YEV PRO Special Interview with Violinist Naoto Sakiya and Producer Daisuke Asakura

Violinist Naoto Sakiya and music producer/composer Daisuke Asakura are featured in a promotional video for Yamaha’s newly released YEV PRO, an electric violin released in 2024. Sakiya has been active at the center of the classical music world with his highly polished performances, and Asakura continues at the forefront of synthesizer music. Their collaborative video has been released, showing off their electrifying talents and musical sensibilities in a classical music arrangement. We asked the two musicians to talk about what went on behind the scenes during the video’s production, as well as each other’s music and the YEV PRO.

—I understand that although this project is the first time the two of you have met and collaborated, you, Sakiya, have been a big fan of Asakura’s work for a long time.

Sakiya: That’s right. In fact, I’ve been listening to Asakura’s work so much that when I’m asked what songs I’ve listened to most in my life, I tell them, “The music of Daisuke Asakura.” Although I listen to and play classical music as part of my work, I spend my off-hours listening more to Asakura’s work than I do to Beethoven. That’s why this collaboration is really a dream come true for me.

Asakura: When I first met Naoto Sakiya and talked to him, I found that he knew a lot about my songs and had even come to my concerts. That made me really happy, but at the same time it made me tense up a bit, as I wanted to live up to his expectations!

—This project featured classical music performed on electric violin and by a synthesized orchestra. So Asakura, what did you think about this classical music arrangement?

Asakura: Typically, I’m not concerned about musical genres, so there isn’t anything special to say about the arrangement just because it’s classical music. The thing that inspired me was when I first met with Sakiya. He was playing the YEV PRO, and he gave me around an hour-long presentation about the instrument and the piece. Sakiya played and presented the music in a way that I understood was classical music, but he gave me latitude to play in the way I liked. That gave me confidence and put me at ease on this project.

Sakiya: I had the sound of Asakura’s music in my mind, which motivated me to humbly ask for his help. The salsa-like rhythm that’s on the “Winter” part we played from “The Four Seasons” was actually from one of Asakura’s pieces. I’d always wanted to play with the song arranged in that way.

Asakura: He’d sometimes say, “You know that salsa-like song you did?” and I thought, “Oh, this guy knows about everything I’ve done!-” (laughs).

—What do you think about the appeal and potential of the YEV PRO as a musical instrument?

Asakura: When I first heard Sakiya playing the YEV PRO, I couldn’t quite match the looks of the instrument with the sound that I was hearing. I always knew that violins produced sound through the resonance of their wooden body, but I was simply stunned when I heard the beautiful tones of the violin coming from this stylish instrument that looked only like the frame of a violin.

Sakiya: What surprised me is that I could get my own sound out of the instrument the first time I played it, without using any effects. Although the YEV PRO is an electric musical instrument, the personality of the player comes through on this instrument just as much as with an acoustic violin.

Asakura: That’s why I was careful not to overdo it in production. Nowadays, you can cut, paste and loop down to the waveform level to do as much processing as you want with any sound. The point I think we wanted to make here was that there’s a real person playing the violin, but that the electric violin transforms the sound.

—For this video, both the sound and expression of Sakiya’s performance change along with the motif, from Bach to Vivaldi to Monti, and this conveys the sonic possibilities of the YEV PRO.

Asakura: Sakiya played with consideration of the character of the different musical motifs. At times, it seemed as if he was a violinist who turned to the dark side, and other times it felt like he was a cheerful tropical violin player. He played the instrument as if he were a great actor, I thought. You can get the sense that this is a story when you watch the video, which I felt was great.

Sakiya: Asakura’s playing looked cool at the end. Yu Jidaisho directed this video. As he happens to be a contrabass player, he has a musician’s sensibilities and could get a hold on what’s going on with our music, portraying that in video form.

—Listening to you both talk, I get the sense that you understand and respect each other’s music, and that this was a collaboration on a deeper level. It seems that your respective visions for this work meshed perfectly.

Asakura: I’m thankful for that, too. While it’s easy to talk about our “vision” for the piece, and we both had our own ideas running through our heads, it was an incredible task to put our ideas into musical form.

Sakiya: I felt that too. I don’t know much about synthesizers, but it seemed like it took hours of trying and combining various sounds to create a single sparkling effect, as an example. It’s the same as what we violinists usually do, when we’re practicing to come as close to the sound we want, both with our bodies and with the sense we put into it.

—That’s interesting. It seems like both of you gained a great deal from this collaboration.

Asakura: These days when I’m making music, I think of the aspects that AI could never generate. When Ithink of it this way, there’s almost no AI training data now that could cover this kind of collaborative approach, so I feel like we’ve found a particular path forward for our future work.

Sakiya: It was a huge opportunity for me to be able to see up close how Asakura creates music, and how he’s on the forefront of digital technology but still doesn’t let the technology control him. It made me realize again that music-making is a very human endeavor.

—We’re looking forward to your future musical projects!