About
Joshua Taipale is a Finnish-American composer, music producer, and guitarist. His music is intimate and vivid, painting a picture of the heart at a personal level.
A visual composer who writes from his mind's eye, Joshua approaches music as a director would a film — each instrument an actor, each note a word — to tell meaningful stories that connect with the hearts of those who listen. He considers art a window into the divine, and the bulk of his music seeks to express this divine spark within the simplicities of everyday life.
In 2016, he launched Looking Glass of the Heart, a multimedia project inspired by visual novels and slice-of-life anime for which he has composed and produced two soundtrack albums, multiple singles, and a fifth-anniversary arrange album.
A guitarist molded from 1980s glam metal (and no small amount of J-Pop), Joshua performs with a style that combines flowing melodies with a flair for the theatric for a sound that's both aggressive yet gentle, orderly yet slightly unhinged. His guitars can be heard in the music of several YouTube channels and personalities, including Scott the Woz,
Alpharad, and SiIvaGunner.
In 2021, he composed and produced "Fly With Me", the main theme of the fan webseries Sonic and Tails R, with guest vocals by Tony Harnell of TNT.
He is the guitarist and producer for U.N. OWEN, a three-piece rock band whose music has aired on the YouTube series Chadtronic and Sonic and Tails R.
In 2014, he started the YouTube channel Ongaku Concept, where he taught music theory using examples from video game and anime soundtracks. His video on the "Blackadder Chord", a type of augmented sixth chord increasingly found in Japanese pop music, captured the attention of both the Japanese and Western music theory communities.
His influences include Motoi Sakuraba, Jun Maeda, Magome Togoshi, Shinji Orito, Jun Senoue, Tom-H@ck, Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Ruka Kawada, Hajime Hyakkoku, Hajime Kikuchi, Yuki Kajiura, Masayoshi Soken, Ken Nakagawa, Kazuki Yanagawa, Hizaki, and many more.
Joshua is currently producing music for video games, YouTube and Twitch channels, solo artists, and personal projects.