Laura Morley-
This week, I caught up with Rob Farhat, auditor of Trinity Orchestra and the man responsible for bringing Daft Punk to Trinity this week. We’ve all seen the massive queues of students in the arts block hoping to reserve a ticket for one of the two performances, and so I decided to ask Rob a few questions regarding his arrangement of the album ‘Discovery’, and also his plans for future projects…
1. Firstly, why did you choose Daft Punk?
Our previous years’ attempts at this kind of thing focused on Sigur Ros and Radiohead, both of whose music translated to an orchestra quite easily. I wanted to tackle some music which didn’t, but that people would still really want to hear. I had only recently gotten properly into Daft Punk, and being one of the most influential electronic music artists ever, it seemed like an exciting challenge.
However, they didn’t have much material for me to work with – only 3 albums, each of which are quite different. The only one which I felt would really work for orchestra was their 2001 House masterpiece – Discovery. Being a big believer in listening to albums in full – just like one would with a classical Symphony – I thought the best thing to do would be to play it in its entirety. It’s a seminal work, and interestingly one which wasn’t that well received on its release, but by the end of the decade critics were falling over it. For example, the notorious Pitchfork Media gave it a measly 6.4/10 on release, but then went on to name it their no. 3 album of the decade. The album is full of depth. On first listen, it sounds quite simple. But every time I listen to it I hear new sounds that I’ve never noticed before, and it can sound very different depending on what headphones or speakers you listen to it on.
2. What was it like arranging ‘Discovery’? Did you encounter any difficulties?
The process of arranging the songs was very different to my previous attempts at other bands. Practically every sound on the album is made electronically, which meant that I had to make some hard decisions on what instruments to put particular lines on. At the same time, it is dance music – which is by nature more repetitive than our previous endeavours – so I often had to come up with ways to keep things interesting for an audience that would, after all, only be sitting down. It’s a long and often arduous process, but one which reaps great rewards when you hear the end product.
3. How long did the whole project take you? When did you start working on it?
I had already decided that I was going to do this over a year ago and had all these grand plans to do all the arrangements over the summer but that obviously never happened. Once we got back to college I started working on bits and pieces but the real work didn’t start until the Christmas break when I really got the head down and basically did the whole thing. I got roughly one done per day, and I’d say it took me on average 4-5 hours per song… So you’re talking about 60-70 hours in total I suppose.
4. Did you have any musical inspirations in the orchestral arrangement of ‘Discovery’?
Not really to be honest, other than the album itself. I’m quite a musical purist, so I literally did my best to translate every sound I heard onto the orchestra. I basically believe that when it comes to covers, they have to be either almost exactly the same as the original, or radically different. Anything in between usually sounds a bit lost in translation. I guess I’ve tried to make an orchestral arrangement that is as close to the original as possible, if that is possible.
I don’t study music anymore, and I’ve never really studied orchestration. I’ve usually found any attempts at orchestrating music like this really tacky. There’s one orchestral Daft Punk arrangement out there that I can find – an arrangement of ‘Aerodynamic’ by Tom Hodge which was used in a L’Oreal ad or something. It’s so cheesy it makes me want to vomit.
5. Daft Punk is the talk of Trinity at the moment. It sold out in half an hour and over 1,000 people have R.S.V.P.ed on Facebook. What do you have to say about this? Were you surprised?
I’m obviously delighted, for two main reasons. One is that it’s amazing that one of the most in-demand events in Trinity is coming from an orchestra, I doubt you’ll find that’s the case in all universities. It’s great that we can appeal to so many people who probably would never have been to an orchestra concert before, and hopefully we can then convert them into liking more traditional kinds of orchestral music too. At the same time, it’s not like we’re ‘selling-out’. Radiohead and Daft Punk are two of the most well-respected music acts around, it’s not like we’re playing Black Eyed Peas…
The second reason I’m so happy about it is that we really put very little effort into its promotion. All there was was a few posters around Trinity and the Facebook page (which was only set up a week before tickets went on sale) – it was mainly thanks to word of mouth. Knowing that this could be a big hit, we gradually teased out information about it on the internet from the start of the year. We also had auditions for the band and singers for the first time, which created some early buzz. So by the time we announced it properly, there was already a fair bit of hype about it. It shows you that if you can put together an event that people really want to see, it almost promotes itself.
Was I surprised? I wouldn’t have planned for 2 nights if I didn’t think we’d be able to sell them out. I was shocked by how fast they sold out though, and how much demand was left over. We probably could have done another night (and we’ve have got some interesting offers to do it elsewhere) which I’m really pleased and humbled by.
6. Do you have any plans to work on a similar project in the future?
Personally, next year I’ll be in 4th year so I’ll want to focus more on my degree. I also won’t be in charge anymore so it won’t be my call. But we’re actually introducing an application system so that – at least in theory – any talented Trinity musician can put on a concert like this through Trinity Orchestra. I strongly believe that open societies lead to better and more innovative ideas, so who knows what lies in store for the future.
I might try and put on another big one like this, maybe not on my own next time. But I’d ideally like to do something more ambitious, so I’m going to look at putting on more collaborative events that can’t be done by one society alone. We’ll see…
