Broadway Musicians Replaced With Synthesizers 319
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by
timothy
from the making-love-to-a-corpse dept.
from the making-love-to-a-corpse dept.
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? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Help me out here... (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
What about the artists? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't wait until they automate programing and all related computer tasks. Removing the 'person' from those duties will save money and reduce errors
Re:What is the issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
You could replace the actors by robots, or by a fancy projector. But you don't, because it's a live show on Broadway, not a movie or a video game. People expect live performances by the actors, why not by the musicians too?
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is that if they do that, I may as well buy a recording and play it on my iPod.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Tragic (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop going to that crap. Go to a bar and see a regular band. I would rather we have many bands made of folks who make only middle class incomes than our current system.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Live performance different from film (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What about the artists? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe making things that sound like they could have been made 500 years ago is not something people will pay much money for.
It is not like they have a right to make money producing something no one likes. I do a lot of DIY stuff, much of it no one would buy but I still do it. I have a day job, and I suggest these folks investigate idea.
Great musicians have embraced new technology (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Scary virtual instrument and ensemble examples (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [youtube.com] 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 [youtube.com] and violins [youtube.com], 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.
Re:Live performance different from film (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true, I tend to go to the local theater pretty often. Last thing I saw was Wicked. I really loved spamalot went to that 3 times. I also enjoy going out to see local bands. Playing an instrument is not drudgery, playing the background for a musical is.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, many people who do not produce anything make a lot of money doing it anyway.
Basketball players. Hockey players. American football. Soccer. Tennis. Sprint runners. High Frequency Trade floor owners. Politicians. Various PHBs. Many people who supposedly do 'create' something as well, we have all seen programmers like that, it's not only managers who can be occupying space and taking in salary and not producing shit.
I bet a mid-range professional violin player does not make anywhere near the same money as a mid-range professional basketball player. That's because the paying audience is limited to the theater and I don't know what kind of advertising deals they get either, but it would be inconceivable. However they do produce something: an experience for the customer - patron.
So now if you go to a show expecting live music but instead you get pre-recorded computer music, isn't that similar to lip-synching and at least shouldn't that be reflected in the ticket prices and in the show description, because if you RTFA you'll find out that the customers apparently didn't even know that half of the orchestra was replaced with a (badly built - apparently it crashes too often) computer program.
So the ticket prices need to reflect this new reality, because otherwise it's only 'helping' the top management who get in more dough, that's about it.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
So let me get this straight. You'd have no problem seeing a concert with Milli Vanilli? Live or Memorex means nothing to you?
BTW, a real violin and a real trumpet sound very different than a recording, or a synthesizer. No matter how good they make it.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
The performer's individual interpretation of a work is not extravagant in a non-solo setting, it is subtle, but it is most assuredly there. In fact, the variety of performance among the performers within a section is counted on in order to get the rich colors that can come of the orchestra.
Let me put it to you this way, if you have a chamber group that has a violin section of 6 players, and you compare it to the violin section of a full orchestra playing the exact same piece...the distinction between the two string section will not strictly be one of volume.
No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment wins the discussion.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is the issue? (Score:1, Insightful)
I should know, I compose electronic music (have several software MIDI sequencers, a dozen hardware synths and a few softsynths)
This doesn't prove that you know anything about the big picture, it only proves that you know (or at least familiar) with the types of devices and technology *you* are buying.
a computer will never be able to produce the emotions that some of the great artists' recordings can
LOL. I like to think of myself as having few illusions about the state of AI and realize things in areas like speech recognition have plateaued and there are other challenges. I wouldn't consider myself a futurist, and think singularity dipshits are mostly crackpots. But this statement is just the classic statement of a luddite. I would be surprised if computer generated playback can surpass the variety and pleasure instilled by the creativity of human playing (for most people) in my lifetime, but I wouldn't be *that* surprised. There's no fundamental law of nature (that we know of) that prevents building a machine that can emulate a number of human skills, perhaps surpass them (in skills we've always assumed humans do better at), and there's really no commonly accepted fundamental law of nature that computing machinery can't become emotional beings.
In more down to earth terms, the idea of faking emotion and nuance is nothing new, and just incremental improvements in this area will probably make your argument in pragmatic terms fairly silly. While the psychological impact of seeing humans play live is another story, since many people enjoy listening to recordings, its less of an issue there (though humans are strongly suggestible, and adding "played by real humans" may soon become a commonplace marketing thing).
Live music, or a recording of live music can (not necessarily will) infuse you with strong emotions and actually awaken you and refresh you.
You are overly presumptuous to assume nobody but yourself has listened to high quality recordings. On the other hand, it could just be that people like me have heard all these things, but are just to boring and/or soulless to care. Trust me, like the person that only takes one drink to get drunk, it actually isn't all a bad thing.
Re:Great musicians have embraced new technology (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not about replacing a harpsichord with a piano, but about replacing it with a pianola.
Re:Great musicians have embraced new technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck,. JSB even took up the very first additive synthesizer, i.e. the pipe organ.
Re:Live performance different from film (Score:3, Insightful)
This means more folks will get to do creative work, writing and conducting and less the drudgery.
Nope, this doesn't create more needs for writing and conducting, it just reduces the need for performers. None of those performers will see job openings for robo-conductors with instrument-performing experience. And the creative and conducting types are next in line for automated obsolescence.
There's repetitive drudgery that people insist on doing regularly: Eating, paying rent, etc. They'd rather keep their repetitive jobs to go along with it.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
>> So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
NBope. But anyone in a broadway musical pit, or anyone in the regular crowd in an orchestra who tries to do so is going to get some nasty looks from the conductor, and fired.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a composer, I can assure you that there are folks of 2 minds on this issue:
1. On the upside, electronic performance allows a composer to have absolute 100% full control of what the music will be.
2. On the downside, electronic performance allows a composer to have absolute 100% full control of what the music will be.
Some people like this - their exact artistic vision carried out to perfection, with no mucking around with rehearsals and soloist egos and begging that clarinetist to join your project, is nothing to sneeze at. But others (including me) would much rather have a live performer's different humanizing touch and feedback. Otherwise, you could easily end up with music by and for Vulcans.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
>> So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
NBope. But anyone in a broadway musical pit, or anyone in the regular crowd in an orchestra who tries to do so is going to get some nasty looks from the conductor, and fired.
I think you may be confusing an inspired performance with improvisational playing of that not in a musical score, and differences in musical performance structure between genres that demand group-performance playing to a score, and others in which musicians are expected to improvise.
An inspired performance by an orchestra chair musician would involve more nuanced details such as the perfect vibrato applied to a critical sustained note in a passage, applying just the right intonation and feel to the notes played that enhances further the emotions the music is intended by the composer and conductor to convey, and a myriad of other small details that together differentiate the performance of a first-chair at your local community orchestra from the first-chair for the NY Philharmonic or Boston Symphony for example playing the exact same piece of music.
Strat
Re:Live performance different from film (Score:1, Insightful)
AHHHH OH MY GOD WHAT THE EFF IS WRONG WITH YOU??
PLAYING MUSIC I S N O T D R U D G E R Y ! ! ! ! it is the polar opposite. calling what a musician does drudgery is like accusing a camper, at the end of a long day, of wasting and just squandering energy, heat, and light, by making a campfire.
you think talented people dedicate their lives to a grueling, low-paying profession because it is dull and drudgerous.
Playing music, especially in an ensemble, and especially at the level of a broadway show (which is pretty good) is, if anything, ecstatic. sensual. i don't know what else to call you except painfully ignorant or a curled-up philistine who's never made love in their life.
I knew everyone on slashdot was a virgin. I didn't know that meant they've apparently never listened to The Beatles, to any sort of music at all, never once applied those supposed techie brains to the elementary chain of logic which must irrefutably deduce that it is fun to play music, and probably are so dead to pleasure of any sort that they eat matrix-gruel (or even worse, mcdonalds - it fools you into thinking its good - the food matrix itself) for every meal.