Strike Out the Band?

So, here we are, sitting amongst this load of obsolete gear that nobody wants. Why hear the real thing when you can hear a synthesized mock-up? I thought you might like to hear it, Jerry, before I burn it all. The last live drum solo, as played by man. The very last.

The words belong to Lupus, the seemingly disembodied band musician whose tortured face tears at you from several television monitors during the Mark Taper Forum’s currently running “Henceforward . . .” by British writer Alan Ayckbourn.

Lupus’ words, actually a small speech mixed in with the larger issues of humanity and technology and a society bent on suicide or civil war--take your choice--may be all too true.

Lupus may be on to something. For in a number of places where Americans listen to live music, the issue of keyboards and electronic instruments is a real one. The last live drum solo may already have been played. The issue: Are electronic instruments enhancements to the music or a necessary way of keeping orchestras alive and costs down? Consider what is happening close at home and in various parts of the country, even as Lupus squirms electronically:

* In Long Beach, a musical without a band as we know it, but with synthesizers.

* In Washington, an opera without an orchestra, but with an electronic keyboard instrument.

* In New York, a musical where the string section has been replaced by synthesizers.

* And in New Jersey, syn without guilt.

They are giving concerts and not inviting some of the musicians.

Synthesizers, keyboards, Kurzweils, Moogs are forcing a lot of people in and out of orchestras to listen to different drummers. New electronic instruments can imitate traditional sounds as well as create a whole new range of sounds. And, depending on where you sit, they can either replace members of the orchestra or augment what is there.

It’s the Lupus Syndrome. A new aural age or the last drum solo. What we hear in Long Beach and Washington and New York are now fights over jobs and in some cases fights over the quality of sound.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Opera’s production of “Don Carlo” went on without an orchestra, just conductor David Lawton, two pianos and one synthesizer player. The same took place again Monday evening. It was a presentation, in the words of one critic, of the “new, low-budget Washington Keyboard Opera Company.” A dispute with the musicians union over the number of players needed by the company caused the management to opt for keyboards, percussive and electronic. It was real, live, traditional opera done recital style, leaving organ and bell effects up to the electronic instrument and the pianos to carry the singers.

Almost the same thing at the Long Beach Civic Light Opera when it came time this year to start its season with “Hello, Dolly!” No agreement with the musicians union on a lapsed contract and a management intent on putting on the show. “Dolly” went on and all the audience could see was a conductor in the pit. Somewhere in the dark in front of the stage, 11 musicians were assembled. Among them, two new players--two keyboard players. And in upcoming productions in Long Beach if there is no agreement with the musicians union, synthesizers for December’s “Nutcracker” and next February’s presentation of “Ballroom” starring Tyne Daly.

In New York, passions are boiling over what happened to the “Grand Hotel” orchestra at the Martin Beck Theatre. Originally, eight string players had been added to the minimum 18 called for by the management-union contract. When those eight string players were eventually replaced by a synthesizer player--a union card-carrying keyboard player--in what the producers called a necessary cost saving, union officials cried unfair, unmusical and unwarranted.

Here, the union said, was a potentially threatening practice, possibly a dangerous precedent. If one player, even a union member, could do the work of eight, certainly unemployment would not be far behind. And that’s a real problem for union members. Their ranks and files have been dropping steadily, jobs are in shorter supply and many blame those losses on electronic instruments, keyboards that can replace dance bands, keyboards that can sound like whole orchestras, single keyboards that have taken away recordings and commercial-making from full bands and orchestras. In all of this bleakness there is but one glint of sunshine for union players, and that’s in Hollywood where several film studios have moved away from electronic sounds and have gone back to traditional instruments.

And there is more to the flip side of this controversy. Many traveling musicals find they can stay economically viable by using synthetizers rather than the customary, 28-member house orchestras. Small theaters find they can put on musicals with one synthesizer while bands would mean prohibitive costs. Dance companies are moving away from tape-recorded musical backgrounds in favor of single synthesizer players capable of sounding like full orchestras.

Still, many critics and musicians maintain that America is on the verge of musical illiteracy because of the advent of electronic music. “A day could come when a whole generation of Americans will never know what a real piano sounds like,” one musician said.

Then there’s Brett Sommer, a New Jersey musician, programmer, composer and keyboard consultant (he recently worked with the Long Beach Civic Light Opera). He thinks the synthesizer will bring more work to musicians as well as a higher quality of sound for most people.

To that end, Sommer has developed a “black box” which he believes will change live musical presentations everywhere, especially live theater music. The black box that powers a keyboard would provide full instrumentation and full scores. All a theater would need for its musical presentations would be the box, its system and a trained player.

He doesn’t see his system ever replacing large orchestras or theater bands. He deplores any unemployment caused by producers who use synthesizers as a way to cut costs. He sees the system being used by more and more traveling theater companies, small companies unable to carry orchestras of almost any size. But the biggest hope is in high school and in college companies. Ninety-percent of all licenses sold for theater and musical presentations in this country are to schools.

Many don’t have orchestras because school music programs long ago were mugged by budget makers and politicians. Bootleg tape recordings shamefully serve as the backgrounds to school presentations. His plan: Each time a school buys the rights for a musical presentation it would also get his synthesizer system. “The schools will have live, interactive music, not poor-quality tapes that the singers have to sing with,” he says. “The keyboard players will sound like live bands.”

He sees more: Piano bars where keyboard players would replace tape recorders and jazz clubs where live musicians rather than karaoke machines would play.

As the computer changed the way writers write and editors edit and office workers go about their business and the way assembly lines produce cars, the electronic, digital, amplified keyboard is kicking up the same kind of dust.

But is it progress or Memorex?

For keyboard advocates like Sommer, there is substance and hope in another set of words by playwright Ayckbourn in “Henceforward . . .”

They are spoken by Jerome, the play’s protagonist, a composer of electronic music:

I want to express the feeling of love in an abstract musical form. In such a way that anyone who hears it -- anyone -- no matter what language they speak -- no matter what creed or color -- they will recognize it -- and respond to it -- and relate it to their own feelings of love that they have or they’ve experienced at some time -- so they say -- yes, my God, that’s it! That’s what it is! And maybe who knows, consequently, there might be a bit more of it.