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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?
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?
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.
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.
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).