New Zealand DJ and Synthony musical director Dick Johnson is preparing for another show in Auckland in July.
New Zealand DJ and Synthony musical director Dick Johnson is preparing for another show in Auckland in July.
Before its show at Spark Arena in July, Synthony’s musical director Dick Johnson takes Karl Puschmann on a journey through the show’s evolution into a global sensation
I’m at Dick Johnson’s home studio to find out how the music for the popular concert series Synthony is put together, but insteadI find myself wildly sidetracked.
“Synthony played a $100 million party,” Johnson, who is the event’s musical director and a respected DJ and producer, says, a look of disbelief crossing his face. “It was the launch of a man-made island for owners of super yachts in Saudi Arabia. We played with Alicia Keys. She did the song Finally, which we arranged. It was all influencers and superstars who’d been invited. Will Smith was there. 350 people. It was pretty strange. It was good financially, but the audience was there to look cool. They didn’t embrace the music, you know.”
Then he grins and says: “They weren’t in the mosh pit.”
This is a long way from Synthony’s humble beginnings as a special night out for ravers. The simple idea of mashing a live orchestra with dancefloor-filling electronic music classics has taken Synthony from selling out Auckland’s Town Hall to filling Auckland’s Domain and touring the world in just eight short years.
It’s been a meteoric rise, with no signs of returning to earth. Next month at Spark Arena is an ambitious double-header show. First up is Mānuka Phuel presents Full Metal Orchestra, which involves Synthony branching into classic rock. Then there’s a complete stadium reset before the late-night second show, Mānuka Phuel presents Synthony Origins, which, as the name suggests, is a throwback to its first Town Hall show and features a setlist of the early techno, house and dance music classics that got the hall raving all those years ago. Dedicated fans can get tickets to both.
It’s going to be a huge night, and Johnson’s amped.
“People have been wanting Origins and to go back to those early Synthony shows,” he says. “It’s going to be all the bangers and the euphoric anthems of that time. It’s going back to the roots of Synthony, but also going back to the roots of the genre as well.”
He hasn’t been too involved with the evening’s rockier opening show, but has been working on the electronic arrangements for years.
“It’s been a big learning curve for me because I’m not classically trained or anything like that. I’m just a DJ, really, and a producer,” he says. “I’ve learned so much from curating these sets and what works well with the orchestra. It’s finding songs that have an element or a hook that we can latch on to and build around.”
Arrangement duties are split in two, with composer Ryan Youens writing the orchestral score while Johnson is responsible for remaking the electronic elements of the tracks from the ground up. Since they don’t have access to the musician’s master stems, it’s up to Johnson to recreate the magic.
“It’s the biggest job that I do,” he says, describing the process of recreating songs such as Fatboy Slim’s sample-heavy classic Right Here, Right Now or Faithless’ iconic Insomnia as “a challenge”.
To hunt down the obscure samples these classic tracks are built from, he turns to online resources such as website whosampledwho.com, which details all the samples used in a track. From there, he begins crafting his recreation to get the vibe spot on. Once he’s remade the song using the music software Ableton Live, he’ll split all the elements into individual stems and then promptly go about ignoring most of this hard work.
“Once we have all the stems, we can use as little or as much as we want in the show. Quite often, I strip the tracks back right down to just drums and bass, and maybe one key synth element. But as much as possible, we try and have the orchestra playing all the melodies and doing their thing.”
Works by artists such as Fatboy Slim (left) get given a classical touch by Dick Johnson for Synthony events.
Distilling these famous tracks down to their roots is a fascinating process, but his job doesn’t end there. He and Youens collaborate heavily to ensure the orchestra isn’t just recreating melodies but is capturing that most ineffable element: the feel and energy of the track.
“The beauty of the orchestra is they can pretty much do anything, even some of the more obscure sounds or percussion,” he says. “I try and get Youens to think outside the box and create all these spiky sounds that really pop from the orchestra. They aren’t even in tune necessarily, but just have the right feeling.”
The musicians receive the score about six weeks out from the event, but usually only come together for a single rehearsal. Typically, this is on the day of the show. It sounds like they’re cutting things extremely fine, but Johnson says he’s never had to worry about the orchestra not being prepared. Instead, he’s listening for set flow and that all-important vibe.
And while he and Youens have been trading files, it’s the first time they’ll both hear it all come together with the actual musicians.
“We’ve done things that have sounded great here in the studio and all the software orchestrations sound amazing, but with the orchestra, it’s been a little too much or it hasn’t quite got the feeling of the original track,” he says. “But that’s pretty rare. It’s usually the opposite. If anything, when you hear it with the orchestra, it’s another level. That’s when the excitement kicks in and you’re like, ‘oh yeah, we’ve got this!’”
He says that excitement is visible in the orchestra as well.
“These guys have been performing classical music for most of their lives, and it’s very reserved, you know, a little bit of clapping now and then. But they walk out here and the crowd are going ballistic and they’ve got the massive bass from the subs going underneath them. It’s hard for them to contain themselves, and they just have great energy. They love it.”
After working intimately with the orchestra for years now, rearranging bangers such as Darude’s Sandstorm, Prodigy’s Firestarter, or Daft Punk’s One More Time to work with an orchestra, has he become a fan of classical music?
“Some I like more than others,” he laughs. “It’s not a genre I’m overly into. But I definitely appreciate it.”
Manuka Phuel Full Metal Orchestra and Synthony Origins are happening on Saturday, July 26, at Spark Arena, find out more at fullmetalorchestra.com.
