Es VOL.16 The musician to the musician plus 第 10 回 Hirohito Furui(first half)

●○○From music freak Es Vol.16

Vol.10

The musician to the musician plus

Hirohito Furui (HIROHITO FURUI)

［the musician to the musician］ explores the musical roots of artists and the works that have influenced them. This time, GARNET CROW’s Hirohito Furui joins us.
Usually, we ask artists to name several musicians or works, then base the conversation around them. This time, however, we took a slightly different approach and asked Furui to talk about his relationship with music from childhood to the present.
Furui is GARNET CROW’s keyboardist, and he is also active as an arranger for a wide range of artists outside GARNET CROW. The arrangements he has worked on span an exceptionally broad range of genres. This was an intriguing interview that revealed the reasons behind his extensive musical knowledge and the breadth of ideas at his disposal.
（INTERVIEWED BY YUKARI MATSUBARA）

●What first brought you into contact with music?
I took a few electone lessons when I was in kindergarten. I do not remember it myself, but apparently I was the one who said I wanted to try it. Once I actually started, though, I was not comfortable with my female teacher... (laughs). You sometimes have things like that when you are little, right? So we tried to find a class with a male teacher, but we could not find one easily, and I eventually quit. After that, I only played when I felt like it. Then, by middle school, I had started to admire synthesizers, and I remember saving my allowance as hard as I could so I could buy one myself (laughs). I expected that high school would give me more freedom to make music, but, amazingly, my high school did not have a club like a light-music club. So we decided to make one ourselves! As it happened, the guy who sat behind me also wanted to make music, and our conversation got us excited. First we had to gather the required number of people to establish the club, so we desperately invited friends who could not even play instruments, and eventually created something like a hobby club.

●Did you play keyboards in high school too?
Once you reach high school age, you naturally start to long for stringed instruments—guitar and bass. I had an acoustic guitar that someone I knew had given me in middle school, so I tried practicing on my own, but my fingers would not move the way I wanted. And by then there were always people who were really good at guitar. I realized I could not compete with them after only a little practice (laughs). Then I moved on to bass and played that for a while, but eventually there was no one left to play keyboards. So I said, “I’ll do it,” and ended up returning to keyboards.

●You never got into sports during your school years; was it music all the way?
I was tall, so I was often invited to join sports teams, but in the end it was music all the way. In high school, I did little besides music.

●When did you start thinking about becoming a professional?
I struggled with that a lot in high school. There was one senior, a year above me, who joined our club. He is still someone who sings anime songs, and by the time he graduated high school, he already had some opportunities to go professional. He was much further ahead of us. The pressure of that, and the positive stimulation it gave me, made me think, “I can’t just continue like this.” But I had no idea how to become a professional musician. Today, indie music is a natural path, and you can casually make and publish songs on a computer. Back then, even MTR equipment for recording at home was expensive, so I did things like recording multiple layers while modifying the erase head on a cassette recorder so it would not erase what was already there. We did some incredible things (laughs). In many ways, I was feeling my way forward back then.

●What kind of songs did the band you formed in high school cover?
Everyone brought in songs they liked, and we played all kinds of music, Japanese and Western alike. I particularly remember enjoying Southern All Stars and Motoharu Sano because they had substantial piano parts. I also liked Kiyoshiro Imawano, and I remember going to see him perform at Nippon Budokan soon after I entered high school. People who were really into Western music often did not listen to Japanese music at all, but I was not like that.