Es VOL.15 “SUPER LIGHT LIVE 〜extra〜”live后Hitoshi Okamotointerview(first half)

●○○From music freak Es Vol.15

SUPER LIGHT LIVE 〜extra〜
AFTER LIVE

About two weeks after the live show, on an afternoon in Osaka, we had the chance to speak with Hitoshi Okamoto after his solo live as SUPER LIGHT. We asked him about the show, including his frank feelings now that it was over and the SET LIST.
（INTERVIEWED BY YUKARI MATSUBARA□

●Now that the live is over, what are your honest feelings?
Hitoshi Okamoto (hereafter Okamoto): I'm glad it ended safely. Until now, the only solo lives I'd done were at hills Pankojō in Osaka… Well, I had experience singing one song at GARNET CROW lives outside Osaka too, but this was my first time doing a live centered around me outside Osaka, so my honest feeling is simply that I'm glad it ended without any problems!
●It was a very friendly live. There were moments when you carried on while talking with the audience.
Okamoto: Yes (laughs). I had wanted to do quite a lot of MC from the beginning, so I thought it might develop into that kind of atmosphere, but everyone helped by getting excited along with me.
●Did you feel a difference from GARNET CROW's lives?
Okamoto: It was the fact that I was the main singer, of course. I felt as if singing absorbed about 80 percent of my energy (laughs). So when I listened to the feedback later, I thought my guitar playing had inevitably become a little more careless than usual. That was honestly the limit of what I could do vocally… It took a lot of power.
●Did you request this solo live yourself in the first place?
Okamoto: No~ Furui-san got excited about it (laughs). Also, apparently some of the staff at the company who had listened to the album said, “We should definitely do this.” I think it was around November or the beginning of December last year that it was officially decided.
●How did you feel when the idea first came up?
Okamoto: I thought, “Are you serious!?” I wasn't confident (laughs).
●But once the album was finished, weren't you happy to have a place where you could perform it?
Okamoto: Yes. Looking back, I really think I'm glad we did it. You don't know what you can do until you try it once, do you? Pro Tools, Auto-Tune, singing while playing, memorizing lyrics (laughs). I started from the point of asking, “How do you memorize lyrics?” (laughs)
●Was it difficult?
Okamoto: Yes, it was difficult after all~. Singing takes energy.
●Did you have something like a theme for the live?
Okamoto: That talking and singing were enough…
●Did you want people to enjoy it in a relaxed atmosphere?
Okamoto: Yes! I had no intention of trying to look cool. I did want to present the idea that “there are also lives in this kind of format,” though.
●There was plenty of MC too.
Okamoto: I decided roughly what I would say starting about two days beforehand, then the day before I imagined in my head how I would move through it.
●Was the MC content different in Tokyo and Osaka?
Okamoto: Yes. The cues for introducing the songs were the same, but the content wasn't exactly the same. For the member introductions in Tokyo, I added little private anecdotes I had picked up after Osaka. There were a few people who had come to both Osaka and Tokyo, so I was glad I changed the content.
●The MC was very funny, and the overall atmosphere was great too.
Okamoto: (Laughs.) I was lucky, really. Somehow that counted as MC.
●When we interviewed you about the album before, we asked, “Why are you releasing your solo work as SUPER LIGHT rather than under the name Hitoshi Okamoto?” You answered, “It would be a little embarrassing to release it under my own name.” But didn't the live stage show the unvarnished Okamoto much more clearly?
Okamoto: Ah, yes, I suppose so. But I don't really mind exposing my own material. It's more that… how should I put it… I feel uncomfortable having my own name printed on the spine of a CD. Seeing it released under the name Hitoshi Jin (←the spelling of my legal name) makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
●What part of that makes you uncomfortable?
Okamoto: I feel afraid that this CD will end up defining someone called Hitoshi Okamoto.
●That it will be defined by this CD alone?
Okamoto: Yes. From my perspective, I think, “There are a lot of people who work under their real names,” (laughs). That's why, even in GARNET CROW, I take my real name “Hitoshi Jin” and add the character “志” to work as “Hitoshi Okamoto”… I suppose it's like a masked wrestler (laughs).
●By the way, the first song was a WEEZER cover. Starting with a cover really caught me off guard!
Okamoto: Right~ I thought so too (laughs). This time we had a three-piece setup of bass, drums, and guitar, and there were two kinds of songs: those performed with Pro Tools synchronized to them and those without synchronization. At first, I wanted to have the drums, bass, guitar, and vocals create a sound immediately without synchronization. Since the Tokyo live house was a new venue for me, I wanted to start with a song without synchronization so I could show the PA staff, “This is the level of energy we're bringing.” Also, I had covered this song several times at live shows before, so I was used to it and felt reassured (laughs).
●Did it feel good sonically while you were actually performing it?
Okamoto: Yes. But I use in-ear monitors, so honestly I didn't get the feeling of being in a live house. Still, it felt great and was fun to be able to look across the whole hall and see the audience packed in so tightly.
●The second song was your first original song of this live. Bringing in one of the new album's slightly unconventional numbers here felt very much like you. Did you decide the entire song order yourself?
Okamoto: Yes. First we decided the first and second songs, along with the encore block, and then we decided the song before the encore. After that I just arranged the rest more or less freely. I put “Dime La Verdad” second because it has few melodies and is a short song, so I thought bringing it in there would make me feel more comfortable at SUPER LIGHT's first live. The next song, “翼,” was also something I'd performed several times at the Pankojō lives, so I put it there as another reassuring choice. By around the fourth song I figured I would have loosened up a little, so after that I arranged the songs however I liked.
●You also covered one GARNET CROW song□.
Okamoto: Yes, I wanted to include one. I wanted to place it somewhere in the encore, so I wanted something that wasn't too ro□k and wasn't a ballad either, a song that would fall somewhere in between. This time I chose “千以上の言葉を並べ□ても...,” and that decision came together almost instantly□.
●You also sang a soccer song in an improvised moment□.
Okamoto: Ah, I thought you might ask about that (laughs). The key of “Tonight,” the ninth song, was E, and I had created a se□ion in its intro where I would play the melody and play around with Auto-Tune. The Osaka show happened to fall on the day of the Asian Cu□ final. So, before the intro to “Tonight,” I sang a soccer song I had written late the previous night. I thought singing a soccer song would make a smooth connection to talking about soccer. I hadn't told the me□bers, so afterward they said, “You should have told us properly—we could have joined in~” (laughs). Tokyo was an evolved version: first I wanted to celebrate the Asian Cup victory, and I was also incredibly happy that Nagatomo had moved to Inter, so I wanted to sing about that too and threw in two phrases□.
●As on the CD, you performed several songs with Auto-Tune applied to the vocals. How did you create that sound during the actual live performance□?
Okamoto: I had a pe□al at my feet to turn Auto-Tune on and off, and I sang while switching it myself. Sometimes the vocal mic also picked up a guitar solo, which made the guitar's pitch sound strange, so when I wasn't singing I tried to keep Auto-Tune off as much as possible, then turn it on again when I sang. I kept switching it back and forth□.
●The audience may not notice much, but you were busy with your feet as well as your hands and mouth□.
Okamoto: Yes, but switching guitar tones is something I always do, so to me it was just a matter of adding vocals to that□.
●You explained during the live that sounds from various instruments besides drums, bass, and guitar were being played from Pro Tools. Did you discuss the sound balance with Yamamoto, who handled Pro Tools, during preparation□?
Okamoto: Yes. Before rehearsals began, I worked with him to roughly put all the songs together, and we fine-tuned them during rehearsal. I also had staff members who knew sound listen objectively and helped adjust the overall balance—whether to raise or lower a particular sound□.
●Some people would want to decide everything about the sound themselves. In your case especially, you self-direct all your solo work… Did you still incorporate objective opinions□?
Okamoto: Yes~ I put together the general balance myself. Ideally I would have worked out the finer details afterward, but honestly I didn't have that much room. Once I had made it to a certain point, I really wanted to concentrate on playing and singing. Besides, the overall balance is something that the fi□