Life & Work with Christopher Chen Wei of Singapore

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher Chen Wei.

Hi Christopher, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hello! I am Chris, and some of you might know me as Chen Wei. I am a professional session guitarist and a solo artist.

I was born in Taiwan and went to Singapore to study when I was 10-year-old. I started my musical journey by learning some pop piano and after about 2 years, I stopped as I have to move to another guardian’s house and there was no piano in that house. I have always been very curious about music and wanting to continue learning it, but as a 12-year-old boy, piano was way too expensive for me to afford as a kid and I was very blessed to have a Korean friend who was willing to share with me his joy and passion of playing guitar in school. As I watch more amazing guitarists and musicians on youtube (I still do these days), I began to study acoustic fingerstyle guitar, and I can’t wait to go home after school each day, just to play my guitar. And that continues for many years……

Fast forward to when I was serving military in Singapore, I started to dive into electric guitar. But interestingly, I didn’t start out my electric guitar journey in the “rock world” like many people did, I started by listening to a lot of funk music, people like James Brown, Michael Jackson, Nile Rodgers, Tomo Fujita, Mark Lettieri, and Cory Wong. I always like rhythmic and groovy music, you can also refer it as “dance music”. I am not too sure the reason exactly, but that’s what draws me into the “electric guitar world”.

After serving military, I was also very blessed to go to one of my dream music college, Musicians Institute (MI) in LA Hollywood for 3.5 years for my music degree and to further pursue my passion in music. I have learnt so much from the teachers and friends over there and given any chance, I won’t trade this experience with anything else.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No. There are many up and down along the way, including my left hand injury back then when I was in school. I was diagnosed with 4 different types of injuries including “carpal tunnel” and “tendonitis”, I couldn’t even remember the names of the other two because I just want to focus on playing the guitar better without pain instead of finding “excuses” to not play it.

If you were to ask me to describe the feeling of it when I play the guitar, it’s like having an “electric shock” at times when you play the guitar and I just have to let go of my left hand because it’s painful, and I couldn’t play more than 2-3 hours a day, so I spent more time trying to study music theory and understanding concept instead of trying to play 8-10 hours a day, because I couldn’t do it back then.

In short, it was physically painful to play the guitar and I couldn’t control my fingers the way that I want to, I thought it was due to lack of practice, but it wasn’t, because I struggle with very simple movement that I didn’t struggle with before.

I have to “re-learn” the guitar and rework on the most basic movement, with the most relax and comfortable positions I “feel”, and change the entire approach of my playing. It was tedious and “painful” because it was a big hit to my confidence and just everything musically. But thankfully, by God’s grace, I am able to play without pain again.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a session guitarist and a solo artist. I would say that my main field of study is funk and R&B. Of course, we have to learn to play many different styles in school but these styles are my strength. I think what I am most proud of is “rhythm guitar”, I have spent a lot of time studying parts and trying to ” create parts” for original artist (being creative). My job as a session guitarist is always to add value to the music (even if it’s something really simple) and not to outshine the artist, because it’s their songs and my job is to make them shine as much as I could!

As much as I love writing guitar parts for artists, I also write my own original music. Personally, I think being creative (both writing guitar parts for artists and my own original music) is so important to me because that’s where my musical soul goes to. I can’t imagine my life without this creative elements.

I have released a single “Odd Funk” in 2023 with my talented keyboardist friend, Hyun Jin, it’s like a funk fusion kinda thing. And I have also just released an R&B instrumental EP called “The LA Vibe”, on the 15th April 2026. There are 4 songs in the EP and I wrote it based on the “vibe”, atmosphere and the feeling I got when I was staying in Los Angeles. Hope that it conveys well through the music! In addition, I also switch my writing a little bit as I was writing these tunes. I focus on “singable” melody and something that the general public can understand and appreciate.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
If you are an original artist and want to collab or work on something together, feel free to DM me on @guitaristchen on instagram. I would love to hear your songs!

You can also search “Christopher Chen Wei” and “The LA Vibe” on any streaming platforms such as Apple Music, Itune, Spotify, etc. If you don’t have any of those streaming platforms, you can also search up on my youtube channel and you should be able to find my Music Videos (MV) of my latest EP over there. Unfortunately, I didn’t produce physical vinyl or album at the moment, but I would do that in the future. Nevertheless, listening to my original music is already the biggest support for me!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chrisguitarstudio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guitaristchen/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chen.wei.75054
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@guitaristchen
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/album/5LUAzWTKKC9kZmAKzovQiM?si=wA1FysjuRhyYYTKracl6uQ

Image Credits
Studio Photograph by Zen