NatPicking
My name is Nathaniel Pua and I, alongside my younger brother Amu started a little YouTube channel called NatPicking in November 2013.
The idea was to make guitar tutorials for songs that other people weren’t teaching. That is - Pacific Island songs, Māori songs, gospel songs, NZ songs etc. We started out filming in our mum’s garage in Mangere Bridge, South Auckland with minimal equipment and an even more dismal amount of video production skill. At the time we were qualified Primary school teachers working in South Auckland and filming tutorials in the evenings and weekends. With what little money we made from the channel, we would upgrade our camera equipment all while learning as much as we could about video production from the university of YouTube.
Fast forward a few years and we began a new venture with our two nieces, Jess & Ayva making family friendly content centred around the girls’ sassy personalities and ridiculous antics.
In 2020, Amu and I were given the opportunity to make content creation our full time gig and so we began writing, filming and editing content for Safekids Aotearoa where we are able to use our passion for working with children and our new found video production skills.
About Me
I am of Samoan and NZ European descent. I was born in Auckland, NZ with a rare genetic disorder called X-linked Hypophosphatemia or XLH. It’s a long and complicated explanation of what the disease - but for myself and two of my brothers who also have XLH it’s meant a lifetime of treatments, medication, surgeries and pain. But despite all the hardships I’ve been blessed with an amazing wife, two children and so many wonderful opportunities that I don’t take for granted. Being a husband and father has been the two greatest joys of my life.
I won my first guitar at age 15 in a High School talent show. The award was “Best Male Performer” and it was for a performance I did rapping alongside my older brother and a mate. It was no doubt a bit of a cringefest performance but one that changed my entire life’s trajectory. I took that guitar to school with me every day and my older cousin JP taught me how to play Puff Daddy songs. I had a friend who taught me how to play Oasis songs on that very guitar. Then my aunty paid for me to have classical lessons for about a year where I began to hone my skills and learn some basic music theory.
I would eventually drop out of High School and begin volunteering with FLEP - a Pacific Island Sexuality Education group for the next 11 years of my life. Here I was fortunate enough to grow my confidence in both the classroom and on stage using drama and music to communicate with our Pasefika youth mostly in South Auckland schools. It was also at FLEP that we started a YouTube channel called FLEP09 which had a few videos go viral including “Singing Your McDonald’s Order” which clocked up almost 1 million views which was a big deal back then. On that same channel I taught my first guitar tutorials which also garnered quite a bit of interest. It was this that sparked the idea for the creation of the NatPicking channel.
During this time I would also play in covers bands alongside my little brother Sofi on the drums. Playing in bars around Auckland and then eventually moving into doing corporate and wedding gigs became our regular weekend line of work until my XLH eventually made it too difficult to gig due to my hearing loss and back and bone pain.
I am a follower of Jesus and I thank God every day for the many blessings, including the ability to share my gifts online with young up and coming guitar players. If you’ve read this far - thank you for being a part of my journey.
