Broadway Musicians Replaced With Synthesizers 319
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.
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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
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I agree, the humans can spend their lives with far less drudgery.
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.
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That is what FREE software is doing, or did you think this was some actual revelation you were making?
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:4, Insightful)
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I would think those people would go to the orchestra.
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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".
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>> 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.
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>> 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
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:5, Informative)
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.
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Next, the singers will lip-sync, and then we'll replace them with robots. Oh but at least it's still a 'live' show.
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Your comment wins the discussion.
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Composers already do this quite easily as it's not uncommon to have synth instruments in a pit along with the traditional ones. Replacing your instrumentalists with automation really doesn't give you as a composer any more sonic freedom...you actually have more freedom when your music has to be interpreted by a performer.
BTW I am a composer...it's what I do for a living...and I do it in theater.
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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.
There's no reason that a synthesizer has to generate the same performance each time. I'm sure someone will come up with heuristics to give a synthesized performance a "live" feel.
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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?
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Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Funny)
There's already precedent for this - plenty of people paid to see Hayden Christensen as Anakin.
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The issue is that if they do that, I may as well buy a recording and play it on my iPod.
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99% of the time I agree you might as well do that. If this is not popular or does not lower cost no one is going to do it. Nothing to get worked up over.
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?
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Well, if there were any actual theater in Broadway, I'd say you are right, but 99.999% of Broadway is not art, is Musicals.
Broadway is the cheap gringo alternative to actual theater. You go and see a lot of assholes run around and sing shit, that's your cheap replacement for actual theater.
Here, we call that "Teatro de Revista" and only the illiterate masses go see that shit.
The day Broadway figures out how to replace actors with holograms, they will, and nothing of value will be lost.
Did you knew that the
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Broadway is the cheap gringo alternative to actual theater.
Gringo alternative, perhaps, but not cheap. If audiences are up in arms about this, it's because Broadway ticket prices are very high, at least in part because a whole orchestra of musicians is expensive. They're replacing it with something cheaper, but is the price going to go down?
It probably won't go down by much. Broadway has become increasingly about spectacle and special effects. The live musicians are only a part of that, but they are a part, and the shows are ever so slightly less spectacular fo
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.
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And yet in musicals the actors/singers get the their names on the credits.
Patric Stewart is in deed a fine actor, but far less creative than the person who wrote his roles. If a machine could do his job, and allow him to be even more creative, why not? 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? Perhaps even performing a work he particularly enjoyed while they make him money or perform other useful work?
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.
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Really? Watch some of the (especially early) TNG. It was a total ripoff of the original. It only survived because of the talent of the acting staff. The X-Men movies again were not particularly well written, but instead special effect monsters.
Robert Downey Jr. is pretty clearly the reason the Iron Man movies were as good as they were.
And, remember how bad the Star Wars prequals were when we didn't have acto
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.
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Both true and false. You can't tell me that the two violinists next to each other get to independently decide what they think the composer meant and play that. They don't. There is no creativity on the part of the musician in a orchestra in interpreting the tempo. As such, this (and all other examples given thus far) indicate that there is little to no creativity in the playing of an instrument
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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
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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 not
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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: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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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I am not a big fan of Jimi Hendrix but the recording of Voodoo Child (Slight Return) is an absolute masterpiece of what you are describing. Every note is hit perfectly, and yet he somehow makes it seem like he is playing with the timing. The overall effect is 11 on the dial. :)
Rock on.
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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.
But, that "little something extra" is undoubtedly quantifiable. Physically, it amounts to the minute details of the timing of notes (e.g. intentional mis-timing), how long notes are held for, and so on. Obviously, all these things could be recorded and analyzed. Currently, music scores just list the notes, but one could easily markup a score with thousands of details appended to each note, telling a synthesizer how to play that note. The computer reproduction would then convey every bit of the emotion and "
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What is the issue here? We automate lots of other work, why not this?
I'm looking forwards to when computers automate news readers and chat show hosts. A machine would probably make a more convincing human than most of todays plastic TV talent anyway. Bring on Max Headroom!
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This isn't somebody opening winamp and hitting "play". That would, indeed, be pathetically inadequate.
A system capable of, say, tracking a conductor would be just slightly above the tech level of the gaming peripheral that microsoft will be rolling out at $150 a pop in the near future. I'm sure a pro-level setup can do better right now(and,
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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 mone
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).
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computer synthesis based on live performance (Score:3, Interesting)
Avatar uses real human actors and capture their action as well as facial expression and emotion [youtube.com], 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 t
Re:What is the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Copyrights? (Score:2)
If you play a recording you have to pay to the recording copyright's owner.
If you play from the original score you have to pay to the score copyright's owner.
Perhaps the second means a lower cost than the first.
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If you play a recording you have to pay to the recording copyright's owner.
If you play from the original score you have to pay to the score copyright's owner.
As I understand it, if you play a recording, you have to pay both.
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If you play a recording, the action on stage has to happen exactly as fast as it would have during the recorded session. If you have a synth being fed input from a camera tracking the conductor and/or scene changes from the guys in the lighting booth, your music will stay in time with your actors.
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Or less profitable productions will continue on as they have lower costs.
I bet that more than anything.
Tempo (Score:2)
What would be the difference between having a synth play this live, or simply a recording of a synth playing during a live performance?
Read the summary. The synth handles tempo changes far better.
Broadway, last bastion of resistance (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Broadway, last bastion of resistance (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Indeed. I'm not sure what the industry could do in this case. It would be up to the theatre owner to contact the musicians - which they can choose not to do. I imagine the composed would get a cut if electronic score has to be licensed for public performance (it would be slightly strange for this not to be the case).
It might be hard to find musicians later though; I'm not sure many musicians make a full time career out of this sort of work, but it might be just be the last straw - god knows I've seen enough
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.
Neat Technology (Score:2, Interesting)
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
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Have you heard CATS? That shit sounds like it was done on the Casio the kids have in their bedroom.
Actually the voice of CATS was done on SoftVoice TTS, as were the rest of the voices in All Your Base [albinoblacksheep.com]. The background music was done on an emulation of the same sound chip used in a 1980s Yamaha FM synthesizer.
The result of sampling (Score:2)
Much of the move away from live instruments to computers (especially in things like TV soundtracks) is the result of modern computing, storage, and sampling. Rather than trying to simulate the sound of a piano, you can painstakingly sample each note at multiple velocities. Depending on the desired complexity, the samples easily reach into the gigabytes for a single instrument. Yet the end result is a digital piano that's incredibly realistic; recording a real piano live better than a good sample is becom
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.
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As a more modern example, Jean Michel Jarre based his whole career on synthesizers. I don't really like his latest works, but his 1970-1980 albums really are classics.
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This isn't a musical instrument they are attempting to create, it's a musical brain capable of playing instruments (digitally).
One thing is, if you start getting rid of all those musical jobs, the career starts looking worse, and little Billy who's a talented musician might decide to become the next Justin Beiber instead of the next Beethoven.
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You sir, should drop whatever you're doing and start writing History Textbooks (and maybe History Channel documentaries) as of now. I want my kids to be reading quotes like this and others like it in school, then I'll know they'll be paying attention in school and learning.
It also moves in some interesting ways (Score:2)
The point of many early synthesizers was to recreate real instruments. The Rhodes Electric Piano had the goal of sounding like a piano, but not weighing north of a thousand pounds. Well it did not sound real, there was no mistaking it for a real grand, though it did have a piano like sound in some ways.
However now we have the capability to get real piano sound. a high quality sample set on a modern computer can come so close as to make no real odds to an actual piano. As such a laptop plus a good MIDI keybo
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Heck,. JSB even took up the very first additive synthesizer, i.e. the pipe organ.
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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.
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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.
To my ears it's not even close to what I get if I pop in the ET CD. That said, I suppose it could be YouTube compression and not source material.
Rube Goldburg machine? (Score:2)
What's the point of replacing live musicians with a synthesizer? WHy not just use a backing tape which sounds exactly the same? Maybe because it points out that the stage performance could also get great savings, by being played from film...
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What's the point of replacing live musicians with a synthesizer?
Asked and answered [slashdot.org].
but the customers need to know (Score:2)
There is only one thing about this that seems wrong, apparently customers who buy tickets are not aware that the music they are listening to is played by computers. The rest is usual RUR like nonsense.
Sarah Franklin, a talented 24-year-old violinist, joined a five-month North America tour for a revival of the musical "Camelot" with an orchestra of just four people.
"There was me on the violin, one cello, one French horn and a conductor with a computer," she said. The computer, using a software called Notion, played the rest of the semi-virtual orchestra.
Frequently the program crashed, abruptly leaving the three live musicians to play by themselves. But despite the glitches, most audience members were none the wiser, Franklin said.
"When people saw us down in the pit afterwards, they'd say, 'It sounded like there were so many more of you!'"
The musicians would wriggle out of the embarrassing situation by pretending that the rest of their colleagues had quickly left the theater.
"We got fed up with explaining and we didn't want to ruin it for them. They didn't need to know," Franklin said.
- This looks to me like false advertising. If people came to listen to live music they paid for the tickets accordingly. Maybe the musicians need to take a pay cut (I honestly don't know how much a violin player makes) but the bosses here seem to run a fake business. Maybe ticket prices also need to come
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The people on stage are all real. The orchestra isn't. The show is still live. Or would you argue that going to computerized lighting boards over the rheostat-type mechanical boards where every switch and slider was run by a human would require disclaimers as well? That's been done and no one complained. So why is the musical accompaniment different when the lighting wasn't?
"We got fed up with explaining and we didn't want to ruin it for them. They didn't need
Nothing New (Score:2)
This is nothing new. This has been happening since the late 90s when I started playing shows. It can work if done right. I think the best way to do it is to have at least ONE real instrument and then have a synth doing the parts underneath.
In fact, the show I'm starting next week we have one violin viola and cello and someone playing a synth to fill up the section. Sounds ok.
A synth? (Score:3)
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?
A performance shows the skill of the performer... (Score:2)
If there is no performer, that is it is all synthesized, then there is, in fact, no real purpose for the performance at all.
I think that the trend being reported here is nothing more than a passing fad. In the long term, I cannot see this technology being practical anywhere outside of a closed recording studio, where only the music itself matters and the skill behind the performance is not actually meant to be directly appreciated.
So, who will bother to learn how to play ... (Score:2)
these instruments if they cannot be heard in live settings or by film or audio recordings?
Very interesting. And yet informal. (Score:5, Funny)
I do declare this comment to be very authentic. I write now while drinking coffee. I insert reference http:/// [http] and get modded up.
(Automatic comment-system robot v0.4 r2)
Live performance different from film (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Live performance different from film (Score:4, Informative)
The conductor controls the tempo and cues just like he controls the orchestra now. You are replacing a bunch of musicians with one robotic one that the conductor controls. This means more folks will get to do creative work, writing and conducting and less the drudgery.
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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.
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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.
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Also as I type this I am sitting below a 4 foot tall oil on canvas painting, so I do tend to spend money on other arts as well:) I just don't think playing the same music every night for a year while the actors get all the attention is anything but drudgery.
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Do you often attend hundred hour films [wikipedia.org]?
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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.
There are really two differences.
In the silent era, musical accompaniment looked something like this:
"Picture Palace" theater orchestras.
Prestige productions and venues. First Run. Premium ticket prices. The house offers live entertainment as part of the regular program.
The grander suburban theaters will have a Wurlitzer theater organ for music
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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.
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So indicating that pop music is often drivel and society would be better served with more variety in music is trollish?
Hey they came for us first ... (Score:2)
sound systems circa 1962, midi circa 1982, protools 1990-ish. They've had machines to do that for a while.
"first they came for the rhythm sections, but as I did not play bass ..."
signed,
a still sometimes working musician
ps: File sharing screwed the lawyers, not the players. Won't someone think of the lawyers ... sob ...
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Anxiously awaiting the MST3K broadcast of this masterpiece.