Orchestral enhancement

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Orchestral Enhancement is the technique of using technology to increase the sound, complexity, or color of a pit orchestra in performance, usually musical theatre, but also dance, opera or other performance genres. There are numerous techniques, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The reasons behind orchestral enhancement are many, including budget, space, or personnel considerations, style and compositional requirements, and adding new sounds and capabilities to existing ensembles.

Starting in the seventies, the use of microphones on instruments in musical theatre was introduced. This created a larger sound that was able to compete with the now amplified voices, and changed the dynamics of the instrument/vocal relationship in this art form. The advent of synthesizers was greeted with horror by many musicians. However, the synthesizer has long made a home in the musical theatre pit, and it is a rare production indeed that does not use some form of enhancement.

[edit] Orchestra tasks

In addressing orchestral enhancement strategies, it is important to identify a variety of tasks that a traditional orchestra performs. A not complete list of these tasks:

Musical production – members must be able to reliably create a pallet of sounds from their instrument.
Score interpretation – musicians must be able to read from a musical score, and generate the appropriate sounds as indicated.
Tempo flexibility – every performance, and in fact, beat of every performance, will be slightly different. The performers must follow the tempo indications of the conductor.
Dynamic flexibility – depending on the vagaries of the performance, musicians will be asked (usually through gesture) to play at greater or lesser volume. This, as in tempo, can be constantly changing.
Blending – musicians must listen to the output of the other musicians, and adjust their performance to match in an appropriate way.
Rehearsal modifications – during rehearsals, changes will be requested by the conductor. Musicians will want to notate these changes in their score, so that they can reliably reproduce these adjustments at a later time.
Random access to music, musicians will be asked to play from different locations within the score, either during rehearsals, or to compensate for unexpected occurrences during the performance.

[edit] Enhancement strategies

From the set of orchestra tasks, it is possible to develop a list of equivalent requirements that a fully featured orchestral enhancement system should be able to implement.

Realism – the ability to realistically simulate the sound of the missing instruments.
Score information – the ability to store multiple productions in some sort of score format.
Tempo Flexibility. The tempo (speed) of performance will vary constantly from performance to performance. Any solution needs to be able to follow the tempo indications of the musical director, conductor or whoever is setting this.
Catastrophe recovery. Even in the most polished production, events can occur which interrupt the normal progression of the performance (missed entrances, sticking scenery, forgotten lines, etc). The orchestra will need to adjust by jumping to locations out of order, by arbitrarily repeating sections determined on the site or following directions in a variety of different ways.
Orchestra size. Different productions will have different budgets, and can therefore afford different sizes of orchestras. Any solution should easily be able to accommodate to these changes in size, either between or within productions.
Transposition. At times, a different performer may need to be introduced, with resulting changes in performance styles and capabilities. One of these is to change the key of the piece.
Modifications to the mix. Performances that travel to different venues find that each performing hall has different acoustics, and therefore different instruments will respond differently (be too loud, to bright, etc). Any solution needs to provide the capability of making these types of adjustments.
Changes during rehearsals. There has never been a production that has gone through the rehearsal process without making changes to the performance. These adjustments need to be made quickly.
Ability for a single musician to perform multiple parts simultaneously. If the solution requires a one-to-one ratio of replacement versus original, then there is no reason to use any solution.
Ability to change dynamics in real time. Loudness levels need to be adjusted during the performance as well.
Transparency. Overall, the traditions of the performing arts have been developed over many years. Any solution should provide minimum impact on these techniques, and therefore be transparent to director, musicians, and stage talent.

[edit] Previous solutions

Since the early 1970s, it has become normal to incorporate orchestral enhancement techniques.

Changing the size of the orchestra. Doing this requires the employment of an orchestrator. This can be an additional and not inconsiderable expense. If decreasing the size, the quality of the final output is compromised by a thinner sound. If the scope of the production changes, then additional orchestrations need to be done. Since practically every production has different contingencies, this reorchestration needs to occur time and again, depending on the required size of the orchestra.
Amplification. Sound engineers have been placing microphones on instruments for close to forty years. This results in a louder sound, though it does not add to the color or complexity of the ensemble.
Prerecorded music. Often called click track. Although able to provide a warm, convincing sound, this solution suffers in many of the other areas. Tempo is fixed, and, in fact, the musical director must often wear headphones which contain a metronome click (hence the name) in order to follow the prerecorded sound. Also, there is no way to recover from a catastrophe, and internal mix decisions are not able to be changed without a lengthy and expensive re-recording session.
Synthesizer. The most common solution used has been to place synthesizer players in the orchestra, each covering multiple parts. Although able to provide flexibility and catastrophe recovery, the resulting sound is thin and unrealistic. It is impossible for a single player to provide the nuance and technique of multiple musicians simultaneously.
Sequencing. There are many computer programs which are designed to take advantage of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) specifications to control multiple synthesizer parts. In effect, these devices can store "performances" and then play back these performances. Sequencers are powerful tools, and, in the right hands, capable of realistic simulations of the orchestra. However, since these devices were designed for and mostly used in the studio environment, their thrust has been to develop solutions designed for studio use. There are many situations in the live performance world that are not fully implemented within these systems, such as arbitrary tempo flexibility, full catas-trophe protection, and real-time modifications to the instrument output.
New Instruments. Specialized devices, mostly optimized for live performance. Multiple types of user interfaces and performance philosophies indicate that this area is still in development. Given the exponentially increasing speed and power of computer systems, it is not unreasonable to expect equivalent advances in power, versatility, and reliability.