Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez — aspiring guitarists and social media

The popularity of Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez on You Tube shows the power of social media to launch careers.

I stumbled upon Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez while cruising YouTube looking for videos on guitars, guitarists and guitar playing. With me being a bloke, it is hard not to acknowledge that they are both good looking girls. Both girls are talented guitarists with huge potential. Both started as lounge room rock guitar shredders. Kelly has taken the next step to live performance, while at the time of writing, Juliette is yet to do so.

This post is a discussion of Juliette and Kelly’s online social media presences, rather than a fan page. Other aspiring musicians can learn from what both these guitarists have achieved.

Kelly Rosenthal

Kelly was 21 on 10 October 2012 and plays guitar, bass guitar, piano and drums. Her home town is Sacramento, California.

Kelly has taken an active social media path, with accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr. Kelly keeps in touch with her fans with regular posts to social media communities.

As an indication of Kelly Rosenthal’s popularity, her YouTube account has 63,495 subscribers and Kelly’s videos have been viewed more than 15,359,958 times. Her Facebook account has 29,594 likes.

Kelly Rosenthal has recently formed a band called Say Chance with Taylor Broom and Maddie Freeman, both from Baltimore, MD.

With the exuberance of youth, Kelly has thrown all her social media eggs in the Say Chance basket. While she is showing commitment to the Say Chance band and brand by no longer posting under the Kelly Rosenthal social media brand, we all know that bands come and go. Kelly needs to be careful to keep her own social media brand going, even if it is just re-tweeting Say Chance posts under her own brand of Kelly Rosenthal.

Say Chance play some beautiful music, but it is a long way from Kelly Rosenthal’s YouTube guitar rock roots. When you explore Kelly’s channel, you begin to realise what a diverse musician she is with piano renditions of Minute Waltz-Chopin, Op. 64 No. 1 and Canon in D Piano. She also plays drums and bass guitar.

For the critics who say that Kelly is just miming the guitar and not really playing, take a look at Kelly playing in her band Say Chance. You can not fake that!

If you want to see more of Kelly Rosenthal, visit the following.

Say Chance also has the following web sites:

Juliette Valduriez

Juliette Valduriez plays guitar. She was born on 16 February 1987 and her home town is Paris, France. Juliette is also a good looking girl who can play awesome guitar.

Juliette Valduriez is somewhat more of a mystery than Kelly. She has closed down her Myspace account and now only has Facebook and YouTube accounts. Juliette’s YouTube account has more than 41,800 subscribers and her 15 videos have been viewed more than 6,302,730 times. She has 18,187 likes on Facebook.

Juliette’s guitar shredding prowess has been acknowledged by Gibson. The legendary guitar maker has reposted one of her videos to their Facebook page and has mentioned her in the news section of their web site — http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/News/en-us/juliette-1012-2011.aspx

I am not sure whether Juliette is an aspiring professional musician, or whether playing guitar is just a sideline interest for her — perhaps she is studying for a career as a doctor? Who knows? My point is, if she is aspiring to make a career of playing guitar, she needs to leverage the social media platform more. In particular, Juliette needs to engage with her fans more. People are already offering on line to help her make a start into live performances, but there is silence from Juliette. At some point, Juliette needs to find other musicians to work with and create some original works.

Juliette’s social media pages are:

Social media and advancing your musical career

Whereas singers can now be discovered and gain lucrative contracts through reality TV shows such as X-Factor, and the former Australia American/UK/etc Idol, where is the opportunity for instrumentalists to get their lucky break? Perhaps Australia/American/UK/etc Has Got Talent, but they are competing against so many other art forms to get noticed.

Putting your music on YouTube is one way to get noticed by an international audience. Here are a few thoughts on what makes a successful musician social media presence.

Get your sound right

It is amazing how many guitarists on YouTube have not bothered to properly tune their guitars. With electronic tuners readily available, even as apps on smartphones, there is no excuse for not properly tuning your guitar.

Play around with your recording gear, position of the microphone and amplifier to find the best sound balance for your recording. Viewers want to hear you rock, so make your sound the best possible with your available equipment.

Ohh yes. Practice, practice, practice.

Dress sense

Be aware that every time you step in front of the camera, people are judging you. Dress how you want your image to be — don’t just get in front of the camera in your daggy clothes.

There is a good female guitar tutor on YouTube. Nine times out of ten, she is wearing a nice jacket over her clothes — that is the image that she wants to portray.

What is your personal style, glamour or grunge, formal or casual? Actively manage it every time you get in front of the camera.

Setting

A word of caution to other aspiring guitarists, be aware of what is behind you when you are making your YouTube videos. I would much prefer to see some instrumental clutter behind the person, rather than their unmade bed or general household mess.

You should aim for a background that is not going to detract from your playing. You don’t want people to focus on the room that you are playing in; rather you want them to focus on your playing. A bland room or backdrop with some instrumental clutter is great. If possible, find a blank wall or hang a plain white sheet and set up your gear in front of it.

I once stumbled across a young guitarist on YouTube playing in what appeared to be his living room. Only trouble was, it looked like someone had backed a rubbish truck up to the room and emptied it. Many of the comments focussed on his setting, not his playing.

Develop a thick skin

Be aware that by posting yourself on YouTube, you are going to attract good comments, and bad. You will need to quickly develop a pretty tough skin. As with all online bullying though, it is best to ignore, delete and ban serial bullies. Do you really want someone like that as your fan?

You may also choose to delete rude and crude comments that bawdy lads have posted to your page. While there is nothing wrong with playing on your looks, if you set the tone of your pages, followers will ultimately conform to the norms that you have established.

What next?

With the rock roots that both Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez are showing, they could do worse than look towards Orianthi Panagaris for their musical inspiration. Orianthi is an Australian female guitarist also with great rock lineage. She has played with the likes of Michael Jackson and Alice Cooper.

I will be interested to follow the social media and professional musician careers of Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez to see whether they can transition into main stream performance musicians.

 

About me: I have been on the internet since around 1995. I have been a public relations and communications consultant for 10 years. I have managed several web sites over the years, and ran a motorcycle discussion group for 500 motorcyclists for five years. I am now learning guitar and I have an active Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, although each used for different purposes.

4 thoughts on “Kelly Rosenthal and Juliette Valduriez — aspiring guitarists and social media

  1. Md. Sadid

    Nice post .
    But I want to know about juliette valduriez’s present activities. But no tress of her, even there is no wiki about her. Why is that?

    Reply

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