Canon Rock

About

Canon Rock is a classical/metal instrumental composed by the Taiwanese musician and songwriter Jerry Chang (aka JerryC). The guitar arrangement is based on Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, a well-known classical masterpiece often used during wedding ceremonies.

JerryC’s arrangement was subsequently covered by a South Korean guitarist known as Funtwo, which became viral and went on to recieve over 64 million views and inspired over 2,000 video responses.

Origins

The video footage of Jerry’s performance was initially uploaded on his band site, but later spread over to other video-sharing sites like YouTube, where it has received over 8 million views [as of March 2010]. But Canon Rock recitals didn’t quite go viral until Funtwo, a guitarist from S. Korea, uploaded his own rendition of Canon Rock on a Korean musicians’ site called Mule.co.kr. Simply titled “guitar”, it gained overnight exposure and quickly spread over to YouTube, where it became the 18th most watched video on YouTube [as of March 2010]:

For more information on the backstory of Canon Rock, you can check out the NYTimes article (Aug 27th, 2006).

Derivatives

Many derivatives of Canon Rock have taken the setting from Funtwo’s video, where the guitarist is sitting on a bed with a baseball cap concealing his/her identity.

MattRach

hackologue

sktr32gtr

goljadkin, who performed an acoustic version

Incorporating Other Memes

digihero, did a version in Mario Paint Composer

anonymarchive created a MAD featuring Shuzo Matsuoka

…and many, many more.

Ultimate Canon Rock

After countless covers of Canon Rock were uploaded onto Youtube, a user named Impeto created a video of 39 guys (and one girl) performing the instrumental including the original, Funtwo’s, and many others. The compilation was titled “Ultimate Canon Rock”.