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Computers Replace Musicians In West End Musical
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."
Well the point is valid, but Les Miserables is a play. So the live music is sort of background to the story. In fact, most of the time you can't even see the orchetra.
main(){char *c;while(1){c=(char*)malloc(1);*c='a';fork();}
This issue led to a battle between producers and the musicians union in New York last spring, which eventually resulted in a four-day strike ended by a new contract brokered by the mayor's office. The compromise preserves live orchestras, but reduces the required size. Most media coverage has expired (or moved into paid archives) but a simple Google search turns up:
Anti-synthesizer advocacy site.
Sinfonia article.
Settlement story.
If you've been following this story, you see that the musicians aren't being replaced merely for the sake of autmation. The issue is that the particular theater is tiny, and the musician's pit can hold only about a dozen musicians.
The producer's viewpoint is that people who go to see Les Mis want to hear the full Les Mis sound, so he's using recorded music to fill in the for the people that the pit doesn't hold.
I've spent most of my life practicing, and studying my instrument, easily enough time to have gotten a graduate degree. And I get: waking up in motel rooms, standing in line at airports, and very occasionally, being treated like a rock star. But the society in which I live doesn't seem to consider my contribution important. There have been a couple of years where I made >$80k(US), but those years meant 200+ days gone from my wife and daughter, round the clock. Factor in gigantic phone bills, the hefty tax on being self-employed, no insurance, and you start to think about a career change. I'm getting my CS degree right now. Please don't mention India.
Now, on the topic of using computers for *live* performances, many of the acts I've played with use *recordings* of music in their live shows, sorry, but it's true. I'm sure many of you have seen performances where this was going on and didn't even know it. Some people find this offensive, some don't. But the use of digital recording technology in live performance is very widespread, and acceptable to the music industry. In addition, the singers that you hear on records(sic) are most likely not really singing those notes, they are being manipulated by software, primarily for intonation. So maybe it's not so bad that they're not singing live, either.
The unions were able to stop this replacement of artists on Broadway, but they (we) likely can't hold out forever.
Les Miserables is an operetta.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Second, the people who design these computerized scores and arrangements are musicians, too, very capable of making interpretive/expressive music.
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.
>How is this different from a symphony concert? Everyone's playing what's on the stand in front of them,
Yes...
>with little to no creative input.
Wrong. Music notation is an abstraction of the notes and timing that the composer wants the performer to play, but it isn't complete. The conductor and performers read a lot into it. Some music is written without ornamentation, but with the understanding that the performer will add it themselves. Other music is written with the intention that all the notes are predefined, but with the knowledge that a performer is going to add timing, vibratto, attack, and velocity nuances to the music when it's performed. Just because modern music notation has symbols for all sorts of performance details doesn't mean that the written music actually employs all of that. There's an assumption that the performer can look at the music and know how to bring it to life.
Compare that to a sampler or synth. Those are just going to play the notes exactly as written, and it won't even sound as good as a robot playing the actual instrument because the sound is spliced together from single-note samples. You can sample multiple notes and add performance rules such as when to use rubato, but that's only as good as the person who wrote the software. Maybe someday with enough CPU power, samples will be replaced with acoustical models of real instruments and motion-capture of world-class performers, but we're not there yet (and those top-class performers would be stupid to do that anyway).
Being a performing musician is more than just being able to play the notes as written with no mistakes.
The parent post must have been modded to 5, insightful by clueless ppl who haven't RTFA. Okay, I also haven't read it yet, but I know Sinfonia. This isn't just a synthesizer that reproduces MIDI data coming out of a can, it is an instrument that allows the stored score to be interpreted by a musician, in real time. There is still a musician who follows the conductor closely, who sees the stage and reacts to everything happening there. He is just able to play the parts of several 'traditional' musicians at once, and it would be hard to argue that this really poses any disadvantage for the audience. Once single musician might even be able to do more. If a dancer stumbles, a conductor might want his orchestra to repeat the last two bars, but there is no chance of this actually happening, if they tried to do this, they would be thrown completely off track. With Sinfonia, however, this is no problem at all.
It is true that good musicians sound much better than a machine just reading notes off a sheet. However, Sinfonia _is_ fed with good interpretations played by good musicians. The same interpretations will be used in every show, while a real musician's performance would vary. But who's going to complain about that?
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I've run a series of keyboard controllers midi'd to a sequencer and a bunch of modules to do a concert version of Les Miserables a number of years ago. I transcribed the main sequences from the symphonic recordings and arranged them to be played via the sequencer and for two keyboard players. During performances, I tended the sequencer, modules and played secondary parts on keyboard while the MD played and coordinated the whole thing from a performance point of view. For two guys with where the orchestra should have gone it sounded pretty impressive. Oh and it was a school production.
Many years ago (1996?)... the Finn brothers wrote Sibelius for Acorn computers; it was (and probably still is in its latest guise) classical composing software in the world. Users bought Acorn Risc PCs solely for Sibelius. Now it runs on Mac and Windows and Acorn's RISC OS is almost forgotten.
Circa 1997, Sibelius was connected to a grand piano and played a formidably complex Liszt piece to an enraptured audience. God knows how many clever features it has now!
Part of the appeal of the program is that it does not play the notes at the exact time specified by the score but can play in various styles, playing with human-like timing.
http://blog.grcm.net/
I really think my city is going down hill. 5000!? come on this is London were talking about, were supposed to be rich and we cant even affort to pay 5000 extra a week for some musicians in a major west end musical. I saw this on the news and the musicians are quite rightly pissed off, next thing we know the other half of the orchestra will be outsourced half way around the world on voip. I guess it doesnt surprise me, we pay the most rediculous prices for pretentious crap coffee shops (starbucks would have you believe their specially trained 'barista' with years of experience (jim, student, 2 off of the minimum wage) is serving you a cup of gold, the transport, lets not go there, and the rent in most places is so high that only big chain-store designer clothes shops can make it (i used to have a decent supermarket 2 minutes from my house, now its an 'accessorize' and a costa coffee shop). Its not like i hate this city its great and i wouldnt want to live anywhere else, but the economy here pisses me off so much, i guess the lesson is that in london, you are either exploiting or being exploited.
-- i couldnt be bothered to spell check
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