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

Defeats the purpose

[mao che minh]

People go (or in my case, get dragged) to see live orchestras because it is music being played by actual musicians. That is what differentiates the experience from merely listening to the songs on a stereo.

What is the point in going to see live, but fake, music?

Re:Defeats the purpose

[Killer Napkin]

Actually, Les Miserables is a musical. The music and the story go hand in hand. To make half the experience artificial is to taint the other half, also. It's not like people aren't going to be able to tell.

Re:Defeats the purpose

[darnok]

Here goes the karma...

Unless someone's done something interesting with arrangements, the musicians playing the score for Les Mis have very little to no creative input in the music they're producing. They play what's on the score, and there's very little interaction between the cast and orchestra in a typical concert hall.

The fact that large chunks of this production of Les Mis can be played by synths tends to suggest that either the arrangements are either very straightforward or that they're particularly avant garde (i.e. it might actually be tough to find/afford musicians who can do them justice). The simple fact is (and I've been a muso in a past life so I'm gonna get beaten up if any of several people read this!) that the synths are probably *better* able to deliver the musical background that the director wants to achieve. They don't make mistakes, they don't break up with their partners just before the show, and they won't get better offers elsewhere.

Bottom line: people don't go to Les Mis to hear the orchestra play, and probably very few of them know or care whether "real" musicians are playing. They go because they think it's a good story and/or to see specific actors and/or because the director may have done something interesting with it.

Re:Defeats the purpose

[NormalVisual]

Unless someone's done something interesting with arrangements, the musicians playing the score for Les Mis have very little to no creative input in the music they're producing. They play what's on the score, and there's very little interaction between the cast and orchestra in a typical concert hall.

How is this different from a symphony concert? Everyone's playing what's on the stand in front of them, with little to no creative input.

The difference is in the performance itself - the performances are a little different from night to night, and a full orchestra that's paying attention to what's happening onstage will be able to compensate seamlessly with any differences in the show from night to night (dropped line, missed coda, etc.) Up until about two years ago, I had regularly performed in a pit orchestra for about 15 years, and it *does* make a difference. It's even more of a difference for something like "Les Mis", where the music is such an integral part of the show.

Knowing that a show was sequenced/synthesized would definitely temper my enthusiasm at seeing it.

Re:Defeats the purpose

[fshalor]

As someone who has more than 5 musicals in a pit playing trombone, and another one working crew including:
1. La Cage A Follies
2. Gypsy
3. Anyonw Can Whistle
4. Peter Pan
5. Scruge
6. Sunday in the park with George
7. Jekyl and Hyde.

I can say without a doubt that I can and will be able to tell the difference. I can also say with 100% assurance that I am not th only one who can tell te difference.

This is actually a rather interesting development. And I must add a few points.

1. Musicians are underpaid in general. The musicals I've done usually barely paid for gas. But then again, no one gets paid in this group, even though the group is very good. (One of the best in the state.)
2. Poorer groups may not be able to afford musicians. I know this one wouldn't, it there weren't enough musicians in the town willing to do the gig for peanuts, and *able* :)
3. Thus in these cases, there may be an excuse for doing "taped" runs, or better, what this article is suggesting.
4. In Jekyl and Hyde, we used a really good yamaha keyboard to cover all the uncoverable parts (ie, cello and some harpsicord and chimes parts, etc.) This was mostly due to space concerns, but MAN-O MAN; patches have came a Long way in the last 5 years.

Still, this makes me cringe that groups who CAN pay for good musicians aren't willing to anymore. To me, for a group that is in that situation, it is a cop out of sorts. It takes away one of the dangers of things falling apart. It brings the group back from that edge, and locks it into the one keyboard jocky and the computer.

Call me a nut, but some of the best moments I've ever felt in music were when things weren't going 100% the way they were rehersed. The combined human factor of 10 pit musicians relizing that Mr. Hyde was going crazy with his stuff tonight made something come alive.

I would feel bad not allowing moments like that to go to the audience.

Next up: record the whole damn thing and play it on a big screen. Oh, wait.. Ooops. Thats a movie. :)

that's too bad

[DRUNK_BEAR]

I don't mind technology easying things out or to offer a divertissement (in the form of games, etc), but when it comes to art I have a hard time with it replacing entirely humans. Art should be a form of expression, not an automated process.

Just my 0.02$

Replacing players.

[Anonymous Coward]

What not replace the entire orchestra with a CD player? Then you avoid having to use the Sinfonia's capability to play along with live musicans.

The actors and set could also be replaced by projecting an image of a pre-recorded performance onto a large screen.

If there was a way to distribute this recording, people could watch it on smaller projection screens at home, and avoid the cost of theatre tickets and the hassle of having to travel to the theatre.

The only hard part would by syncronising the CD player to the projection, but I'm sure someone will come up with a method in the future.

Re:Here's One Positive

[rishistar]

Yes, but wait until the theatre gets hooked up to broadband!

Did anyone notice.....

[Insipid Trunculance]

that the salary of a professional musician ,who has most probably spent years of training and hard work ,working for a major west end production makes only 450 a week(and this figure is most probably gross).Waiters earn this sum working 7-8 shifts.I mean what happened to cultural society?

How many musicians give up just because they cant survive on these wages?I am appalled.

Well, I was going to say...

[juglugs]

I was just about to bring up the hypothetical situation that the music has to be adaptable to any hiccups that occur on the stage - i.e. an actor forgets a cue so the orchestra plays an extra intro bar.
However, I was working in the theatre when the first automated lighting desks appeared and a skillfull operator could always adapt or delay when changing to the next "scene".
Having said that, lighting is secondary to the performance compared with the music - jumping around the place would be kind of stupid. How do they cope with non-scripted events?

I'm also of the opinion that we pay pretty high ticket prices to see a "live" performance - both for the actors and the musicians - I think I'd feel ripped off knowing that it was a computer orchestra..

This battle already fought in New York

[yelvington]

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.

Not so bad

[cpu_fusion]

So they outsourced the musicians eh? Well, at least the drummers are safe.

It really is different

[violajack]

To address a few of the concerns raised here:

Les Mis is not a play, it is a musical. In fact, there is little to no spoken word in Les Mis making it almost an opera, which would make the music quite important.

Many people seem to think that if all the musicians are doing is playing from the score, then a machine may as well be doing it. To me, that's like saying, "if all the actors are doing is reading from the script, then we may as well replace them with robots." The fact is, despite the mess of markings that is a classical score, there are many more things not on that page that musicians are expected to fill in. There is a passion and subtlety of emotion, expression, articualtion, and sound that no machine can reproduce.

As a classicaly trained musician soon to graduate with my Master's in performance, I may be a bit biased, but the majority of my training hinges on those very points. Playing the music on the page is a given, you just have to be able to do at least that. What gets you a job and makes the music worth listening to, is doing more than what's on the page.

Now admittedly, that's hard to do for a show that's been running for so long. Many people have pointed out the business end of this decission. So, lets look at this from a business point of view...If the market demand for performance of this show no longer supports it being preformed in a space big enough, then the market has no more need for this show. Maybe it's time to learn a new show.

I think that all adds up to about $.04. Thanks for reading

rap

[Heisenbug]

(FYI, the most useful definition I've heard is that rap refers to the musical form, hip hop to the culture, which also includes breakdance and grafiti art)

Rap is a drum machine and a rhyme dictionary in the same way that blues is four chords and a gravelly voice, or jazz is hitting the wrong keys and pretending you did it on purpose, or rock is two power chords and a stage show, or classical is machine-like repetition of a score. There are recordings that fit those descriptions, and before you get used to the form it might all sound like that. There's also a hell of a lot more to it -- but if you don't care to learn, more power to you, it's probably not for you anyway.

If you like rock, or blues, or jazz, or classical, though, you are hereby prohibited from making stupid generalizations about rap.