentive because if you're not telling stories, you're people are like, oh, well, I got the information, and then they just click away after like half the video. Whereas, like, no, no, no, this there's a payoff at the end, right? Like, there's a setup to like the beginning of Hamilton that will pay off at the end of it, and you're not gonna get that payoff until you you get to the end of the video, to the end of my explanation, um, and the end of the show, too, if you're just watching the show.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, you so your channel does, you know, have a lot of Broadway show tunes. And I'm curious if you find this particular genre of music, I mean, it it feels like it's very rich. And do you think that the the medium of Broadway of these musicals just lends itself more to these really interesting stories than, say, like, you know, a pop song?
SPEAKER_01I think it does. I mean, I I think that because it's explicitly musical theater is explicitly trying to tell stories, that they do consciously employ these techniques a little more. Like, sort of the generic explanation is that like pop songs could just kind of dwell in one emotion, one sort of, you know, general mood, vibe. Whereas musical theater songs have to like change, but something has to have changed by the end of it, right? Like they have to realize something, or they have to like at the beginning of the song and they weren't in love, and by the end, they're in love. And so to me, that's that's an exciting thing of like, well, if when that change happens, the music changes with it. And like, what is that change and why is that change happening? And also the other thing about musical theater is that it's explicitly using a lot of different genres of music, and so there's kind of no limit to what musical theater can do. You know, if you're like writing a pop song, it has to be pop, it has to sound like a pop song, right? You can't kind of go off and do these random moments. Um, whereas in musical theater, like you can have a rock song next to a waltz, next to uh, you know, electronic dance piece, and it all makes sense because those are the styles that were needed to tell that story at that moment. And so to me, it's the most freeing because you know, as a music historian, I'm like very kaleidoscopic, you know, I'm like looking at all genres throughout history, and I don't want to cut myself off from any single genre, and so musical theater is the one that says all genres are welcome, and it's almost a requirement because if a character needs to sing using hip-hop, then that's what how they have to do it. And so if you look at opera, which is also start telling a story, but they always stick to like a single kind of idiom, like a classical idiom or like a modern, modern classical idiom. Occasionally you'll you'll see like, oh, they'll throw in like a little reference to like a pop song, whatever, but they're gonna stick with whatever that composer is like known for. Like Philip Glass just sounds like Philip Glass, right? But musical theater sounds like what it needs to be. Like Linmau Miranda can write like Latin music for In the Heights, and then in Hamilton, he's writing like hip-hop and like ballads and all these other things, and like they don't sound like each other, but they came from the same person because he's telling a different story. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think part of it also, and I don't know if you did agree, is that the experience of musical theater is you sit down and you're basically on board for like the whole time, right? It's not like a Spotify playlist where you're going like next, next, where they have to the, you know, it's like the goal of the pop song is to keep you engaged at all times. Like they can't, they can't let up because you're just gonna go like next. But in musical theater, you can you can have moments that are quieter, you can have moments that have a lot of contrast. And a lot of times things just come together like at the end. Maybe you don't understand something now, but you understand it it later. A funny example I was just thinking about is, you know, I so I have some kids and like we watch Frozen all the time. So I of course, like I know all the songs and I know all the music in Frozen. But recently the Broadway Frozen came touring, and I went to see that, and it was just like, you know, I I'm one of those guys that like always gets the chills at the musical theater because there's just something about it. And that musical was just like so fresh and engaging to me in an environment when I was not ready for it that I was like, man, there's just something about this medium where they can just do things that you can't do normally. I don't know if you've if that's part of it. It's like that that the story, the arc is longer, maybe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I I think I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, like I talked about the setup and payoff kind of situation. And I I think that's that's true of like the best musicals, is like they'll set something up and you don't know it's being set up. I think if if you see it coming from a mile away, you're like, oh, they're setting that up. But if they kind of like hide it in just the right way where you're enjoying it in the moment, and then suddenly the sort of like classic version of that is they'll have like somebody singing one song, someone singing another song, and then suddenly later on, like there'll be a reprise where they're singing the same music together and it like fits like you know, magically. That's sort of like maybe the bad version of it, because like everyone can see that coming, but um, but in the in the best ways, like if they hide it just well enough where the styles are so different and the characters are so different that you don't expect it to come together, and then it does. That's very gratifying, and I think it it speaks to the adventurousness and innovative quality of musical theater. Going back to what I was talking about with In the Heights, in the Heights features a lot of different genres, but there's a song called 96,000. And I remember sitting in the theater, I didn't know who Lynn Manuel Mirando was. Like he was in the touring production of In the Heights in LA. This is his first time kind of performing the show in LA, and um I had no expectations. 96,000 comes on, and you get like hip-hop, you get Latin music, sort of like reggaeton music, you get these like ballads that sound like RB ballads, right? It wasn't didn't sound like Rogers and Hammerstein ballads. It was like full-on, you know, like 90s ballads with like synthesizers and stuff. Then it all comes together in this like huge explosion, and you have it all happening at the same time, and there's like dancing, and it was at that moment I was like, oh wow, he took all the music I grew up with, all the stuff that was not respectable, and he combined it all together into this chapestry where like it doesn't sound like Rogers and Hammerstein, it doesn't sound like Sondheim, it sounds like today, like me. And that had a profound effect where I was like, oh, I can tell my stories too. I could do what he did, but for like my own experiences, um, one of the first things I did after seeing that was I I wrote this uh sort of short, like 10-minute musical, uh, but it was like it was full of like rap battles and stuff. But it was based on the Ice Cube song Today was a Good Day. And I remember being a kid listening to that song and being like, Yeah, this is such a cool song, but like, will it be forgotten in 20 years or 30 years, or will it become our new classical music? Will it become the oldies? And part of me was like, nah, it couldn't be the oldies, like like the songs just it'll always be like edgy and whatever, right? We'll cut to like 20 years later, like it was the oldies, and so I was basing a uh a play off of that, and they were doing rap battles, and then at the end they all sing today was a good day, but in canon, and um, so I kind of turned it into like this classical piece, and everyone had like these uh hand sock puppets. It was like really surreal. I couldn't explain to you, but that came out of seeing in the heights and going, like, I could just do whatever, you know, like there's no limits to um to incorporating the music of today into theater, which I which again for that point I was more in the mold of like Sondheim of like, no, no, no, I have to, you know, do it the right way. And so that blew the door open. And I think the composers are frozen, right? Like uh Christian Anderson Lopez, Bobby Lopez. Bobby Lopez opened a lot of doors with like Avenue Q. Like people didn't even think a Sesame Street parody was gonna do well because they're like, oh, you're not supposed to do that, you're supposed to do stuff that's like very respectable, and like, you know, again, like it was the model with Sondheim, and they just came out with this thing that was like dirty puppetry for for kids, and who's gonna watch this? But it turns out like you know, that sparked their uh Bobby Lopez's entire career, and then obviously Christian Anderson Lopez, who is his wife. So when you when you hear frozen, like yeah, like you know, like Adina Menzel, she was like in rent, right? And they turned let it go into like a legit pop song, yeah. Even though it in the context of the the the show or the the movie, it's like this like beautiful, you know, character moment. And I can go more like I I did a whole video series on Frozen. I totally go into it because it was so careful, like what they did there, but while also going like we can't make it too specific, we can't talk too much about the character, otherwise it won't work on the radio. So they were smart enough to go like we can do a little bit of both, yeah. Which is how like you know, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and George Gershwin did back in the day, was like they would write these hit songs, but kind of like make it work for the show, but really it was for you know to to have a hit. And so that sort of came back in the form of a frozen and Lynn Manuel doing Moana and and Encanto, right? And so to me, that that was very exciting to be part, you know, the Disney Renaissance in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. I have a lot of respect for the Lopezes. I mean, I I uh obviously like the music for Frozen. I I actually thought Frozen 2 was incredible, the music for that. They just have a lot of range. So I I was bummed about Avenue Q because so they won the Tony that that year, and that was the same year that Wicked came out. And I was just the biggest Wicked fan. Like I loved Wicked so much, and I was like, how can this not? This is the best musical ever made. Like, how can this not win the Tony? And then Avenue Q comes on, I hadn't seen it yet, and and wins. But when I saw that, I was like, oh yeah, because this is cool. It's this is like different and and cool. I do want to talk a little bit about Hamilton though, because you're you're probably like one of the world's experts here. Um so I have had a similar experience to you. I in 2010 in the heights comes to San Francisco and I saw it not knowing what it was, and I was like, wow, like this is this is different, and I love it. And you know, people that don't know in the heights, I mean, it was really a big deal at the time. I think it won like four Tonies, and I think it has a lot of the same elements that Hamilton has in terms of the innovation. Um, but it it certainly, I think you would agree, was not the cultural phenomenon that Hamilton was. And I'm just curious, like, why you think this was? What was it about Hamilton that just like captured everybody in a way that I don't think any other musical really has in in recent memory?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So that that's a that's a great question. And I mean, I think that it was like lightning in a bottle for sure. But like at the time, uh especially in the heights, like musicals weren't really that innovative. I mean, uh, you had like Spring Awakening the year before in the Heights, which I think was sort of on that track of like, let's put modern pop into musicals, but we were still in the model of like, oh, hair is still like crazy for putting rock into, you know, like people still thought that was revolutionary. And I was like, no, it's not. Like, like, and then Jonathan Larson comes along and it's like, no, I'm gonna put like grunge in a musical and like, you know, dance pop into a musical and stuff like that. But really, it was like in the heights was kind of like launching the career of Lynn Manuel Miranda because he started it and he wrote it in the one best musical, but he wasn't, you're right, he wasn't like the sort of ubiquitous superstar. He was just sort of like, oh, he's just a Broadway guy. But I think what what really triggered the whole thing is that uh, you know, Obama becomes president uh in 2009, and Obama's like, I'm gonna host this event at the White House, and and Lynn was invited, but instead of singing something from In the Heights, which is what they asked him to do, he's like, Is it okay if I just share this like piece I've been working on? And then of course he shares the opening number of of Hamilton, and everyone was like, Whoa, like this is, you know, like it's not just like super cool and and hip, but also it's about, you know, it's about the White House, it's about American history, it's like serious in a in a way. I I feel as though it was like this total Obama-era thing, the lightning in a bottle of like you had a president that was so different from previous presidents, and you had this musical that's so different from previous musicals. They say that like Camelot, they call they called JFK's presidency Camelot because Camelot, the musical, came out around the same time and sort of mirrored, like, oh, Camelot's about this young king who's trying to like come into his own. And then JFK is a super young president who's coming into his own. And I feel like in a certain way, Hamilton had the same effect where it's about like being this young brash kind of like go-getter in politics. And here's Obama, like being sort of you know, metaphorically doing the same thing. So, you know, it you can't really you can't really get that magic back, right? Like, like that, only only one time that that that kind of happens. So, in in a certain way, I remember just going like seeing that White House performance and going like, if he can sustain this for an entire show, this is gonna be the biggest thing ever. And I'm not right about things usually, like, like I don't like win the lottery all the time or whatever, but like I knew how big of a thing that was, and like everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people around me were skeptical. They're like, Yeah, like what's the big deal? Um, but from right away, I was like, no, guys, like this is gonna literally be the biggest thing. And of course, then like my prediction came true, and I'm like, oh my god, like am I doing things? Like, and and at that time I was not using music theory in my day-to-day life. Like, you have to keep in in in context, like I was just uh doing sort of like marketing, you know. I was I was working in the theater, but like not really doing music in the theater. I was doing like stage managing or marketing or or you know, doing behind the scenes stuff. And I was like, oh, YouTube's this thing that is, you know, helping people go viral. I'm just gonna do piano covers. And so that's kind of where I was at, not using music theory, but just kind of going along the same track that um my peers were. And what I what I found was that, like, oh, you know what? This thing that I used to do in college, like, oh, I can kind of bring that back because I did a piano cover of Hamilton, and that was kind of like my first Hamilton video where I like transcribed the piece for piano and then I performed along with it in one take. And what was cool was that as I was playing it, I was like, oh, like I see, I see how he's composing it, and I can talk about it, you know. And I did a piano tutorial. I didn't even talk about the music theory, but I did a piano tutorial where I would sort of talk a little bit about it, but mainly to teach people to play it. But then when I was making that tutorial, I was like, oh, yeah, he's doing this chord because that's gonna make you feel this way. And then after that tutorial video, I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna talk about the theory of it. And I mapped out an entire like I could I could teach people how to play the whole score in this like one video where I talked about all the chord progressions. And I thought that it was just literally just like one video of me breaking the whole thing down and I'd be done with it, right? Well, I was like, no, this is like too big for one video. So I just started off with like the first song after the opening number, which is Aaron Burr Sir, and talk about the Aaron Burr chord progression. And that just kicked off this entire thing of realizing like. Oh, like every song has its own sort of trajectory where it's like weaved in in this very careful way. And another thing that spurred me on was that I don't think people were respecting the music as much. So I don't I don't wanna I don't want to be uh unclear. Like people love the show, but I think a lot of them were loving it because oh, it's like hip-hop, you know, oh he's a great lyricist, but they weren't seeing these connections of like, no, he's doing some like classical shit here, right? Like like some serious, you know, composition. And a lot of the reviewers were like, oh yeah, it's like the music's just there to just hold the lyrics. This that's all it is. I'm like, no, that like you are using your biases against hip-hop in make in writing these reviews. So I felt a duty to point out, like, no, hip-hop can have these same qualities, right? Like going back to what we talked about, like let's have some respect for hip-hop, let's have some respect for somebody who grew up in the 90s. You know, I I'm actually the same age as Lynn Moel Miranda. And so I feel I feel like a kinship of like, oh, we grew up listening to the same stuff and having the same ideas of what you could do with music. I mean, obviously he did it before I did, but I was I I I feel like I could understand it because I was right there with him, like like the references and the sort of feeling that you could do whatever. So to to me, that was kind of the genesis of that video series. And then obviously I've expanded beyond that since then. But I didn't even know that it would be a hit. Like I wasn't trying to go for a hit, I was just talking to fellow nerds like you, right? And be like, oh, like maybe somebody out there cares about this as much as me. It turns out like everyone who likes Hamilton, just you know, the whole fandom came over to my channel because even if they didn't understand what I was talking about, but they just love the show and they just love the idea that the stuff behind the show is actually logical and full of complexity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and it's just so rich. I mean, you know, when I saw the show, obviously really liked it, but you know, you're not able to really process everything that's going on. And when I watch your videos, it just, you know, it's like, oh man, like I didn't even realize that was going on. That's just like so cool. That's kind of what uh these like when academics like take a look at at music, that's like kind of what it's for. It's it's it's because you know, you can't possibly take in everything and it's it's like art, you know, you notice another thing and you notice another thing and you make these connections. And I'm just like really thankful that you've taken the time to to kind of point all these things out because I think it just makes watching, listening to these, these songs that much uh more enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01And Lynn Lynn actually composed it that way. Like it was supposed to be a hip-hop album, like a like a concept album, and then become a musical. It just so happens he had so much momentum that it went straight to being a musical. But yeah, he built in all of these things because it was like, no, I'm just doing like the greatest hip-hop album I can make. And if you listen to hip-hop artists, like that's what they do, right? Like they're layering it with all these things. And one of my favorite sort of podcasters is Cole Kushner from the Dissect podcast, and he has a similar mission where he's like looking at you know the albums of like Kendrick Lamar and really just going like, you know, what they're doing. I'm applying the classical tools, but like breaking down all the lyrics, breaking down all the musical influences. It's kind of this untapped area, and I was lucky enough to be one of the first to uh to see the potential there.
SPEAKER_00Well, you definitely have done it justice. So I just wanted to just spend a minute talking about kind of what's next for you. I mean, you had mentioned that you do some songwriting, that you're maybe writing some musicals. What what do you kind of have in the works on on your creative side other than your your videos?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you know, it's it's funny that you mentioned like talking a lot about academia, um, because in a certain way I'm I'm going back to my roots in that I'm taking the Hamilton videos and I'm turning it into a book. And so hopefully that book will then be more respected in the academic circles because like it's a book, you know. I don't know if professors are really like, oh, like I'm gonna learn from this YouTube video, but like if you put it in book form, they'll take it more seriously, maybe. But I I think like, yeah, even even going beyond that, I am a also a playwright and composer on my own. And I've been trying to sort of get musical theater pieces of my own off the ground. And you know, I I I live in New York City now. I didn't live here until I moved here like two and a half years ago. But really, what drew me here was like the theater scene. Obviously, it's like unparalleled anywhere. And so getting more of the opportunities, getting more of the sort of exposure to that world. I mean, Lynn had the benefit of being born here and sort of like growing up around it, whereas like I'm sort of like getting my footing here. But I, you know, I've written some pieces that have uh been seen in New York. I have like a short play that's happening in a couple weeks in New York, and you know, just things like that. I mean, honestly, it's a total grind. Like Lynn wrote Hamilton in like six, seven years. He started in the heights when he was in college, you know. Like, like these things take years and years to develop. So, you know, it it's hard to have any expectations. Like sometimes, like I've been working on a video game musical, this sort of like eight-bit video game musical for over 10 years and sort of just learned a lot through that process, but I never got like a full production. So a lot of a lot of my pieces are sort of like in the air, you know, I'm just constantly submitting, you know. Like I just made my off-Broadway debut in a play as a composer. So there was this play called My Man Kono by Panasian Rep. And they're a theater company that's gone back like 30 years uh plus. But really, what that play was about was about Charlie Chaplin's right-hand man. And so a lot of the music they wanted to use was like Chaplin's film scores, but they were like, Oh, it's gonna cost a lot of money to license these, like some of them are still in the Bobby Right. So I was like, Oh, uh, I had this playground to uh compose Charlie Chaplin imitations and went back to kind of my roots of writing like film scores and you know, uh writing in full orchestral pieces. And so I kind of made my off-Broadway debut as a composer. Awesome. Um, just just in past January or February to March. So yeah, like it's stuff like that to like have a career in New York is just crazy. And I don't know if you I knew if you knew this or I mentioned this, but like my partner, we moved here together, and she was in the Broadway musical K-pop. Um that's right, yeah, which you know really applied the things that I was talking about, which is that you could put any music into a musical, and they did. They put K-pop, you know, K-pop music into a musical. The show didn't run that long, unfortunately, but it did bring me and my partner here to New York and give me a little bit of a jumpstart into the New York scene. And so, um, so hopefully we can keep that tradition going. There's there's another sort of Korean American musical on Broadway now called Maybe Happy Ending. And so, uh, you know, as an Asian American artist, like that, those are kind of the opportunities I'm looking for, which is like not just writing new musicals, but writing musicals that represent me and my community. I grew up in Southern California in an Asian American enclave where we weren't seeing ourselves on TV or in film or whatever, but we were seeing ourselves at school. You know, all my friends were Asian, right? But and so being able to translate that experience into pop culture, into musical theater has been a lifelong dream of mine and something that that again, Lynn kind of paved the way within the heights, doing it for the Latino people. And, you know, I I feel sort of like it's it's kind of cool talking to to you as like you're you're a creator of this amazing company, uh, but you're also like a fellow Asian American. And to me, I feel like a special, like cool kinship with that, that that you're able to do it, you know, kind of on the tech side in in a different way, and I'm able to be part of your world, and you know, we're kind of like lifting each other up. It's just it's just a cool uh thing to be part of.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, I think I mean art, like it's it's just it's really important to have different perspectives on things. I think that that's kind of where the diversity of all the creative output comes from is we all have different experiences, we have different takes on things, um, we have different ideas, and it kind of makes everything better. So yeah, I mean, best of luck with that. It's it's it's really amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks. I mean, yeah, you know, and and Broadway is like very there there are gatekeepers to Broadway. So I think I think this is this is a challenge, and you know, I think in the pop world there there's maybe fewer gatekeepers. Um, but definitely definitely on Broadway, you're like, okay, how do I crack this? Um But that that is the challenge, and I do feel like YouTube also has given me this this huge boost in in visibility of like, oh, it's not just it's not just somebody like teaching music theory, but it's like this sort of youngish Asian Asian American guy doing it. I mean, I'm not I'm not actually that young anymore, but um, but you know, but I care about sort of like things that are young, things that that kids are into, things that are trends, because to me that's what the next musical theater piece is going to be about, right? Like I'm always looking at what genre hasn't been represented. So I was talking about like an 8-bit musical. It's like, yeah, I haven't seen an 8-bit musical before, right? On the sort of the scale of Broadway. So that's kind of the thing that I was trying to do. And I I I just recently worked on a musical in Arizona where we were premiered, we actually premiered that musical uh, you know, in the same building where Wicked was. So imagine like Wicked in this huge theater, and then they leave, and then a few days later, we're doing it in the exact same theater, right? But what we were doing was a solo show by this woman, Christina Wong, who just uh was like a Pulitzer finalist for another a different play. And I was doing her new show, which is called Food Bank Influencer, and the entire thing was like a karaoke musical, and you know, it's just like like I haven't seen a karaoke musical before, right? And so, but to me, it's not just a show that I haven't seen before, but it had kind of had like a little bit of an Asian American feel to it, right? Because, you know, sort of karaoke came out of Asia, you know, and and is is huge in in the Asian American community. So to me, like that was this feeling of representation, but it was also musical theater. It was also going back to telling the story using uh these karaoke songs.
SPEAKER_00I love that. And I I love how yeah, you're just like tying in like your whole life of growing up with such a diverse perspective on music and then your musicology, like the way that you just really think and analyze very hard about these things and really appreciate it. And I I do think that your videos give you some clout. I mean, we can tell that you're very serious about your craft. Yeah, I I I really hope that um yeah, things work out and you get some traction because um you know it's it's it's yeah, the work that you do is really great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Um yeah, I mean, I I definitely like when I landed, I definitely connected to some of the other YouTubers in the in in Broadway. There's there is a whole like fandom community that that is unparalleled. Like, like in LA, I was involved in a lot of theater, but you don't have quite that same level of people tracking like all the actors and what they're doing. But I think on Broadway, it's like in the news all the time, and then you can go see the shows, and then they go to stage doors. But the thing that's really uh cool is like, yeah, I can actually interview these people here because I live here now. So um you you call my videos documentaries. Like, I've actually been moving more and more towards the documentary format as I can like actually interview people or you know, go go talk to the actual theater makers on Broadway. One of my more recent videos was like a 50-minute, I call it a documentary because it's 50 minutes long, just talking about the show and Juliet, which is an entirely like pop jukebox musical, like featuring the songs of Max Martin. You know, it's speaking of like yeah, pop songwriters. No one's done it better than Max Martin. Yeah. No, I I think I think that it's it has given me a huge boost to the point where this past like Broadway con. So Broadway has its own, you know, sort of like Comic Con, but for Broadway, and Lynn Memo Miranda was there and he gave a shout out to my channel. He actually gave me two shout outs, which was great, that's amazing. Uh and he mentioned me by name, and it was like like Howard analyzes my my shows and everything, um, to like a huge audience. It was like like hundreds of people there. And ironically, I wasn't at that event because I was working on my my off-Broadway debut, you know, like like a couple blocks away. That was sort of um a really heady moment of like, oh my god, is this happening?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever so you've never met him in person before? Oh no, I've I've met him many times. Yeah, okay. Oh, that's that's that's great. Yeah, well, one of the first things I did when I got here was like, okay, when am I gonna meet him? Like, is this is this gonna happen or like and it just so happens that like one of the first times I went to the drama bookshop, which uh which he actually is a co-owner now of the drama bookshop, uh, he helped sort of like revitalize it. And I went down there and I I sort of saw him sitting in the corner, um, like looking at his phone, and I was like, that can't be him. He's just like sitting there, like it's that's kind of like weird. I didn't know at the time, but he's a huge like tennis fan, and he was like streaming the the US Open on his phone in the corner. He didn't want to be bothered, and I would be like, Is that him? Like, should I just go up to like no? I don't want to be presumptuous because what if it's not him? And I've just like profiled somebody who who looks similar to him. So I was like, no, I'll just leave him alone. And then and then I messaged like somebody else in the fandom, and they're like, no, no, no, that was him. Like he was he was there this morning, and like and but he's not there anymore. And I'm like, oh, I missed my chance. Well, as I was about to leave the drama bookshop, I was like, ah, it's over. He's like, he's like right there, like towards closer to the entrance, and he didn't actually leave. I was like, oh my God. So I I went up to him and I said, Well, I didn't know what to say. Because like I, you know, when you have so many things to say to someone, you just kind of like go blank. So I just said, like, hi, I'm Howard Ho, you know, because I thought like maybe he would know my name from the channel. And he was like, Oh my god, like he thought about it for a second, like, oh my god, yeah, you're you're the guy who does those videos, and you know, gave me a big hug and everything. And um, so I got a picture of him. And and ever since then, I've I've seen him like, I think like half a dozen times, where you know, I was at the first preview of New York, New York, which was a Broadway show that he co-wrote, and I gave him a big hug then, you know, I give him a big hug at intermission, I give him a big hug after the show, and it was just like this great thing of like, congrats, man, and you know, just just being able to be part of his sort of outer circle. I'm not in the inner circle, but I'm just sort of like there at different events. And so, you know, these are the kinds of things that I I can do now that like were was I would have blown my mind like five years ago, right? Yeah, that's just so incredible.
SPEAKER_00Well, Howard, um, yeah, just thanks so much for taking the time and sharing your story. I mean, it's just so, so great um what you're doing and what you've done. And I uh wish you like best luck for the future. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm sure we'll we'll we'll check in soon.