 Are we online now? Hello, Houston. Welcome, everyone. I'd like to thank you all for coming out tonight to just DG Conservatory's seminar. We're very excited that so many of you are interested in these musical seminars we're putting together. As always, if you have any ideas, if you have people you want to hear from, please let me know. In case you don't know, I'm Terry Stratton, Director of Education and Outreach here at the Guild, and I put together these seminar series. My email address is tstrattonatdramataskild.com. Any ideas, please send them my way. I really appreciate them. If you want to take a moment to, you know, tweet that you're here or check in on Facebook. Let everyone know that you're here. After you do that, please put your phones on vibrate or on silent. We're going to try not making you turn them off, but please don't audio record on your own phone or take any photographs at this time, okay? The panel is going to speak for about an hour amongst themselves, and then we'll open it up to questions. I ask that when you ask a question, would please stand up and speak loudly so our internet audience can hear that as well, okay? And we'll be, this will be archived starting either tomorrow or Monday. So if there's something you want to replay, you can go to New Play TV. I'm sorry, livestream.com backslash New Play TV. And you can watch this plus all of our other DP Conservatory events that we've had this year. I'd like to introduce our moderator who will introduce the panel. We, I'm sorry, supremely talented, but also supremely nice and wonderful person, Mr. Stephen Flurry. We're really excited that you're here with us today, both in person and virtually, you know, through the little camera in Wyoming and other places. And we had done one of these panels on music composition, music theater, and tech two years ago in 2010. And I was making a little list of all the things that had changed technically for me just in two years. And it's a huge list. I mean, it's like gigantic. And last time, we had a really great time and we learned a lot. So, you know, take notes, think of questions and we're happy to answer any questions. The panel today, we have some members who had joined us before who are rejoining us today. We can do a follow up conversation, but so much has changed in both theater and theater tech in two years. So I think we have a lot to talk about today. So, to my right is Mark Menard of Acme Sound Partners. When we did the first panel, we didn't have a sound designer. And a lot of people kept raising their hands and asking questions about how the idea of sound design and sound production interfaced with dramatic storytelling and musical storytelling. And we thought rather than, you know, being middleman this time that we would actually get one of the most cutting edge sound designers here in New York City to join us. And Mark, he and Acme have done such amazing work. Recently, we worked on the revival of Ragtime. And then a couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to have a big concert version of Ragtime. And Avery Fisher, which was a completely different kettle of fish, you know, designing sound for that. That, you know, very different kind of a whole set. In three hours. In three hours, yeah, exactly. There's no, like, tech period for that one night only event. But Mark, he's done amazing work. And Acme, just in recent years, if you look at the scope of the kind of work that they've done, they were nominated for the Tony for Hair, which is, you know, the seminal rock opera. And also for the Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. So I couldn't think of sonically two different kinds of shows and two different assignments, you know, to design sound for. So, you know, I'd like to hear more about that, you know, once we get rolling. But we're really happy that Mark is with us. To Mark's right is Michael Steribin, who is a two-time Tony award-winning orchestrator for Next to Normal and for Stephen Sondheim and James, oh, sorry, and John Wyman's Assassins. And we've worked together on many shows beginning with Once on this Island and most recently with The Glorious Ones and On a Film Project. Still to appear. Still to appear. It's a film version of my first show, Lucky Stiff. So the techniques that we used in the recording studio for the film and that we used live, a lot of them are different and a lot of them are surprisingly similar. So I think, you know, that's something that might be interesting because Michael's worked, had an extensive career in orchestrating for the theater, but also for film as well. And he's also a gifted composer as well. So, you know, he's sort of like the all-around guy at this table. To Michael's, and Michael was with us for the first panel as well. So to Michael's right is Alex Lacomore, who is also a Tony-winning orchestrator for In the Heights. And Alex was represented on Broadway this season by the new production of Annie. And also by Bring It On. And again, can you think of two different shows that Annie and Bring It On. It's interesting because the tech stuff that Alex and Co. used this season for Bring It On is really cutting edge stuff. It brings a lot of studio techniques. For those of you who weren't lucky to see the show this season, it really featured a really interesting pop and hip-hop score. And so a lot of the hip-hop sounds and technology were brought fully into the theater and I think very successfully. So I know that that'll be something that you'd like to hear Alex talk about. And then to Alex's right, also on the very first panel for the tech here, is Emily Grishman, who I think it's safe to say that you're... What's the female version of Dean? Doyenne. The Doyenne that we use? Not only here in New York, but like she is everywhere. She's literally everywhere. I think you have several doppelgangers running around. I wish. But Emily, she's had such an extensive career doing music copying in the theater. We first worked on my first show at Playwrights Horizons, Lucky Stiff. And that was in the day of oil skins. Onion skin. Onion skin, yeah. So long ago I forgot it's onion skin and handwritten. So she's really gone the gamut from beautifully handwritten scores to cutting edge computer generated scores and parts. So it'll be interesting to hear how Emily fits into what we do. So sort of how we were framing this was the composer and the lyricist and the book writer basically in their little rooms together and separately and they come up with an idea. And how does the initial notion of what a song and what a theater score can be, how does that translate into the final product, what we see in the theater and how technology is changing our lives both creatively and personally. Can I ask you a question if we're starting from the song writing aspect? How filled out do you feel a demo of a song needs to be? I mean that first stage which is where technology is very available to a composer now. And the reason I ask is when I get sent demos saying here we want you to orchestrate this, I find it very, it gets in the way for someone to have done a huge MIDI orchestration which will never be achievable certainly for a show that's going off Broadway with five pieces. And here's the string section in this brass and it also hides what the writing they've done. I'm just wondering what your feeling is with the scores that you're writing now. Yeah, well originally I came to New York in the fall of 82 and so back in that day we actually would get together as a group of people in a room around an upright piano sort of like not that far removed from Tin Pan Alley frankly. And we'd play the song and we'd sing the song and discuss the style of the score, the style of the music, what it would be. And oftentimes there weren't demos but even back in the day it was acceptable to have a piano vocal demo which basically is you go into your studio and then later your home studio and you would just do a very simple rendering of the song oftentimes with just a piano track and a vocal or if it were a choral number you'd try to mock up what the vocal parts might be because that's important for the orchestrator to know what the vocal texture is because what he does really interfaces with that. So back in the 80s it was really kind of primitive. It was a piano vocal demo or piano vocal DX7 demo which was like the new kid on the block in terms of synthesis. And recently I've noticed that a lot of young composers' demos are what Michael is describing where they're fully middied up the wazoo. And actually a young composer came up to me and he said I'm trying to sell my or try to get a producer introduced or interested in my piece and I'm thinking of hiring an orchestra from Czechoslovakia to do a 65 piece orchestration on my new score because it's going to be so exciting and we'll have strings that we'll never have and brass that we'll never have. And I'm thinking well how does that represent your piece? At least your piece at a Broadway-sized house. I've never heard of the 65 piece minimum. It's everything in between but I know Michael's point is well taken because I think a lot of the times if the composer gives too much information then it doesn't leave a lot of room for your original ideas to interface. Or for the producer to imagine where it might go as well. How long the same line as Michael is just very confusing. When you know you have five pieces and you get this fully orchestrated piece and you're like what am I going to do? Are the keyboards going to play strings? Is there going to be a whole bunch of keyboard patches to play all this stuff? Is the brass going to be there? Because we don't have brass players. We're going to play double reeds off keyboards, not so much. We entered the room and Mark said it really helps the sound designer even in an early stage to get some sort of a mock-up demo or MP3 recording to say this is the sonic scape of a piece. So he can begin thinking is this the Gershwin's porky investor or is this hair? Because it really affects your work. Exactly because it starts us on a path that is the right path. Because then we know sonically we're designing a sound system and it's very large orchestrally or we're very rock and roll and the systems are completely different in that regard. Well Michael, what's your idea of the kind of demo that is most helpful to you as an orchestrator? I think for the most part piano. However, if the score is based on pop feels then obviously you need a rhythm section. But the idea of a demo is to express your playwriting choices and your songwriting choices, not to show a finished product. Because this is a collaborative art form and on the way to getting to a production many things are going to change. Directors are going to ask you to do something with the song. Choreographers are going to ask for dance music to go into it. And so the more finished you make it, the more harder it is for everyone to imagine it being pulled apart and being used as a piece of playwriting. It needs to be to a certain extent plastic as you move forward so that it can be molded a little. Do you find the demos in the theater world are different from the demos that you hear from the film world? The demos you hear, well the overdone demos are not... Theatrical music isn't necessarily big symphonic music, isn't necessarily the sound of movie music. It can be at times, but it isn't always. And there's this thing like to take a pop ballad and do it like a big huge pop ballad for the radio. And that doesn't work in the theater. A ballad for the theater usually needs to start softer and simpler to come out of the fact that there's dialogue being spoken. And we're going into a musical moment gradually. And so you don't want to overlay the exact pop feel that's correct. If you're going to go for that pop feel you've got to work your way to allowing the audience's ear to find their way there and go with you on the journey. So I mean for my money it also gets, as an orchestrator, it just gets in my way to hear what they've done. Because I'm going to want to do something for their composition that I think is appropriate. And they may have some good ideas that I'll use but I have to like push them away and sometimes I'll push away good stuff because I'm so busy just getting to the nut of the song itself. Well the other thing that Michael does so well is he really thinks he do. You think he's a musical dramatist because it's not like oh this is a really cool tune. It doesn't sound great this ballad. Really what we do is we're musical dramatists. We're dealing with a human being feeling a certain emotion in time in a moment. And so much of what we do is in context. It's what is the scene about? What happens in the course of the scene affect the song? Or if the song is the scene dramatically where is the turnaround? How musically do you highlight what that turnaround is? So oftentimes oh then you get to doing the original cast album and then we go back to square one because you realize that for most cast albums especially with integrated theater scores it's not just about a collection of 12 songs. It's about musical scenes. It's about musical sequences. And we have to rethink as you know how to rework that. I mean you had a really interesting thing talking about assassins going from the first Playwrights Horizons to sort of lock up to the recording. The very first recording was orchestrated for that recording, for the RCA recording. It wasn't done for the theater so I went fine. I'm going to do it for 45 pieces which I did. I used different orchestras for different songs and it was great. And then they said okay give us a version for eight pieces based on that. And I reduced it. It was horrible. And then I luckily got to do it again in 2004. An actual theatrical orchestration for the first time which was different. Because I remember the Playwrights Horizons, the Jerry Zach's production. And it was Paul Ford on piano, Michael himself on keyboards, and Paul Gemignani hitting the drum. That was the orchestration. And then I went to the 45 piece and then I guess the one did the Dunmars. So the Dunmars was based on that eight piece reduction which is not very good. And then we got to do the new one for 14 which actually works in the theater. So after those four or more orchestrations you finally got that Tony, right? Yes, for all the war wounds, getting it right finally. One of the interesting things that Alex does is he works, I think this is fair to say, on a lot of pop based scores. A lot of people, more traditionalists, are used to scoring by hand or now computer piano vocal scores. But I know that you work in many different ways that involve other technologies, other ways of capturing musical ideas that aren't necessarily written down into a piece of paper. Can you speak to that about a bit? Yeah, I mostly dealt with that a lot. I'm bringing it on this past year. Some of that started because of Lin Manuel's demos and speaking of demos, that's kind of how he works on a lot of his stuff. A lot of his songs have effects that can only be created on a sequencer. He would use logic essentially. There's a particular song in the show called Do Your Own Thing. And the basic riff of that is built around what's called an arpeggiator. It's a sound that goes... And it's a sound that I at first wanted to put on live keyboard. I'm like, oh, that would be awesome because it would sound so cool. It would make it such that the guy could hit just like one note at a time and every time he hit it, it would double strike. And then when we got to Atlanta, we tried it and we could just never sync it up with the click track. And if the guy hit it like just like here in the 32nd at the wrong moment, it just wouldn't groove and wouldn't lock in. So it was a bit of a learning process and we got to learn that, you know what, there's certain things that were designed to be played by a computer that need to be played by a computer in order to come out right. So one of the things we did is that we had to leave that on the track and then build the band around it. So yeah, we use Logic a lot. I use Logic a lot for my stuff because it just helps me to hear it. And one thing that I know that Michael is really good at too is being specific about the sounds that he wants to hear. And I used to be much more general about what kinds of sounds I wanted keyboards to play. And I would tell Randy Cohen, who's the guy who I call for all my keyboard program, and I would say, okay, Randy, give me like a belly synth here. Give me like a whooshie whoosh here. And then again, we were in Atlanta and tried that route. And every time we heard the sound, it just wasn't quite what I had in my head. So I learned that I then needed to get a proper synth, get the actual Yamaha motif sound, find the very whooshie whoosh that I wanted and tell Randy, give me this whooshie whoosh or give me this bell sound because, you know, I needed to hear what happened in my head and how to come out the right way. Because when you just give a programmer that kind of broad range, you might not always get the sound you're looking for. So it needed to be exactly right. So when you're talking about creating really specific electronic sounds as opposed to clarinet hitting a B-flat, how do you get the literal physical sounding to Randy? You know, it's worked on Bring It On because I knew what keyboard he was going to be using. I knew what rack he was going to be using. And he said, listen, when you're in the pit, the keyboards will have this Phantom Rack and they will have this multi-keyboard. He literally let me, those very keyboards in that rack, I had it sitting in my house next to my computer. I would sit there by the dial and like find the pad and hit the chord. Nope, next pad. Nope, that's not it either. Next pad. It's just literally sitting there. It's a trial and error until you found the exact sound that you were imagining. Sometimes for 10 minutes is to find the right sound. And sometimes 10 minutes after you realize, you know what, maybe that's not the part I'm looking for either. So it's a slow-going process. But in the end, I think it gave me what it was that I had in my head and it allowed me to like hear it ahead of time and know that this is the sound that I'm going to be getting when I get to do that screen. One of the things that's interesting that we used to all have to borrow the synth that was coming in and find our sound sound, we're using soft synths now, which are plugins. Usually you can run them in logic or something. And the great thing about that is I can take a patch, open it up and go, oh, I like this, but I'm going to change this envelope here, do it a little bit here, throw it into Dropbox, which we'll talk about Dropbox if any of you no longer know about it. And suddenly I'm able to immediately send sounds back and forth between Randy. And because it's a synth, it's not a sampler, but also it's using virtually no memory for all the different patches I want. I think we should at this point do a little sidebar because there might be a member or two here, and certainly some members watching the stream. Mike, would you care to explain what Logic is? Logic is a computer sequencer, a music workstation, you might call it, but other ones are known as Cubase, Performer, GarageBand, which is now a simpler version of Logic. If you're a GarageBand user, you might want to graduate up to Logic, which is more complicated. And these are wonderful tools that deal with MIDI, where you record MIDI that is then either outputted to a synth module you have or to an internal software instrument. They deal with audio where you can record yourself singing, record yourself playing an actual guitar, and you can manipulate these things in myriad of ways. You can take the guitar you recorded, slice it up into pieces, re-quantize it to have swing where it didn't have before, and treat your audio almost like MIDI. They're extremely powerful tools, difficult to learn, but very valuable for making demos. I used Logic to make, I just did a cabaret performance with Mary Testa, where I make tracks for us to sing over. It's just a wonderful tool. Did I miss anything about it? No, that's okay. And also the other thing is GarageBand is actually really cheap, which is great, so it's not like this incredibly, what is very sophisticated, but it's not something that will break the bank. So every young composer that has a power book and a little MIDI keyboard can really do high quality home demos. What's wonderful about them, if you're going to do pop writing, is that there are all sorts of drum loops in there, so you can quickly throw in a drum loop and write in the style that you want to, and not have to do keyboard writing that does the rhythm work of a drum. So it's very useful for them. I actually started using a lot of the loops, and it sort of changed my approach to writing a lot. There are certain projects where I do it in a more traditional way, but like working on Rocky for example, which is so rhythm driven. It was actually, not that we used any of these loops at all in the final product, but just in terms of freeing my mind up and playing to a rhythmic groove. It was really helpful. Absolutely, because otherwise you're writing a piano part that's supplying you with the groove and the energy, and if the groove is there, you can take the time to just make your harmony what it needs to be. It's simplifying in a great way. Because actually the printed scores, it looks so much simple, but whenever you hear everything played together, it sounds quite rich. It looks like there's not that much on that page, but in fact it feels quite full. Emily, we should hear from you about how you, when does the copy come into play? At this point, I think it's the same way it's pretty much always been, which is after you guys do your writing and your orchestration, the music comes to me and my job, essentially the final product is that I have to provide the pieces of music that the players play every night on their stands in the band. But along the way, I also provide, sometimes I'll provide, score mock-ups or templates for an orchestrator. But my work essentially comes at the end of the line, and we were talking beforehand, before we came into this room, about the funny thing we're talking about, all this technology and how through using the technology like Dropbox and other sharing programs, people can work in, you don't want to have to be in the same room anymore, with the upright piano. But the bottom line is when I do my work, the audience can get sent to me electronically. But once the show is up and running, it is just the same as it's always been. Every night, during previews, I'm running to the pit with scissors and tape and a pencil, and that is essentially the final tool that the guys use. No matter how much technology, I can use Sibelius, I can use Finale, I can get Logic Fuzz, I can get MIDI Fuzz, I can get whatever it is. But in the end, when you call me at 5.30, and there's a 6.30 band call and something has to happen, the bottom line is I don't just sit in my pajamas at home and send it down via Dropbox. Somebody has to physically walk out of the office with a piece of paper and some scissors and get it onto those parts. So the copiest job is a funny one, because you have to keep up with the technology. You have to be able, you have to use, we were talking earlier about Google Docs to keep track of who's doing what, you have to use Dropbox because everybody's sharing everything. You know, you're definitely in, at least we're using two notation programs now. But in the end, the job is still very much the physical, we still print music. We talked about the fact that I believe in a pretty short time span, we'll probably be using the screens everywhere. I mean, nobody wants to play a whole show off an iPad yet. Some guys do because they know their parts or they've written their own drum parts and they just put the pad there just for a reminder. But right now the physical music is still on paper. And I think that as soon as the screens get less expensive and producers get more used to the fact that there's another element of technology that they have to add, pay for, spend time with, I think that we'll probably be using me and PDFs on screen or, I don't think we'll be using live active music files, but certainly PDFs, which will then, I'll be at the need for me to be there on my hands and knees with scissors and tape. But I think that that's pretty, so I fit in still at the end of the line and still as a marriage of technology and the old school. Before we came in here today, we were actually in the little anti-room across the hall and we were, everybody at some point brought up the concept of the iPad and how that's starting to really interface with the kind of work that we do in the theater. And this, I guess it was a year ago, this still unreleased Lucky Stiff. We did a recording session here in Manhattan and I was really impressed that Michael ran the entire session paperless. He had his iPad, he used his finger, he would change a beat to a B-flat, something had been misrepresented. He would make a circle, he would do all of his notes that would appear on the computer screen as like a red B-flat, a red circle, and then he would email that, I guess you would do that. No, no, no, no. It was Dropbox again. What it is? Yeah, she was there doing the changes for the parts and it was all done without paper. What it is, it's a program on the iPad called Goodreader. It's a little expensive. Great program, a little expensive, I think it's $15, God, we're calling it. $15 expensive. How much did we spend a first copy of Finale? Well, for that it's double. Yes, exactly. And what it is, it lets you annotate PDFs either, you know, I can circle on them, I can open up a little text field and type in a note to myself, and then it can sync to any Dropbox folder. So basically I'm not annotating the Finale files, but I'm annotating a PDF I've printed of each of my scores. And for now maybe three years I've found that even with large orchestral scores, the largest was a full Philharmonic chart. I can pretty much work off of my screen. Now, on a large orchestra I can't really read the notes, but I can see who's playing and then I simply, if you're an iPad user, you pinch to zoom or whatever the opposite of a pinch is called. And I can read the actual pitch. This is great. It has tabs so I can have multiple files open in a theater rehearsal where the song has four parts and I can jump between them. I can go home and because I've synced to Dropbox, I open up the PDF there are all the changes I'm supposed to make that I marked on the PDF and I open up my Finale file and I make the changes I send it to Emily and it's her problem with them. But even in a simple preview in Apple's preview program not in and out, if you don't have a full version of Afrobat, you can actually take a regular file in preview and mark it up. There are annotation tools right in preview so if I'm working on a PDF, not on an iPad but on a computer on a laptop, I can use annotation tools right in preview and again, text blocks, circles above the arrow and they're savable so you just hit save and suddenly you've got a document and those markings that you make in preview and again, you can use any text style, you command T, get your text style, color size, font, everything and it's really great because again you don't have to carry that stack of immense scores and they're always with you. Whenever you have to run around the theater and it's like, oh where's my score it's always in this carryable iPad I would use effort to give notes to the actors I remember one time we were in the middle of a rehearsal for bring it on and we had just made a change on stage literally the next five minutes and I just had to put it into finale there wasn't a printer around the pianist is already at the piano I'm like, okay here's the change I ran over and put my iPad in front of him and everyone's like, I can't believe that just happened it was like great to think that I didn't have a printer but this change that had just happened I was able to just let him see what it was instantaneously, it's a miracle that's incredible sometimes I think you can talk so much about tech and it sort of seems like an ending of itself but in fact really what it is is just to keep fluidity happening and keep it you know, quick ideas being able to capture them and also being able to share them. I'll give you just the negative side from the person who's at the end of the line the negative side is just to speak to the fact that things happen so much more quickly which is the positive side for the creative side that you can make a change at 6.30 and at 7 o'clock your orchestra could be playing it but the fact is that I hate to say that when I walked through the doors of this room I just saw something on my phone and over at Motown they're having a rehearsal and they're saying could you send me and I'm like well, sorry buddy not now but the thing is that I'm asked to do things that I was never asked to do before and to turn things around in sometimes really ridiculous amount of short amount of time and it's doable and that's the thing it's great and it's the curse because once I do it once once you do it once and you say oh well you did that in an hour you did that in half an hour then the next night at 6.30 you get the same request and I'm exaggerating when I say 6.30 but kind of not really so technology works in many fantastic ways but sometimes if you are the person who's at the receiving end of those requests you know it's very very hard to say it can't be done because really there's almost I hate to say it out loud but there's almost no can't be done anymore it's almost old along those same lines Emily we have the same technology basically now as a sound designer in the house on a preview night in any scene you control every aspect of the sound system I can change it at will and because of that it's also a curse because the show gets better faster and the producer says to me wow that's good but if it doesn't happen the next day he's like why didn't it happen you can make so many fast changes the show can get so much better so much faster that for me it's great because I also can eliminate because years ago I had to go through two or three people to get a change made and it was it was impossible because by the time it got it's like the rumor that goes around by the time it gets to the third person your grandmother's dead I just wanted to turn up the center cluster but now I eliminate all of that because I'm in total control of it I can control every aspect of it so I can do it live on the spot make that change which is I don't have to wait until tomorrow to take the note and try and put it into play and not notice the sonic change immediately and that happens I mean we're missing the programmer here but that happens the same thing I mean Randy Cohn or any programmer who's working now can sit with the iPad also anything in the house and first of all change things as requested but also troubleshoot and it goes awry down there and the sound isn't heard they can send information back and forth to those keyboards right in real time and that's pretty amazing I should say that really Emily's not the last in the chain the sound designer is and there's this expectation at the first preview that it's going to be great and for producers or directors who haven't done a musical before they don't understand it's not sounding perfect for a mixer who's only had two or three performances with orchestra and voices suddenly there's an audience in there with laughter suddenly the energy from the actors is completely different because there's an audience so it's kind of a rule that we know first couple previews leave sound alone let them just and we're very appreciative of them let them just you know don't have is killing me I already know you've already heard but I've also been regarding this real time concept I mean when you or actually say you are the sound operator is doing the show that operator is doing the show the same way an actor is doing the show they've got their show, they've got their timing they've got their moves and I have been in this very season been in the theater where somebody new to the game you know whatever will run up the aisle in the middle of the first, second, third preview and run to the sound board and start to give notes during the show to a sound operator and you know and you have to know that that person understands that it's possible for that operator to change something in that moment but that it's completely wrong to do so you get that everybody has to be educated to know what you know what is not not only that you can do something because it's possible but sometimes you really shouldn't do something at that moment that you need to wait because that sound operator is literally has, he has every person on one fader and if one person is talking that person comes up, if another person talks right after that person comes up never unless it's a group number so he's doing thousands of moves during the show and it's finger management it's also these puppies and that's why the sound operator is our most important person in the building to us because there has to be implicit trust between us and they're a performer I mean it's, if a sound operator is good, our shows can sound great if a sound operator is bad even if we design the best show in the world it's not going to sound good I mean it's that simple, we're in their hands and the reason why they're so invaluable is I leave the building after the opening they can do thousands of performances and all of them are exactly the same and that takes incredible talent to do and what's really hard is that a lot of people don't realize that not everything is necessarily the sound person's fault that is to say, like say you're watching a show and all of a sudden the guitar is blazingly loud it's not necessarily the sound operator's fault it could be that that particular guitarist hit his pedal at the wrong moment and made the guitar blazingly loud and if you go to the sound guy, turn him down, turn him down he winds up chasing him because he turns the guitar way down and when it was really an accident on the guitar player's fault for the rest of the show that guitar player is really down not where you need it to be or sometimes maybe the keyboard player is actually on the wrong patch he's supposed to be playing a piano sound in his study, happens to be on a big loud boom people think it's the sound guy what did you do, what happened and it's really just a mistake that the keyboard player made that won't happen the next day probably and they know what happened and people around them might not know that people kind of need to know or just have to expect that the sound guy really knows what it is his job is totally like the actors like the orchestra totally performance based it changes every single night and he has to figure out what that changes the other thing I find for all our discussion of technology here is that the goal is not perfection that perfection is really nothing to do with the theater there isn't a perfect mix there isn't a perfect orchestration there isn't there's always compromise because there's so many elements coming at an audience member there are lyrics there's orchestration, there's music, there's lights music is going through sound it's to achieve a result and sometimes I have to let some of my orchestration be a little buried so that the song can come through in a way that it won't be on an album because an audience is hearing something for the first time in a space that's so not acoustically perfect our theaters are not built to be great acoustic spaces they're built to look beautiful old fashioned palaces a lot of them in my right don't are not good sounding buildings and so the achievement is the best possible result it is not for perfection some people look for perfection and that's well and that's the important part of what we all do it's totally collaborative with communication but I have a question about this, I'm talking about the buildings the theater and acoustics but I don't know which this season which shows you're working on entirely but I know that in a few of the shows that I've been working on now musicians are no longer in the pit but they are in rooms built below the stage or separated into most of the orchestra might be in the pit some might be on the seventh floor right now I'm working on a show where everybody's in the pit and the drummer is on the seventh floor I mean that's happened many times or rooms are built with isolation the brass is here and the drums are here and it's much more studio like can you talk about how that works pluses and minuses and case in point is the revival of ragtime we had eleven live musicians in the pit strings and a harp and seventeen people in a room downstairs with a keyboard player in another room and the goal of that is to and I was told this by musicians is to make you believe all twenty eight people are in the pit and the funny thing about that is we were in the Neil Simon theater and that's where Porgy and Bass premiered you know and I looked up how many pieces were playing in the opening night of Porgy and Bass and there were forty pieces and I went to our producer and said well we have twenty eight which was like a sumptuous for two thousand and nine and I said well where did they put you know the additional twelve players and it turns out that when the theater was refurbished they added more rows so there was a larger pit but also another thing that I noticed and I noticed these things because I crawl around the pit a lot at all the pits is that the pits have also gotten smaller because of the technology a lot of times the designers will say well you know we're going to do this thing and they need to put a lift right in the middle of where the pit is you know lots of elevators or trap doors things that shouldn't ever have been in the pit suddenly now we have a stage craft that requires technology to be right where the musicians used to be so even if you had forty people in that pit now depending on your set build you might only be able to fit twelve but that also is a technology it's turned into now a sound designer's job to actually tell everybody how many people can fit in the pit because we literally while we compute a generated over the years we've developed symbols for how wide a cello player needs to be and a violin player and a trumpet player and a drum kit and we literally lay it out around the posts that people don't think are going to be troubled where the first violin is hitting the post every five seconds and it allows the conversation to continue where it becomes real to say look we have a problem or we need to take three dressing rooms you know or as in the case of one show you know a broom closet where we put the heart the other season I did work on leap of faith where the orchestra was divided into four groups two of them and each of the boxes were the rhythm section winds and strings were in the pit but facing away from the conductor because the pit was covered and he was a little little hole where he could see the cast and the brass were down in the basement and so nobody was in the same place and at a point where it got so ridiculous that I thought why can't they all be in another room somewhere so they're playing together as a group because if the pits are going to be so abused with technology and being covered and stuff at least the musicians can play together as a group however on one of the shows that's running right now where the musicians are all playing together in another room they say it sounds very weird because the rhythm section is completely you know all the guitars and keyboards are completely direct so if you're walking in the room without headphones on you don't hear them the drums are pad so it sounds like some guy hitting the table and they say they're playing together but they feel like they're not really part of a show the way they are when they're in a pit they're in a room getting together playing music under headphones and the show and sometimes like it's a show that starts with dialogue and they said sometimes if their headphones aren't on they don't realize the show has even started we had talked about this a long time ago as this sort of dystopia of where we thought and this was before technology allowed for orchestras to be split into four places in the theater a dystopian vision of a building in some cheap part of town where there were just you know if there are 20 theaters so there were 20 big rooms and there were 20 orchestras and at five of eight every night they'd file in and you'd have all your different shows and they'd all be streamed into the sound system in the theater and really and truly we're not that far away from that being far away it's how they did the Academy Awards well I know I worked on the Tony's and we had you know I hate to say it but the Tony's a celebration of live theater and you have live theater awards and we're at the Beacon Theater and I and the band we're at a studio on 26th Street everything going through the truck and not one live musician in the house not one so you know we're in a place where that's possible we don't want the world out there to know most the tracks are pre-recorded for the musical numbers on the Tony's we're not going to let you know besides that the fact that the few the few cues that we play live the music that we do play live is only live in that it's being played by live musicians but they're 40 blocks away under headphones so it's a very strange one and we completely hate that does that cause any kind of delay cause it's a huge amount of problems for us because we have to allow these rooms to cross-reference each other which adds a enormous amount of equipment and we have to give them a sense that they're actually playing the show so it adds huge video monitors but the biggest thing it does is it takes the actual sonic element out of the room which we can't regenerate we can't make a trumpet sound like he's pulled well we try and fake it but we have a better chance of the orchestra's all in one room but if they're split especially if you have and we fight this all the time when producers say to us well we'll put rhythm section over here in boxes and we'll put the other orchestra someplace else and we're like we can't win cause acoustically that trumpet is going to make a sound and it's going to fight everything else cause you're going to reference those boxes where the other orchestra is going to be round like this like we want them to seem to be and it's really difficult for us to get around so as much as we can we fight it we win sometimes and we lose sometimes next time you should invite a set designer so we have someone to appeal yes for all the covered pits we have to deal with well the other thing talking about playing in different parts in some way for people that are literally physically dislocated to play together as a group that's sort of a natural way into the concept of clip track there's a really interesting article that was in Sunday Time some of you may have seen about hands in a hard body which is a new musical that's opening like now right right there 25 minutes in and the co-composer is a Trey Anastasia who's from the pop group Fish and in the article it was an interview he said he was listening to a performance and he thought there's something not right about it and it turned out that all the players were playing to clip track and he felt that there was a natural give and take ebb and flow and for that to come from like somebody from the pop world rock rock world world to say get rid of the clip track it was a really surprising comment for me to read a lot of shows that are less pop oriented a lot of them use click especially whenever you're using either loops or pre-recorded elements and you know mixing all that together it's been a little bit of a trial and error for me I know a lot of people have a love-hate relationship with the click for me it depends on what kind of music it is and I found for Bring It On we benefited from having the click happen because when you're doing a hip-hop song hip-hop is based around regularity that does not change the song starts at 96 BPM it's going to end at 96 BPM and whenever there's any kind of fluctuation you hear it so I know for certain groove players some people prefer that because if the guitarist knows that he can just hear that metronome and rock against that even if maybe the drum player might bend a little bit everyone has a frame of reference to go to I remember we were rehearsing once I think it might have been Bring It On and when we were in the band rehearsal the entire band was on click but those of us behind the table were not I think the conductor gave a cue that might not have been clear something happened and people didn't know where it was and for two seconds it sounded like and then my B3 everyone went and then all of a sudden it congealed and then we were back on track it was really interesting to hear what kind of gravitate towards that but the other thing that I learned is that when I build click tracks and I do it for tempo mostly I've learned that if there is a spot where the band has a whole note I will build a natural retard into the click so that it feels like it's breathing for example if we're doing that by sense I say and there's a spot where the band is grooving the days into weeks into years and here I stayed I found that if I kept the click going at the same tempo then actor would always naturally slow down because they would feel the band stop and they thought they had more time and without a doubt the band would always get to the next downbeat before she was and it always felt like a little bit of a skit so that I learned to start anticipating that anytime there's like a hold or anytime there's a whole note if I've been at 96 BPM for that one bar I will take it down two clicks just for that duration and then as soon as we get back to the tempo just go back in when you hear it in the theater you cannot tell the difference and just for whatever reason it can anticipate that all of a sudden the actor will feel that space and they'll hear that and they'll want to react to that so I try to anticipate that because you're human which is crazy because you try to use computer to emulate something that should be human to begin with but again you know I do it most because I can feel it I can tell when it's not locked in and I can just feel when it does include the same way and again I only talk about certain types of music like I would not recommend it for Annie for example but for bring it on without a doubt did you ever have problems along the way with things getting off from the click because an actor jumped the measure you know it's funny I actually never had that happen for whatever reason and I just need to just knock on wood any errors that we ever had with the click tracks were like 90% up greater error there's only one every time where we ever had something like global ride and you always worry about that like you think oh my god if the actor jumps ahead what's going to happen but I found that that was very rarely the case and you know people would always just kind of find their way would you do one start per song or would you do a couple of different songs it depends, depends what the song is 96,000 for In the Heights like was really super long clicks and there were certain points where something stopped then we were able to kind of cash back on if we needed to but by and large again it just kind of seemed to work out that for whatever reason people would just know where they are and just work out were those kinds of choices were they developed I guess trial and error over time for me yes because just like you were saying and again the article there were times when I found the click got in the way and no matter what tempo you would put it at it just wouldn't quite feel right so there are times when it just doesn't need to feel human but I feel like that you do need to rely on having a good rhythm section a good conductor, a good person to call it right at the right tempo you know there are times that I love to click track because as an MD I'll know that every time I go see the show that song will be at the correct tempo and you know the actors might be like yeah that song felt slow today I'm like well it was the same tempo it was yesterday you know it's like right it's something else that they're reacting to and then you try to figure out how to make them you know how to get it back to whatever the energy was but I find it actually makes things relaxed I know that like tempo won't be an issue I think one of the larger things we've been talking about today is how important with all these different technologies and with the velocity of changes and decisions being made to try to find the way to keep the communication open for the group you know because I mean it's in your case you know you're playing like in the Heights I remember seeing it for the first time and it was off Broadway before it had moved downtown and my first impression I told you this was when I right heard Alex was in the pit playing and he was the music director and the co-orchestrator and I just remember his playing was phenomenal and I just kept thinking who the hell are they going to get to sub that show because it was just a brilliant playing but the idea of having you know one person for that particular show wearing at least three hats so you you know trying to keep all the information clear about click and what a performer's need is and how the conductor communicates with that and also you know gets the click and you know the attack to all work together I appreciate that thing for me I guess I just had such a very you know strong opinion about what it should sound like and I had worked from that show so early on that I knew what it was that I was looking for and I thought that was the only way I was going to be able to get what was in here out there also even before that you know you worked on Wicked which I think is a really interesting orchestration because it's sort of a symphonic orchestration that has this really tight pop sound at the heart of it and I know that you did a lot of work on the you know on the on the pop part of that and is that a show that relied a lot on click trying to keep you know not at all there's actually two spots at pick at all and they're like 32 bars apiece and that's it the rest of the show is just completely off a field very I'm sorry very often a click will be used because pre-recorded vocals are being added for instance very often in attack dance I remember working on the Christmas Carol that played at Madison Square Garden and there was a big tap dance abundance and charity where all the girls and they wanted them all singing loud and the singing came out like this and so what you do is you pre-record and you have that click where the band just you know learns to be wearing headphones and go to click right at that point or at least the rhythm section is wearing so that's where click has been used until Alex's work mostly just for that right for like the dance breaks where you're adding vocals is it too dangerous to ask question about pre-recorded things and pre-recorded vocals and for a reason for a dance number whatever and then we have this whole thing about hip-hop or real pop music coming into the theater so needing things the needing types of sounds that are not created by live acoustic instruments but then you know where do you where does that line get crossed now to having other things on the tracks that might be pre-recorded or enhancements there's been so many strictures against that I mean in our union rules and in the sort of the propriety of what goes with the theater and all that and where do we live now in reference to adding things on track in my recollection it's probably been like three times in 20 years that equities approved it is that true do you mean equities approved what vocals on them? but you're talking about adding instrumental tracks or drum tracks my feeling is technology is a tool it can be used and it can be abused a tool that came in in the late 80s was the use of synthesis and sampling it's still being abused somewhat where people will use string samples to just play string lines that's not an abuse that's an artistic choice some people make and I think the same thing is going to happen with tracks of instruments there's times where it will be used in an artistically wonderful way and sometimes it will be used people are going to do it you can't stop technology but you can, the thing about the theater is the more mechanized the less we're actually in that room the less it is theater and the less it's appealing as live performance so I don't think live musicians are going to disappear but we're in a world where people will always abuse it somewhat and we're going to have to encourage them to say no let's do it live it's more fun do you know I have one violin, one cello and I chose never to use a string sample in it because I just felt like, well alright maybe I used it in the boughs a little because it just needs to be big and loud alright and then there's fun you know but there's a point where it's like I just don't want to go there but some this is a battle we're going to have to fight one way or another whether it's a union battle whether it's an artistic battle so I do think tracks are going to appear I think somebody along the way is going to abuse it and I think someone else like Alex is going to use it in a wonderfully artistic means that just enriches what we can do in musical theater like when we didn't bring it on there was nothing ever on the tracks that we had that was supposed to take place of a live person playing like if you had heard the tracks for bring it on like for example legendary was a great example of a big huge cheer number that had tons and tons of cheer effects tons of arpeggios and stuff like if you had heard the click track it would have sounded like this like this it would be like a metronome like all this crazy stuff that literally that's what it would sound like you can't do that you know the arpeggios stuff can't be on a keyboard maybe someone could hit the samples but it wouldn't have like a right effect like you'd have to worry about what the levels were it's something that was predictable like sax player playing it the sound of a violin trying to do a run it was always the intention to do it for things that were expressly computerized synthesized digital sounding things and the other thing about vocals you are very right equity is really strict about what you're allowed to do and you can never they never allow you to have pre-recorded vocals just because people are really tired from the dance and they can't keep up it's always because they can't make a costume change and again in our case of bring it on we had pre-recorded vocals because people were flying up in the air all we had like four guys on the floor supporting like two girls and they tried to sing it with someone and equity actually acknowledged that and they allowed us to use the pre-recorded vocals because it was for the safety of the actors because it was literally physically impossible to sing when it's that kind of case they were able to understand what the case is for and you have to go through a very laborious process so exactly which bars are going to be pre-recorded and give them sheet music and like annotated this it's the same thing with local 802 I mean police those kinds of effects but Michael you're right people are going to use it artistically and people are going to abuse it I mean I did a show in Las Vegas where we had eight players on a band stand and before we opened we cut two players because of finances in two months we cut the entire band totally pre-recorded because of finances I remember seeing come fly with you Twilight Tharps Tribute to Frank Sinatra and they featured this great looking band right on the stage but then all of a sudden you're hearing this enormous string section come in and you can where are those violin players they're nowhere so obviously that was a pre-recorded I worked on that show so where were those fiddle players and it was recording not a sample in other words it wasn't a keyboard they were playing it it was a recording they were using some of the Frank Sinatra tracks and deconstructed them but oh okay great I think we're at the question part part of the evening yeah so should we delve into questions so kind of thinking backwards from all this is acoustic instruments we start to integrate more with sounds that can't be made by an acoustic instrument arpeggiators and even in regard to pre-recorded things what specific challenges does that present from a notational standpoint anything well I'm just notating a new Chromalum for Sunday in the Park for a production happening in Paris and it's all based on things where I'm just notating the trigger note if no one is playing along with it there's no reason to notate it but if it's by the way you're going to get a score to the Chromalum soon but but I've done things where tracks had to be written out because people are playing along with them and so you have to do some kind of notation of what's happening electronically to represent it I mean you guys both use techniques where if it's just if it's just something triggering chords or harmonies I mean we'll just put the note that the person has to perform and then we'll have a series of small notes or parenthetical notes or a little like an OCA bar or somewhere on the page where we notate what's being heard because if it's something that's integral to a score and there's somebody who's looking at that score they can't just see a whole note there and then all of a sudden they're hearing something happening but you've done notation Larry Hoffman often will write the trigger note and then some version of except that goes when it's something that is sort of traditionally musical and not effects you don't notate not notating a lot of the effects like the explosions and things but if I had to write down a piano part that was based on that arpeggio to sound and I would try to find some way to notate it and for example like the same song I described it was really hard to get pianists to play so I would just find a way to kind of simplify that and make it playable and still groove it does pose some challenges for sure because I think we all get a lot of emails from other productions and you know like at the mapping you know the concept of mapping that's a big question but that's again we're missing the program of person at this table but yeah that's something I mean we started as far back as once on this island which was that we had especially with small bands that are four or five pieces the ability to play one note and a chord would come out and you could program whatever voicing you wanted for that chord and this allowed the right hand so you were playing like a two hand pad part and allowed the right hand for you to do you know a trebly bell you know electric piano fill or string sample whatever called something other than strings right exactly but the trigger notes would sometimes even get as strange as not even being chordal tones because you were doing a whole series of chords and you'd use up the notes that were actually in the chord so you'd have to use in the key of A you'd have to use an F natural to get this particular D chord because you had used up all the F sharps D's and A's and so you would rent this part out and people would be renting it and looking at your synth part go why is there an F natural here and you had to explain all that what I started doing was putting in little parentheses a half note later in a second layer in finale removing the stem and putting the notes that actually came out of it so it was a self-explanatory thing of F natural is actually this D major triad with an E added in this voicing your problem at how to deal with it at your high school but this is what it sounds like but the thing is that that also is about when shows go into rental does that rental company license the programming as well and that's if it's your show you need to find out what's going to happen with that because again they'll send out these parts half your thing will be missing programming doesn't go with it but there are deals to be made and that's a business thing it's artistic slash business and I have to say the performance of that original orchestration of Once in the Silent is handicapped because it was two keyboards very early in the synth era and the program is up in the air the instruments it was done for haven't existed for 20 years proteases you know Yamaha TX802's Roland D550's all long long gone so even if I could translate the patch data from the program that no longer exists on the floppy disks there there'd be no way to do it so I mean we could create new programming but it really hampers when people rent that orchestration of Steven's show I have to say I still my keyboard controller at home is a Proteus I kept thinking it's worked for me all these years like don't change it this horrible little I also think that when you rent Once in the Silent you get my hand written I think you still get my hand written that's the other thing my favorite score that we did we did my favorite year Michael did this beautiful orchestration for my favorite year this is before the advent of computer notation and it's written in three hands and it's Emily's hand, it's my hand and Ted Sperling who is our music director it's his hand part of that was the history of that this week I got an iPhone picture from somebody who was playing songs for New World and said oh look and there it is and it's like my little scroll and that's the one thing to talk about the change in technology and not to get too nostalgic but there's something very much lost in what comes off the printer now that you don't get that human quality of the notation and actually feeling that somebody actually wrote that thing we see it now and you know that it was created by a group of people but it really has a sense of created by as opposed to written by, I mean really written by as someone who got a C plus and penmanship through all of elementary school learning to write a neat score was a real struggle for me and slowed me down for many years finale was a huge turnaround for me in terms of picking up the speed at which I could orchestrate but it was something I loved to do you know it felt like I was crafting a chair like a carpenter making this score and getting and looking at a page and seeing the density of the graphite on it and somehow that meaning something in terms of orchestral weight you know the picture, one of the reasons when I prepare my scores I don't let the whole recipe here in empty bars because it gets in the way of my seeing what's getting a general picture of what's there and what's not there because I would never fill them in the old handwritten scores either just playing through March of the Falsettos which is in my hand yes we have to give a little nod to your wife Hannah because Hannah it was great, she would put in all the vocal lines with all the notations and the rhythms and we are beautifully done and then hand them over to Michael who would do the orchestration and I said it is amazing that you were so smart to marry a woman who can read music and she says I can't read music literally she would copy the notes in just by how they look and do the lyrics and that was the big change when notation software came along and I could just paste the piano vocal from the composer in well if you have a composer like Steve Flaherty who writes the most complete fantastic piano vocals, it's fun I mean you always say that's your project so do we have some more questions first of all, thank you all for so enlightening and inspiring and I have given notes about sound during performances and I thought the guys but Alex and Michael you mentioned you don't like to get large demos with too many ideas spelled out, what would be the ideal that you would get from a composer would be simply what's the style, can you just give us a quick idea well I would say not pop necessarily but something other than pop that I'd require and also you say you use logic is that the desired, is that the point of the realm in theatre on Broadway? I would say if it's not pop it would be a piano part that would be it if it were pop it would be helpful for me to know at least where you heard the drums playing and maybe just drums and piano might be enough that's my take on it I agree, absolutely I mean we want to hear what your songwriting gestures are then we sit down with you after and say how many pieces were told the band is it's never how many we want the band to be it's how many were told the band is going to be and what they should be you hear strings, ok because it's a romantic score let's go strings there's a jazz bend to it, ok let's go with a couple of saxes and acoustically the instrumentation should be something that comes after the playwriting is done because it's a result of the playwriting your logic question, again it's just whatever people's comfort level is if it's just a piano part and vocal you can literally put your iPhone on top of the piano and just let it roll that's fine too I was a performer user for many years and in some ways digital performer is easier to because it's built more like a tape recorder and it's easier to use however logic is wonderful it has a wonderful library of loops it's just wonderful with making sound and it's become much more standard than performer at this point in terms of the theater I don't think there's anything standard logic and performer are more overall tools for the music industry even Pro Tools now Doug Besterman uses the MIDI section of Pro Tools as his sequencer he feels it's gotten powerful enough that he doesn't need a dedicated sequencer it's whatever you're comfortable and whatever works for you is a tool to do things and I know people are starting to get hip to Ableton Live that's another kind of up and coming I know that's on Kinky Boost as well that's kind of like the next wave a lot of people who are doing electronic dance music are starting to do that so that's making its way to the theater I need to learn it and by the way what I said about the iPhone if it's going to an orchestrator if it's going to producers and other people that's a separate thing but that's the thing about the demo is that it has to serve two purposes which also Michael said at the very beginning you don't want it to be the 65 piece prog orchestra but then you have the one that you might give to your creative collaborators and those might be different I'm wondering how do you all manage when you're playing jazz kinds of stuff and you try to get the machine to print for you I tried it, I went crazy all over the place because I kept kicking all the beats so you're trying to play in tempo my son tried to make me do that I finally ended up I can't play in tempo but they don't notate well in tempo when finale I had finale one before they named it after years very early and when they first came out with it all the composers were going great I'm just going to play in my piano vocal and that's it it never ever worked it still doesn't work what you have to do like any jazz notation you have to just enter it in quick note entry that's why I'm still writing everything by hand because it's driving me nuts and you say swing eighth and it's done you can still enter notes in speedy note entry learn to use that speedy note entry chord and you hit a key on the key pad to say this is an eighth note you hit your next thing hit it again without playing the note and that's a rest and so you're entering one note at a time I mean that's how we use finale I mean anybody who's using finale what's the melody is enters the music one line one note at a time and you build your if you have a piano part you're building it as if you were notating it with a pen but you're using the computer well I was using something called news score and my kid comes in who is such a computer you know what the hell are you doing I can't stand this I can't play it because if I play it all these flags and baloney come up and I'm finished enter it and then if you're jazz musician you know it's just you write even eighths and you just write swing eighths at the top and which is a note to all composers don't notate swing for us please no twelve eight none of that none of that we should say that that way of entering the music I think most composers or a lot of composers do that's the way I enter all my scores and you can't learn it like from finale you know through the little tutorials but the thing you need to know is first learning how to do it in 94 I think the first lesson was a la weta you know which is a very simple french tune that we all know and I could have written it by pencil I know it would have taken me twenty seconds and I said to Emily I said I'm so proud I got a la weta written in the computer and I said the only downside is it took me three hours I said I gotta speed up I did not so give yourself a long weekend for your first when you initially get your ideas down do you go right to finale or do you still use pencil on paper because I used to I still need my pencil on paper to just catch it out if I'm in rehearsal and there's a transition that needs to happen like I still will have a sheet of staff paper or just in the piano put the pencil in my mouth put some chords and write it and change it there's something I still love about the tackle feeling of it and then I hand it to the intern who will enter it I haven't picked up a pencil to write music in since 2004 I have two screens on the computer they're both just 20 inch screens and I keep one in landscape and one in what's the other word portrait thank you and my desk is just a full ADA keyboard with a little drawer for my mouse and stuff and I used to at the very beginning I still sketched on top of a piano vocal receiver now the first thing I do is I paste the composer's piano part into the piano part I paste in the insert not paste insert the vocal line and the piano part and then I do my sketching right on it it's sort of like I'm not in rehearsal like Alex who works also as a music supervisor and so he's there not in a situation where he has a setup I'm at Omo always and so the setup is there and so I've just I want to cut out all the middle men you know all the middle stages and I just will sketch right there, pull stuff out of the piano part do things like notate the three trumpet part the five the three clarinet parts put all the articulations in the dynamics and then explode them on to the three staffs so I'm not writing it three times right and then I'm you know very often I'll rewrite the piano part because it needs to be a little different for what I'm orchestrating I think the important thing to keep in mind though is you know do whatever feels most comfortable and is the most fluid for you you know everything is different I find that I get ideas and they come in quickly and they come in fleetingly and they come in strange places could be an elevator or a cross town bus so I always encourage people to carry a little pad and they can note take something down or even sing it into your your phone, your iPhone or whatever it takes to to capture the idea because they're fleeting you know and then you have your basic idea caught and you can you know run onto your piano with whatever you need to do I always look at a difficult passage before going to sleep because it looks so much easier in the morning yeah that's an interesting thing like before you go to bed do you do you like review your day's work or do you say this is what I need to know I'll definitely say if I've just finished a score I'll definitely set up the next one and look at it and think oh yeah I gotta do it oh yeah and by the next morning it just it doesn't look so bad and by bad I mean difficult like how am I going to do this with what few I have and the solution suggests itself yes do you have a crossover between sound designer and composers with the effects like the things that you're describing do you ever, does the sound designer ever create a sound for you sure all the time I mean we have a huge crossover in terms of I mean we're responsible if it makes a noise in the end it's our responsibility and in the world of non-musical players there are quite a few designers who are also composers covering band trials one, Cameron a lot of you know sort of erasing that border there I try to now and then throw sound effects and just to annoy the sound designer there's a two months of a great transition that we had in the Heights and it was actually Nevin's idea when he was at Acme at the time had this idea where we had a transition that happened on stage and it took us right to the scene that they were in the bodega and it's like wouldn't it be cool if as soon as that transition is over the band stop playing and then you heard that very same music coming out of a little tinny radio inside the bodega so we actually went into like the studio and recorded it and they treated it so it sounded like it was coming out of this tiny that was an idea where it was a moment where the sound designer contributed to like the sound of the score and it's a really cool moment I thought For submitting songs or orchestration is piano vocal score like the epitome I'm for hearing them writing lead sheets because I do a lot of different bands and that's what seems to work the best and if you have let's say most of my recordings are four or five piece I do a lot of rock and pop and lat music and so most of the recordings I've made of my songs have like rhythm section and then basically rhythm section with some guitar licks that I feel add to the feel of it so two questions if you have one or two riffs in a song that you feel help to reflect the feel of it does that does that confuse the orchestra or does that take away from being open-ended enough for you to deal with it and secondly what about lead sheets for a company I think there's always, you always take whatever input you can get I did next to normal and with Tom Kitt the composer and Tom co-orchestrated because he'd been doing these songs for many years with his band and so a lot of the rhythm section stuff was worked out and he wanted a lot of it some of it was notated some of it wasn't and he knew he's great with rhythm sections and so there was no point in me like saying no I'm gonna throw it away I'm gonna start from scratch why I mean he's the composer he knows what he wants if you have worked that really contributes to what your song is doing of course you should pass it on you should not say this has to be in this because then you're not collaborating you should come to your orchestrator and say I feel this kind of is really kind of what the song is I'd love the guitar to be doing something like this I'd love it but absolutely bring your work to the table and any good orchestrator should be open to it you should be open to him saying yeah but I think this is happening and maybe we can bring it in the second verse because one of the great things an orchestrator will do will be to layer your song your pop style to not crash in so quickly in the style but build to that style and so if you're open to the give and take you're the final arbiter as a composer but and as far as the lead sheet again if it's a rhythm tune I don't want to written out drum part and guitar part that becomes so difficult sometimes and so a lead sheet for that kind of music would be fine and the bass notes will be it's the year G over the year yeah and like Michael said if you have riffs or ideas absolutely write them down if there's something that I would have an idea of I would definitely come to you and say what about this one note change what would you think of that like Michael said it's a collaborative art form and at the end of the day the orchestrators are really working for you you have to be happy about the end product it's a question of whether or not you want the input or you want to have to be a mess together with what you have it's about preference seriously coming back to what I was saying as a joke before if I rewrite one of Steven's piano parts because I'm trying to do something he has the option to come to me and go I really miss that voice thing let's put that back and I will but you know it lets me say to him I'm doing this with the strings over here I'm gonna try and take this away to let that come through it's about him hearing the song that he wrote with my contribution but coming back to what he wants but it's interesting the more ingredients that you add not only to a song or an orchestration but to a show you know it's something I think I learned from Graciela Danielle really early on is that certain times a composer can overwrite because you're just thinking of what you're hearing in fact that you add choreography to it and there was one number in Once in the Cycling where I had a vocal counter line it's the two different women and the guides the central love triangle and she for the other woman just created this beautiful dance line and I thought well you don't need that vocal at all and I just took it out and it's the same kind of thing working with an orchestrator or an arranger because they bring other ideas to the table and I'm thinking well that it's the same idea just getting the idea and the emotion across but there are many different ways to do that I think I think this may be our last yeah okay you're the lucky last question my question is about Sibelius and Finale I'm a Sibelius user but it seems like Finale is mostly used as a theater does it matter for the composer should they be using Finale when it comes to this process you've been talking about yeah we were talking about possible topics I'll answer anything except the Finale I'm happy to answer I'm happy to answer this question under the water the question I didn't want to answer is which is better there is no which is better but the predominance is that theater people in New York still are using Finale and that seems to be what everybody's started with and everybody's attached to in my office I use both I would say that we're equally good at both programs but still because more people are using Finale than more of our shows are still in Finale I would say easily 80% of the shows that I do for everybody because the music comes to us but when I get a lot of the transfers from UK everybody's using Sibelius so we do those shows in Sibelius if I were to give a score on paper right now I mean a handwritten score from somebody and we're starting from scratch which would I use probably we'd still use Finale because we do that but really there are advantages to both but I'd say that it's a matter of your collaborators if your collaborators are all using Finale then you know you have an issue but there are translator programs now and they work very very well so it's less of an issue than it used to be I mean you can definitely one can talk to the other so I don't know I wouldn't counsel necessarily learning the other program I think that Sibelius is a great program it's just a matter of who your collaborators are but as an orchestrator I know that when I've been asked to work on a show that's in Sibelius someone just has to set up translate for me the piano vocal so I can paste it into my scores and that's it and when we post our finished scores on Dropbox for everyone to look at we usually do a pdf at the same time so that everyone can see it it was so great that you could join us both here in the room for the feed and the only thing that worries me is that if we decide to do a technology and a composer 3 that we're going to be doing like a chat you know like FaceTime you're going to phone today it might be the last time we do that that's a good one thank you so much