Cruise Criminals of Music

There are two shows. One is called “Piano Man.” Although you are the piano player in the band, you are not the “Piano Man.” Another cruise line you have worked for also had a show called “Piano Man.” The music was better, but the lead trumpet player sat directly in front of you with his bell pointed at your head. He did not swing. All of his figures were syncopations playing off the beat. Your job as a piano player is to play “on the beat.” When the loudest instrument in the band is playing right in your ear “off the beat,” it is not easy to do your job as the “Piano Man.” Most people would quit. This new “Piano Man” is the male production singer. He sits at the acoustic piano much of the time, but the M.D. fails to tell you if he plays or not. For the first half of the contract the sound engineer does not mike his piano, so you play his “Piano Man” parts on your digital piano. When the sound man changes the new engineer mikes his piano. He comes to you in a panic and says there is a “chorusing” effect. (He also is a keyboard player) It is created because you and the “Piano Man” are playing the same parts. No one could ever hear this before, because they didn’t mike the real “Piano Man’s” piano. To solve the problem you instigate a meeting with the “Piano Man,” and ask him what he is playing. You write this in on your music and begin to leave out what he plays. This should have been done on the first tech run of the show five months ago. The M.D. that “brought out the ship” failed to do this creating havoc for five months between the “Piano Man” and you. The second show is pop/opera, and is a gay romp. The grooves are all electronica. The drummer in the pit is using a Roland V-Drum kit. He does not use any of the sounds that are recorded on the tracks. He uses a live high hat with electronic cymbals. It is not miked. He never studied the grooves on the tracks, and plays like a machine. He should have been fired. Your most difficult music in this show is Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s opera Turandot. It is an aria. (In opera there are two types of singing. Recitative is spoken language set to music. It is linear, florid, and continuous. Aria is more sedate and expressive. Its rhythm is like a hymn.) It is extremely unusual to use an aria in a commercial production show. The reason is chamber and orchestral music are expressive and breathe. Commercial music relies upon a groove. To realize an aria in a commercial context with a CLICK TRACK, all of the changes in tempo (rubato) must be calculated and programmed into the computer. In this production show City of Dreams understanding and playing these tempo markings in Nessun Dorma was the major task of the piano player. There was only one simple line of melody to play, but there were tempo changes every two beats of music. This is the most unconventional music notation conceivable, and no commercial keyboard player in a pit orchestra of a production show should ever be required to do this. Doing this means you must memorize over thirty tempo changes for one short piece of music. (This is not music) No musician in history has ever been required to do this. After attempting to follow a rubato click track completely exposed with two vocalists that have no click track, you’re required to play a techno synthesizer part with the bass playing off beats to your downbeats. Like the “Piano Man” show where the lead trumpet player is playing his syncopations in your ear off your beat one, this bass player is doing the same thing. It is commonplace in ship production show writing to use the piano player as the metronome. The arranger does not use a live piano player to record the keyboard parts in the studio. Instead they program the keyboard parts with the computer using a standard MIDI file extraction from their notation program. It is left untouched or quantized with a specific rhythmic feel generating a Casio Drum Machine type feel. The feeling of live music does not exist in the track, and the arranger requires that the other live players record to this track negating the possibility of any real musical interaction. This stiff, sterile, uncompromising music erroneously has begun to set the standard for commercial music production in America. Because there are only three venues of live music left in the vocation of music (Broadway, the military, and cruise ships) cruise ship work has taken over as the major trend. With the influx of Disney into the Broadway orchestra pit, live music production has suffered. The use of a computer in music production has ruined the craft of music in a few short years. Jazz music, the underground, renegade, and rebellious music of Bourbon Street brothels, is what created art in music in America. It added humanity to an aesthetic that easily can become nationalistic propaganda. America was the unique place that allowed this music to come to fruition. The flooding of New Orleans and the subsequent loss of American musical heritage greatly is effecting the temperament of the nation. The drugless anodyne to life’s tragedies slowly is being murdered at the expense of right wing extremism. Music quintessentially represents the human things that need to occur in life. If this magic could be incorporated into the cruise ship experience instead of a stifling bureaucratic political game of music, then it stands to reason everyone would benefit. Keeping the pleasures of music at bay because of novice movers and shakers is a crime.