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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 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..."
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.
There are some people who enjoy going to the same live show multiple times. They relish in what is the same as well as what is different in each performance. A synth is not even close to a live performer. A recording gets mundane to those who go to multiple showings. It is similar to the difference of using a code generator and point and click interface for a novice compared to getting in there yourself and seeing what the real code is and writing it yourself.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
What is the issue here?
And industry founded on the creation, performance, and appreciation of human creativity is about to suffer devaluation of the human talent upon which it is based.
We automate lots of other work, why not this?
Because this is not 'work,' it is multi-sensory immersion into a subjective framework of context and meaning. Otherwise they could just have the beeb 'casters get up and read the scores/scripts and no one would notice a difference.
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.
Let me guess: Your world view is that it is turtles all the way down?
The Kahler "Human Clock" was a MIDI clock generator that allowed drummers to control the tempo of sequencers. They were produces back in the late 1980s, and one was used by New Order.
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.
Machines make perfect replications. They can play the composure exactly as written. Unfortunately, that's a beginners mistake. When you play from the sheet music, you can tell the people who are beginners. They can play the written music technically perfect, but they can't put any feeling into it. An excellent musician will play a song where you'll feel it. It's that little something extra that we put in, so you know there's something special to it.
I guess in an orchestral setting, you want that technical perfection. Every element of a section must play just like the rest of the elements, or something will sound wrong.
What they're headed towards is technical perfection of the piece. It doesn't take a bunch of machines playing the part. They could do a lot better with a good recording of the orchestra. By recreating parts of the orchestra with machines, all they're doing is making themselves feel all warm and fuzzy because they spent a lot of money doing it. Wheee, you've reinvented MIDI.
People usually show up to live shows to see the live show. If they want a recording, they can rent the video.
I go out to see live bands. If I wanted to hear the jukebox, I'd just go where there is no live band. There's a difference, no matter how well it was recorded.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Good point. I'm not a big Broadway fan, but isn't the point of a live show, after all, the fact that it's being performed, uh, live. If I want to heare edited recordings, or speakers, I'll go to a movie or wait for the Netflix viewing of the same story rather than pay for an expensive ticket to sit in a tiny theater in the middle of a dirty city to hear the same recorded sounds.
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.
Acting and playing music require creativity (as creativity requires work). For example, Patrick Stewart enables Shakespeare, Scrooge and Star Trek. This is not because he understands how robots work but because he understands how humans work.
If you think that acting is for robotic simpletons, you are welcome to upload to Youtube a video of yourself reprising any of Stewart's roles. For Youtube is full of fools who think they are stars, but few so pompous as to regard a live performance as nothing but a subroutine executed.
Well, yes, there are people who are sad. For example, people like me, a violinist still studying in school whose dream is to perform with professional theatrical groups in ballet, opera, cabaret, and, yes, Broadway. I suspect that when you see the phrase "Broadway musical" you're thinking of works like "Beauty and the Beast" or "Oklahoma", but musicals have come a hell of a long way from there, and suggesting that all musicals that have ever been on Broadway are simplistic, conceptually or musically, is just displaying your own ignorance. And that aside, even works at the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein level present plenty of opportunities for *actual* musicians (unlike synthesizers) to add to the expressive quality of every song and scene. This is a story about machines being used, not to let people out of a tough task, but taking jobs away entirely and reducing an art form to a less complex and less musically pure sound (not to mention massacring the intentions of the composers of these musicals).
Depends on the composer. It is true that scores of earlier epochs left much of the detail out, and the only reason we know that the musician's deviation from the score isn't incompetence but "feeling" is because of a continuous performance tradition. Of course, with ancient music there's much controversy, because the scores have very little detail at all, but we're not sure exactly how these pieces were performed.
But there are plenty of composers who want their music to be performed exactly as notated, with the musician putting what he thinks is "feeling" into it. They have gone on to add so much detail to their scores that the musician couldn't possibly introduce something extraneous. Ferneyhough's scores are hyper-notated like this, as are a few of Ligeti's pieces (the Cello Concerto, for instance). Stockhausen and Xenakis have written scores where instead of a general metronome marking for the movement, each segment is specified as a certain number of seconds so that the conductor or musicians don't add any rubato.
You are _mostly_ right. The sheet music doesn't contain full information. A good part is missing and has to be re-added by a musician every time the composition is being played.
But... what if you record _that_? Or, create good enough algorithms that can guess that missing information?
You get the same effect as live musicians -- and if you want little errors here and there, they can be introduced as well, just like deBeers' claims that mined diamonds are "better" can be derailed by adding some junk to diamonds being grown.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
There's already precedent for this - plenty of people paid to see Hayden Christensen as Anakin.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
Patric Stewart is in deed a fine actor, but far less creative than the person who wrote his roles.
Shakespeare was exceptionally creative with English and his plays can be admired even on paper (still much better with good actors, though). But TNG's writing was symbiotic with Stewart's panache, and TNG would have been shit if you or I had played Picard.
If a machine could do his job, and allow him to be even more creative, why not?
But a machine cannot do his job - to interpret a character and respond to a live audience as effectively as a human requires a human (or something sufficiently close to a human that it should enjoy the rights of a human). And it does not follow that a machine doing his job would "allow him to be" something else - he may have neither the interest nor strength of ability in writing that he possesses in acting. The guy's been honing only one of these skills for decades.
You don't think he would like to be able to create virtual partrics that could go out and perform works while he did whatever he liked?
Creating little humans somewhat like you and with the ability to perform as well as you do is having children. Children are not your slaves.
Perhaps even performing a work he particularly enjoyed while they make him money or perform other useful work?
I have no indication that Stewart's bottleneck in life is his lack of money.
Ayways, I would support a truth-in-advertising requirement, but otherwise let people vote with their pocketbooks. If I'm watching a movie, I'd rather watch it with a highly produced soundtrack playing over loudspeakers (i.e. what is actually done now) rather than piano accompaniment (like the old days), yet nobody would buy orchestra tickets just to watch a "conductor" push the Play button.
Live performances are never the same, that is why the orchestra is there. The song can be faster one night, or the onstage actor may change things up to keep it interesting, the orchestra can make changes on the fly that go along with what is happening onstage. A repeat customer appreciates the differences that they experience. It may be the same show but it is different every performance.
I am a spotlight operator at our local theater and I can assure you that a Broadway show is different every night. This is what keeps the crew awake during something that could be incredibly repetitive.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
This industry is different in that the workers are also creators. Musicians take what is written on a page and do something creative with it. There is always a ton of detail that is left out of music, and it's up to the performers to fill in that detail. Claude Debussy said that "music is the space between the notes."
Beethoven was the first composer to provide actual tempo markings (as in, 120 beats per minute, as opposed to just saying "Allegro" or whatever). Before him it was up to the performers to figure out how fast something should go based upon a couple words. As things progressed, composers added more and more detail to their works. Look at some works by Mahler or Hindemith and there is a lot more detail there. But even then, they're leaving out a ridiculous amount of information that's being filled in by the best judgement of trained musicians who understand the styles they're playing.
Yeah, technology helps composers create works faster and more easily. But I don't think most composers would be very happy having their works performed by machines at this point. The machines just aren't yet capable of sounding that interesting.
The next time you go to a concert of your favorite band or group, who needs them to be there? Just some big speakers and a tape recorder ought to be enough. I bet they could even make the tickets a little cheaper! It's just as good!
:q! Oh crap, not again...
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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Programmers can be eliminated just as soon as business users are capable of grasping the FULL logic of all of their various processes so they can create an automation system with no technical or process-oriented expertise required. In other words, when hell freezes over.
You get the same effect as live musicians -- and if you want little errors here and there, they can be introduced as well, just like deBeers' claims that mined diamonds are "better" can be derailed by adding some junk to diamonds being grown.
Live music and music produced by a computer really is not the same thing. I should know, I compose electronic music (have several software MIDI sequencers, a dozen hardware synths and a few softsynths). But I am also a lover of classical music, and I guarantee you, a computer will never be able to produce the emotions that some of the great artists' recordings can. The reason why you wouldn't know that this difference exists is, 90% of classical music recordings are crap. A 5-minute long movement can be pieced together from two dozen outtakes. It just sounds bland, as if it was played by a computer. But if you search carefully, especially among live recordings, you will find true gems, which reinvigorites you while you listen to it.
Put simply, computer-generated (I am not talking about music reproduced from recorded files like .flac, .wav or .mp3) music is boring and will make the listener sleepy. Live music, or a recording of live music can (not necessarily will) infuse you with strong emotions and actually awaken you and refresh you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
There isn't any artificial scarcity because there isn't any scarcity. The number of possible programs left to write is practically infinite. For starters, we haven't invented a program that can write programs (artificial intelligence) (though realistically the problem would be supplying motivation in a non-programming language), so there's still that to be done. Also, computer programs help nearly every other field (niche/domain specific programs) - so saying that there are no new programs to write implies that no other field is advancing and changing. Thirdly, programs for entertainment (video games, social networking, online games, etc) are a practically inexhaustible domain - you can keep making them until kingdom come. Finally,
You're not the first to express this sentiment, and you're not the first to be wrong about it, either.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Controlling lights is just the sort of thing a computer can and is expected to do.
Music is expected to be produced by musicians. There is something inauthentic about it, when a computer mechanically "produces" music.
It's as if it removes value from its production... it's no longer a performance of the musician, but mechanical mimikery by a machine which cannot appreciate the music it "plays".