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."

Comments

Re:Defeats the purpose

[Magnus Pym]

Actually, there is no difference.

It is just a matter of getting the audience to adjust their expectations.

The fact is, people expect that music played live, especially by a good-looking musician with a "life-story" would sound better than the "soulless" music produced by a machine.

The argument is as bogus as the DeBeer's argument about "fake" diamonds.

It is only a matter of time before the bulk of all music created/played will be by machines. The number of musicians will plummet.

Call it outsourcing to machines.

Magnus.