Meet Yukino Takenaka

We recently connected with Yukino Takenaka and have shared our conversation below.

Yukino , so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.

Since I was a kid, I love interacting with people, and I had no hesitance talking to people whether they are stranger or adults. One of the reason why I wanted to study English is to expand the capabilities of being able to communicate as many people as possible from all over the world to learn something new. So I talked to a lot of people, who are at the different age, from different countries on various topic. I enjoy having a light or deep conversation with others. However, all over the year, I learned that communication is not about how talkative you are or how listenable you are. It is about how you understand others to have a right catch-ball with the other person within the communication. In order people to understand what I am trying to say, I try my best to think what is the best way to approach with my opinions, ideas or feeling. So as to understand others while I listen to them, I try my best to see their perspective to give them the best response I could give. In any communication, there must be a time when you need to disagree with them or they disagree with you. A lot of time, people tend to like to avoid this situation because they do not want to argue or have a conflict. I understand, it is frustrating when people cannot understand what you try to tell right? Especially when you are at school or work, or even work on the same project with others, there will always be some issues regarding of each person having different opinions. As I am the kind of person who always has my own opinion or ideas, I had struggled a lot in order to actually deliver what I think, because I have to bring the disagreement to the table sometimes. And I often had unique opinion or ideas, so it was difficult for me to show my perspective. However, as I grew up, I learned the way to communicate better. That is to show empathies, always. As a listener or speaker and whether you agree or disagree. When I give them disagreement or my own ideas, first thing I would say is that “I understand—-” or “I like the parts you mentioned—-” then, give my opinion after like “but I think this way because–blah blah, but what do you think?”. Because nobody, including myself loves receiving those directly. Also, by questioning how they feel about what I said, I do not make it sound I am forcing my opinion, and also it allows them to actually think about what I said. As a listener, whenever someone asks for my advice, I don’t just throw what I think they should do, I try to understand where they come from first. Still, there will be the time I have to say “But I do not think it is right for you–” kind of things as a listener right? But I do not want to talk like what I am saying is right or must, or make them feel like I am against them. So when I face that situation, I always approach like “I understand where you are coming from, and you might feel this because blah blah right? but I think that this is better for you.” Over the years, I noticed that people can only understand from what they experienced. Like, when I was a kid, I could not understand what my parents told me, but now I started to understand what they tried to tell me. And as the oldest sister of my family, I try to teach my younger ones that what I think they should do because I already passed that time so I know what might be the best for them, but they cannot because they are not there to understand me yet. So what I believe in the effective conversation is, first, we have to allow ourselves and others to have the different opinions. Second, if you end up having the different opinions even after the communication, that is okay too. At least we can learn about what kind of way of thinking the other person has, we do not always have to come to the conclusion. Third, be okay to conclude in the middle of other opinions, meaning that take equal of each person’s ideas and combine them. It is more like negotiations. Lastly, always have respect to others. If we want our opinions to be heard, we should always listen to others too. I developed these communication skills by talking to a lot of people and faced a lot of different situations. I used to be so frustrated when the communication did not go well, but I got tired of it so I needed to change the way I communicate with others, And also, my parents always told me that not everyone have the same way of thinking so if people cannot understand me or I cannot understand others after communicating, let it be. So even tho sometimes, I am not satisfied with how the communication ends, I try to control myself to be okay with it. This is the part that I still work on. One communication can fix problems or destroy the relationships. So I hope I can be better communicator as I grow up and experience more in my life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Hello, I am Yukino Takenaka, a music composer, songwriter, and producer from Japan. I am currently based in Los Angeles. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in music production from a university in Florida, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue more opportunities and network with people in the music industry. My excitement as a music producer comes from creating good melodies. I tend to start making music with melodies, so when a good melody comes to mind, I love to see how it develops into a piece of music. As I am still at the beginning of my music career, I am taking the time to explore and figure out what I want. I have worked on film scoring for a short film, written a song for a short film, and collaborated with friends on songwriting and composing for EDM music. I prefer making music with others rather than by myself because I love sharing the excitement and happiness of the music production process. The recent update of my music is that I and my friends released a song called “Can’t Feel Your Love.” I did the songwriting and wrote the lyrics, and my friend made a track and everything else. I am going to tell some uniqueness of this song, that you would not know without me telling you! First one is that this song is written in mixed Japanese and English on the western style of the music. I would say the genre of this music is EDM/ synth pop. As I am Japanese and grow up listening to Japanese music, I do not find a lot of EDM or dance music written in Japanese so I and my friend wanted to try something new. The second part is that the singer who sang on this song is from Costa Rica! I think it is the most unique part. Even though she studies and knows other languages like I also speak English, singing in a different language is not easy. I really appreciate her effort and patience during the session and it turned very well in the end. If you have a any chance to take a look, please do so! You can find it by searching “Can’t Feel Your Love- The world of Mata and Yukino Takenaka feat with Aella.”

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

This question is challenging to answer because I’m still early in my music journey, so I’m learning as I go. However, I believe having the ability of playing some instruments allows us to expand the capabilities in creativities when it comes to music production. For example, playing the piano helps me a lot to come up with melodies. I am interested in learning how to play the guitar and drums because it will help me to explore the new genres and also overcome my weakness which is making the rhythm and drum patterns. Also knowing as many chords as possible and different patterns of chords progressions brings much more uniqueness into our music. As I write about music theory here gives me a headache already (haha) but it is very helpful in order to make a good music. Beside the knowledge of the music production side, I think it is important to learn business side of the music industry. I think that the more you know music business, the smoother you go through as you start putting your foot into this industry. I barely know about music business, so I would definitely like to have a better knowledge on this field.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Yes! If there are opportunities to collaborate with you, I would love to do it. I love working with others because the more creative there are, the more uniqueness we can bring into the music. I also would love to learn from you guys. I think working with you help me develop my skills in music production and also as human. Since I am good at coming up with melodies, I would love to collaborate with producers, composer and singer-songwriters. I am open to any kind of genres, but I am more skilled at writing the melodies for pop music. I also would love to try more for writing the soundtrack for the films. I am expert at bringing the sad, happy/ nostalgia, melancholy emotions into music. So not only with people from the music industry, I would love to collaborate with people from film industry and media industry.

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