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Computers Replace Musicians In West End Musical
Posted by timothy on 10:03 AM -- Saturday February 14 2004

Albanach writes "The Scotsman newspaper is reporting that despite opposition from the Musician's Union, Sir Cameron Mackintosh will proceed with his plan to replace one half of the musicians in his musical Les Miserables with a computer synthesiser. The Times claims that using Sinfonia will allow the show, the third longest running musical in history, to replace 11 musicians saving 5,000 GBP ($9,450 US) per week. Sinfonia consisits of 2 PCs, one master and one backup, controlled by an trained operator using a musical keyboard."

I think it was the fault of the K1 throwing random MIDI data at the Proteus, but since it had proved itself to be unreliable in performance, I (quite sadly) had to sell the Proteus - I couldn't afford to replace the K1.

Of course, you can now get all five Proteus modules on CD for about $100US.

These days, I pretty much stick to playing the piano - I know it's not going to fail me, even if the power completely shuts down.

Hrm... I just noticed this blurb on the page for the OrchEXTRA, apparently the budget version of the Sinfonia (emphasis added):

• With OrchEXTRA in the pit, actors on stage feel fully supported while the pit musicians experience the thrill of playing with a full orchestra.

Wow! The thrill of being able to play with a full orchestra! I know it's the kind of thing that thrilled me when I started playing in the orchestra in school - the chance to actually play along with a real, live OrchEXTRA! (Iknow - the fact that my school actually had an orchestra makes me really, really old.)

So it's not a substitute, it's the real thing.

As soon as you add a synth playing six parts at once, then your tempos can't vary...

RTFA. In fact, the tempos and dynamics can vary. The conductor can skip or repeat verses, add ritards or rallantandos, and the system follows along. This thing is NOT a dumb MIDI sequencer that plays to a click-track.

You can argue over the morals of replacing half a pit orchestra with computers, but 99% of the audience won't be able to separate the live instruments from the synthesized/sampled ones.

As for whether it will feel more or less "human" to the audience, this is Les Miserables we're talking about. The people going to see it don't want a nuanced human performance from night to night. They want a slick Cameron Mackintosh production that is uniform, standardized, and reliably the same whether you see it in London, New York, or Kalamazoo. This technology delivers that product.

This apparently has already happened: Sinfonia's Controversy response
Apparently the Opera Company of Brooklyn did not have sufficient musicians or sufficient space to hose them to stage a production of the Magic Flute. They used Sinfonia to replace the missing musicians and it was extremely successful. Based on this, they planned to stage The Marriage of Figaro only to be circumvented by the local union. According to Sinfonia, they were actually allowing the OCB to stage productions they otherwise could not have afforded to money, musician and space constraints. The article says that this is pretty much the case with the Les Mis production as well, there not being enought space for a full orchestra.
That said, even though I prefer live music at a stage production, spontaniety and change being one of the main attractions of live performance (why see a favorite band/play more than once otherwise?), I would see a production that used something like Simfonia. I live in an area with only a couple of (very conservative) large playhouses. If a smaller company could put on a production they may not have otherwise had the resources for, well, everyone wins and I would support that.

The Sinfonia site mentions that the operator can alter how it plays the music, presumably by skipping back by a few bars. Anyhow, as I mention in my comment further down, such slipups are very rare in a long-running professional production.

Having said that, last time I went to see Les Mis, with full orchestra, it was actually fairly poor musically. So maybe that'll improve, who knows.

Mackintosh says he's been forced to do this by moving to the smaller theatre because the pit can only accommodate 11 musicians. Where exactly does the Musicians' Union want to put the rest of the orchestra? Suspend them from the ceiling?

Reading the rather limited blurb about the Sinfonia on the manufacturer's site, it's not like the orchestra or conductor is playing to a click-track or anything, the Sinfonia is operated by someone, presumably playing along to a piano part or some other lead part under the control of the conductor, then the synths on it follow that. Which means the conductor still has overall control of the orchestra, and it seems that the Sinfonia operator can even repeat bars or whatever, in response to what's happening on stage (although in a professional musical, an actor forgetting their line is somewhat unlikely, those things run like clockwork).

Yes, there's no substitute for live musicians, but if it's a case between the show going ahead or not (such as this case on RMS's site), then the answer is obvious to me. It's rather amusing that the musicians' unions are worried, they should be comforted in the knowledge that they can do better than a synth. Indeed, RMS claim that the Sinfonia can free up room for more live musicians by reducing the need for seperate synth players.

Still, I'd like to have a play with it before I'm fully convinced :).

Mackintosh says he's been forced to do this by moving to the smaller theatre because the pit can only accommodate 11 musicians. Where exactly does the Musicians' Union want to put the rest of the orchestra? Suspend them from the ceiling?

Reading the rather limited blurb about the Sinfonia on the manufacturer's site, it's not like the orchestra or conductor is playing to a click-track or anything, the Sinfonia is operated by someone, presumably playing along to a piano part or some other lead part under the control of the conductor, then the synths on it follow that. Which means the conductor still has overall control of the orchestra, and it seems that the Sinfonia operator can even repeat bars or whatever, in response to what's happening on stage (although in a professional musical, an actor forgetting their line is somewhat unlikely, those things run like clockwork).

Yes, there's no substitute for live musicians, but if it's a case between the show going ahead or not (such as this case on RMS's site), then the answer is obvious to me. It's rather amusing that the musicians' unions are worried, they should be comforted in the knowledge that they can do better than a synth. Indeed, RMS claim that the Sinfonia can free up room for more live musicians by reducing the need for seperate synth players.

Still, I'd like to have a play with it before I'm fully convinced :).