Five For Friday…9:15 on a Friday Night with Walt Ribeiro

By Tiffany Bartok on April 16, 2011

I’m not as good at titles as Jayce, but I was thinking of our subject for this Five For Friday, Walt Ribeiro, and his amazing renditions of The Cure, and well, it’s not 10:15 on a Saturday Night, now is it?

Walt is a fellow alumni of University of the Arts where I went to college.  We met recently at a dinner and he was cool enough to make a playlist for our TIC Launch Party in October.  Walt makes orchestral arrangements of pop songs… less muzak-y and more awesome-y.  Below is an example of one of his arrangements of Friday I’m In Love by The Cure set to a slide show of our event.  And what follows are his answers to the same 5 questions we ask a Do It Yourselfer every Friday…

Five For Friday

Five Questions For Our Weekly Do It Yourselfer

Why did you decide to Do It Yourself

When you have an idea, it’s difficult to get people on board, and so you have to bootstrap until you have a better idea of what to invest. The decision to do-it-myself wasn’t so much of a choice, it was the only option. But that’s a good thing, because it makes you more focused, independently creative.

Are you really Doing It Yourself?  Is anyone helping you?

No one is helping me. Recently, as things have grown, I’ve been looking into hiring people to do the administrative work, but I’m not there yet. The thing about starting a company by yourself is that you have to do everything until you’re ready to ‘outsource’ some of the work you do to professionals so you can concentrate on your trade. Knowing when to make that move is tough, but getting to that point of your first employee, or seeing something grow that was once only an idea of yours, is so encouraging and incredible.

What success have you had?

I have arranged over 50 songs for orchestra in every genre, which is a dream knowing I’ve been fortunate to create weekly content and grow a community as a full time job now.

I was featured on Methodshop, Comedy Central’s Tosh.O and Sonicscoop and my music has been performed by The Boston Pops and even had a Blazer named after me.

Are you in the DIY culture out of necessity, or creative control?

Both. The thing about DIY is sometimes dampening to one’s creativity. When you begin to realize that a painting can inspire a musician’s music, or how a film can change the style of a person’s fashion, then you realize that we all learn through each others’ creativity and ideas. For this idea DIY was a necessity, but I wonder how my orchestration ideas would have been different if I had other people working with with me. To hear their input, their arranging style, suggestions, and all around influences – that certainly would play a part in my work. But DIY has its own creative control with it too, which is certainly welcoming.

What’s your worst experience Doing It Yourself

I hate paper work. Hate it. So the worst thing is how I have to be a ‘one-man-army’ and wear several different hats, until I decide it’s time to hire. I’m not passionate about video editing, or doing taxes, or administration work – I’d much rather be doing what I do best, and that’s arranging songs for orchestra. I just want to do what I’m passionate about doing – so the worst experience has been the work hat keeps me away from that. But I also don’t mind it so much knowing that I have to do it in order to continue to arrange songs for orchestra.

Website: http://fororchestra.com

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/fororchestra

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/walt-ribeiro/id210180043

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