Sungha Jung
Sungha Jung is a young virtuoso guitarist who chose the most intricate guitar style out there, namely fingerstyle. Being only 17 years old, Sungha Jung already has 690 videos on YouTube with more than 700 million views. Sungha has won 15 awards on YouTube, including 6 “#1” awards. He is an idol and a source of creative inspiration for many aspiring musicians from all over the world, and sharing the same scene with Sungha is an honor for any performer. To name a few, his playstyle has impressed virtuoso guitarists Thomas Leeb and Martin Taylor, and even Yoko Ono, the widow of the late John Lennon. Not to mention an endless army of less known musicians and regular Internet users who call Sungha a “guitar prodigy” and “Korean August Rush”. Yoko Ono even left a comment under one of his videos that caused quite a stir. The comment reads: “I just watched you playing All You Need is Love. It was wonderful! I truly believe that John Lennon would’ve been happy that you performed his song so well”.
So what do we know about this increasingly popular young talent? Sungha Jung was born on 2 September 1996 in South Korea. As with many musicians, his taste in music and desire to play guitar were cultivated in him by his father, even though Sungha’s father wasn’t a professional musician. For him, the guitar was just a hobby. At the age of 9, he asked his father to teach him some guitar. The learning process has not been easy for him since plucking strings is difficult and painful for the child’s hands. One would think that after meeting his first challenges, a 9-year-old should give up on his dream. However, for small Sungha, the magic sound of the guitar was above all else. He simply couldn’t stop playing: having learned one melody, he immediately started learning another. Even now, with more than 690 videos on his YouTube channel, Sungha Jung admits that there are still plenty of melodies that he’d like to learn.
His first teacher was, of course, his father. It was him who gave Sungha his first guitar lessons. However, soon the student surpassed his teacher and started to study independently. Giving his favorite hobby only a couple of hours a day, combining it with school, English lessons and other daily activities of the average teenager, Sungha managed to achieve great results in honing his skills in no time. Now he can easily learn a melody without tabs or sheet music, just by listening to it on the Internet. It takes only 2 hours for him to translate the melody into tabs or sheet music, 5 hours to learn it, and from 2 days to one month to perfect it for stage performance.
Sungha Jung chose the most intricate guitar style out there, namely fingerstyle. He plays his guitar only in fingerstyle and nothing else, because it allows him to fully embrace the melody, both technically and emotionally speaking. As Sungha admits, this style is simply perfect for him. He says that the technical diversity of fingerstyle is what stopped him from dropping guitar classes back in the day.
At some point, Sungha published a video on YouTube where he played a tango by Ulli Boegershausen, a famous fingerstyle guitarist from Germany. After watching the video on YouTube, people started to ask Ulli Boegershausen to share sheet music for the song, which took the musician by surprise since he never published tabs for this particular piece. After seeing Sungha Jung’s video for the first time, Ulli was pleasantly surprised by how masterfully he played his song. Subsequently, Ulli became a good friend of Sungha, his patron and musical inspirer.
His first instrument was a plywood classical guitar which he bought for his own pocket money (it cost him about $60). It looked more like a toy than a real instrument. The guitar was crude and sounded awful. However, soon enough Sungha Jung was able to play his first melodies thanks to it. Surprised by his son’s ability to play great music even on a bad instrument, his father bought him a better guitar. It was a Cort Earth900. It was smaller than the previous one but still too large for a 9-year-old. However, despite all difficulties, Songha Jung continued to play and recorded many YouTube videos with this guitar.
His third guitar was a personalized hand-made solid spruce guitar by the famous Korean company Selma. It cost about $1000. “It is unacceptable for a child to use a guitar for adults, so we would like to make a special guitar for you”, – Selma representatives wrote him after watching one of his videos. This is exactly the guitar that was later signed by Sungha’s friend Thomas Leeb. “Keep enjoying music. To my friend. Thomas Leeb”, he wrote. This guitar soon became Sungha’s best partner and friend that helped him to further hone his skills.
In 2009, Lakewood guitar company (a reputable guitar manufacturer in Europe) gave Sanga a new guitar. It was one of the best-sounding and the most expensive guitars ever produced by the company. Back in the day, it cost about €5800. The guitar was custom-made specifically for Sungha, was perfect for him, and took around 4 months to produce. Now this is his favorite guitar that he plays to this day. Besides, the case for this guitar was handmade by one of the young musician’s American fans.
Currently, Sungha Jung gives concerts, learns and records new music, uploads videos to YouTube, releases CDs, participates in television shows, has fans and fan clubs both in South Korea and abroad. He is constantly moving forward: he takes classical guitar and piano lessons, is interested in drums, and constantly hones different sides of his talent. You can follow the work and rapid growth of the young virtuoso musician using the links below:
