Busking on the internet is how Jonathan Ong once described what he’s doing on Twitch. The classical concert pianist and Twitch streamer has grown his community of music lovers and enthusiasts to 83 thousand subscribers over the past six years. Recently, he joined the Audio-Technica family, which gives us a chance to better get to know Jon and how he got started with content creation.

You started playing the piano at age four and had your orchestral debut at ten. Take us on a journey through your musical career.

Wow this is hard to sum up; I’ve been training in and playing music almost my whole life. My mum and sister diligently filled the house with sound constantly. Playing music was just part of life at this time, and since we took to it quite well we entered and won local eisteddfods as children.  I was lucky enough to apply for and win music scholarships for high school. After my Bachelors degree at the University of New South Wales in Australia, my mentors encouraged me to apply to schools overseas to see what music was like in the rest of the world.  I was again fortunate to win a funded place at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and completed my Masters and Doctorate of Musical Arts there.

While I was there I branched out into music production, jazz, music education in a variety of environments from preschool to nursing homes and continued concertising classically.  After I finished my studies, I decided to return to Australia (because it’s the best country) and immediately set to work teaching in schools, university, and concertising for Kawai Australia as a Kawai Artist.  But in 2017 I started streaming on Twitch; and that has changed everything.

We recently spoke to Meri Amber, who said you encouraged and inspired who to get into the world of streaming – when you started streaming, who or what inspired you to move from the concert halls to the world of making content in a home studio?

One of my friends, Lara6683, made YouTube videos.  We made a few together on her channel and her community found her on twitch when she started out and suggested that she bring me on to play on her live stream.  It was my first exposure to twitch- I made my account seconds before she went live, and we streamed for over five hours playing music.  I didn’t know anything about Twitch then except that I wanted to find out more.  We started out simply with a piano and a laptop, but it kept evolving from there due to my obsession with music technology and exploring what I could do at my limits.

Your home studio setup is impressive! What are your current go-to instruments and microphones/accessories to capture all the magic?

My acoustic grand pianos, the Roland AX Synth keytar, the AKAI EWI wind controller, and flute would be the top few. To mic up those pianos, I really love my ATM350pl’s- the magnetic mounting system is so nifty and easy to pop onto any piano.  The AT- BP40 is so crisp when I’m talking or singing, the ATH-R70x open headphones are so lightweight and non-fatiguing while streaming long sessions and ATH-M50x is fabulous when I want to monitor with some isolation.

Musicians setting up a home studio has become the norm in recent years. However, it might still be tough to prioritize the right audio equipment, especially when many are new to home recording and working on a tight budget. What are your studio staples that every muso creating content should have from the start?

Your audio interface is the most important thing considering it combines your A/D, D/A, Mic pres, headphone amp, connections and initial software package.  Besides that, decent microphones to capture your sounds and headphones that you work with enough to understand what they sound like on different sound systems.

You shared a lot of great moments with your Twitch audience. What was the most memorable stream so far?

One of the best was when I visited Wayne Stuart of Stuart & Sons, Australia’s only piano maker in the Snowy Mountains.  He has warehouses where he has instruments he has built, and at the time he had a 102 key monster of a piano that he let me stream on.  Funnily enough this would be memorable enough on its own, but I also happened to blow out one of the bass strings on this monster piano live on stream while playing an improvised version of Carmina Burana.  It sounded like a cannon went off, and all I could think of, was “What is Wayne going to say?!” .  But then he was chill about it, and even made a replacement string for us live on stream.  It was epic.

You have been creating quality content for the past six years. How do you stay consistent, and do you allow yourself to have dips in productivity or take breaks?

When you take Twitch seriously as a vocation, you quickly end up making and keeping to a schedule.  Even when you stream for fun; regulars in your channel are so critical for the feel of a channel and your energy as the streamer.  Since we’re not machines we always need breaks!  It’s really hard to get comfortable with them since whenever you stop there’s the worry that people will leave, but after six years I’ve found this is mostly unfounded.  The breaks allow creativity to return in a way that doesn’t happen when you’re going flat out.

What’s ahead for your Twitch channel, and what are you up to next?

I’m currently writing a different kind of album- I’m very excited about it.  It’s non-classical multi-instrumental and a total departure from my usual thing.  The kicker is I’m making it entirely on my iPad, because I’ve always wanted to make good music and stream away from indoors.  I’m working on a few surprises for the Twitch channel too- one is a project that’s been in development for several years! But I’m going to have to leave those unexplained because they’re secret! I guess you’ll have to come find out live when they launch.

You can catch Jon on Twitch on Tues/Fri/Saturday and follow him below!

Check out Jonathan's A-T gear below!