In the pits

In my ongoing interest in orchestra pits and the music technology contained in them, I’ve found a few interesting reads:

On Broadway: Playing ‘in the pit’ for musicals

This article is aimed at musicians who don’t really know how the whole orchestra pit thing works. It’s a nice overview for others with some interesting details such as:

• The AFM contract stipulated a 2008 pit player base wage to be around $1592 USD a week, plus 12.5% for the first double, and 6.25% for each additional double.
• There are a few muso case studies, including 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee drummer Glenn Rhian who was told that he just had to play “the same number of measures” in certain passages of the Spelling Bee score.
• The Tony Awards used to have a Best Conductor and Musical Director category until 1964.

Spotlight on: Randy Cohen, Broadway Keyboardist / Programmer / Music Director

This article, published by the company who makes Receptor, a hardware platform for software synths, touches on some of the configurations that Randy Cohen has come up with for various shows including High Fidelity, High School Musical (tour) and In The Heights. Specifically the article indicates a preference for Ivory and Native Instrument’s Elektrik Piano and B4II, driven by a Yamaha S90 or Motif. That site also includes the most ridiculous collection of social media buttons at the bottom of the page.

Starobin talks about Sunday, Assassins

Finally, Michael Starobin offers a bit of history on his career and talks more conceptually than technically on the process of orchestration, and why he doesn’t like using Finale or a digital piano while orchestrating. Starobin has worked with some pretty big names (I would argue he’s a big name in his own right), and his articles are always interesting.

Please send stuff of this nature my way if you come across any. I tend to absorb article after article and never find it boring. I’ll continue to share my finds here if anyone’s interested.