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Broadway Musicians Replaced With Synthesizers
wooferhound writes "Sophisticated synthesizers and computer-manipulated recordings are increasingly taking over orchestras. Sounding almost like real players, while costing much less, they're especially popular with provincial or touring companies. But until mid-July — when 'West Side Story's' producers announced that a synthesizer was replacing three live violinists and two cellists, or half the orchestra's string section — staff violinist Paul Woodiel thought that at least the classics would be immune to the trend. There are computer programs able to read and play back music scores — a boon to composers who can now hear their work as they write — and software allowing conductors to control the tempo of the machine, in the same way that they direct live players."
What is the issue here?
We automate lots of other work, why not this?
Oh noes, someone is no longer going to be doing a repetitive job better done by a machine, truly the end of the world.
Why where they not already using recordings was my first question when I saw this article.
What would be the difference between having a synth play this live, or simply a recording of a synth playing during a live performance? The one question I would ask is: Did replacing actual musicians make the ticket prices go down?
A: Probably not. Profits will be up though!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
software allowing conductors to control the tempo of the machine, in the same way that they direct live players.
I did something like this with an Apple IIe in the early days of MIDI in a scene where an actor had to fake playing the piano faster and faster as the scene progressed. Up in the booth I tapped up the tempo following the actor, rather than have the actor have to follow a recording.
What's amazing about Broadway is that it has held out so long. In large part that's due to unions, but I think also audience expectations. One isn't surprised a low budget production in the boonies would cut corners, but if you shell out for a Broadway ticket, you want the full meal.
Loose lips lose spit.
The media industry makes so much noise about what they call "piracy" supposedly causing artists to starve, how can they allow this automation to happen?
After all, a live performance is much harder to "steal". The only way I can imagine of doing it would be drilling holes in the theater wall to let people watch from the outside without paying.
Automating musicians' jobs takes away one sure way they have to earn a living.
As someone who has played an instrument, I find it pretty cool that they are able to get a machine to read music... It was only a matter of time though. What is music? Fractions and frequencies. Something a computer should be able to handle.
What I haven't heard is a really good synthesizer. My God, Have you heard CATS? That shit sounds like it was done on the Casio the kids have in their bedroom.
In the long run though, this should make the "ARTS" more accessible to the public. I find that to be a good thing.
There is a major difference. The big moment that happens at 93:27:34 in the movie will always happen at 93:27:34. There is no such dependability in live performance.
I've made a few paychecks as a pit musician and I can't imagine how the synths will be controlled. If it is a person at a keyboard with a super advanced tone module then you are really just replacing a few musicians with a single one, not exactly groundbreaking, and it's frequently done with a standard piano covering parts that can't be hired (your local production of Fiddler on the Roof likely has a piano covering the accordion part).
If this is a computer, like the one FTFA that is mentioned to keep crashing, well, I can't see this actually being ok for any real performance where people are paying money. Crashing is one thing, but even if the program works perfectly, now everything has to cue off the computer. What if someone is late on an entrance? What if there is a technical problem? What if an actor drops a couple lines? An entire verse? There is a very delicate interplay between the actors, the stage manager, the conductor and the musicians to make everything match up every time. It's why opera is, for my money, the most stressful job I have ever taken as a musician.
Example: J.S. Bach didn't hide from the newly invented piano and cry "Ach, mein Gott, give me mein harpsichord and save me from the barbarian pianoforte". No, Bach took the piano and made it his bitch. Ditto for Telemann and the keyed flute.
And remember, electronic instruments have been part of classical music since the 1930's and Edgard Varèse.
If you want to hold back the evolution of musical instruments, then you might as well throw away your violin and go back to banging sticks and stones together.
The Vienna Symphony Library is available today and can essentially replace an orchestra to all but the most discerning of ears. Here is an example of the E.T. theme. There are a couple of parts where I can tell it's a bit artificial sounding if I really listen, but it's approaching the flawless threshold.
That said, there is a particular order of ease of simulation: percussion (including piano), strings, brass and woodwinds. The latter two are notoriously difficult to emulate because they are so closely tied to non-discrete complex forms of movement of the mouth (articulation). For example, see this demo of one of the betters saxophone emulators - still something missing even to uneducated ears, but not too bad in a mix. Strings can also be difficult to emulate, but if apps from companies like Prominy are coming out, guitars and violins, this is getting scary.
There are a couple of serious implications of this. First and foremost is what the value of a live performance is with and without musicians, which the linked article addresses. The second is decreasing numbers of people willing to learn these instruments. For a lot of folks who compose for small-budget TV and movies and can't afford musicians, it's a great way to go. Nevertheless, it's the same cautionary tale as the decline in handwriting that coincided with the rise of computers with keyboards. You can't replace handwriting in a lot of circumstances.
Sounds old fashioned to me. Shouldn't that be a PC with a high quality D/A converter aka sound card (or a few) these days?
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I do declare this comment to be very authentic. I write now while drinking coffee. I insert reference http:/// and get modded up.
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I like to toy around with music in my free time. I'm not very good, I'll never be able to make a career out of it, nor would I even want to. I want to hear what I mess with, and want to hear it as though good musicians were doing it. Problem is that being nothing but a hobbyist, I can't really afford to go hiring out a symphony. What to do?
Buy EastWest samples, that's what. For several hundred dollars, my computer can give sound that is pretty damn close to real players. Now I can have fun at home, and it is something I can afford to do. What's more, if I had the skill to make something that people wanted, I could do so, record it (or more correctly bounce it down to two tracks) and distribute it. I could produce from my home, needing nothing but my system.
Stuff like this, quality samples, cheap HD cameras, good 3D software, etc are great equalizers in terms of media production. You don't have to be well funded, backed by major players to create something high quality. You can be some guy, or a few friends, with a little bit of money and a lot of talent and can create something for everyone to enjoy.
Avatar uses real human actors and capture their action as well as facial expression and emotion, and then use that as the basis to synthesize a performance. Notion3 is actually similar but the motion/emotion capturing is much more primitive. The live performance mode in Notion3 allows a conductor---or a technician following a conductor---to use just one key on a MIDI keyboard to play a score. The MIDI keyboard captures the dynamics by recording key velocity as well as tempo. They then use that information to synthesize a performance based on audio samples recorded from London Symphony Orchestra.
While Avatar probably wouldn't be successful if they only had one person play all characters, the success of Notion3 where one person plays the whole orchestra is kind of interesting. It shows that when you're part of an orchestra ensemble, the amount of individual character you contribute to the group is negligible. This would probably motivate more musicians to pursue a solo career, or inspire a music genre where all the instrument pieces are part of a dialogue rather than just playing in unison.
I once had a signature.
He certainly tried them out. As far as I know, he didn't actually write anything for the fortepiano. Even though he had a favorable account of the later fortepianos, I guess it was too late in his life to really start writing for them.