Half-staff
The music industry’s fear of the Dread Pirate Anyone borders on legendary these days. (And of course, when Anyone retires, someone else will assume the, um, position.) This ongoing neurosis, I submit, has affected them in ways they never anticipated. For instance, it would be nice if they could handle a simple task like coming up with sheet music on request, but apparently they’ve had trouble with the concept for some time:
It’s been a while since I purchased band parts, but I remember the process as often being expensive and frustrating. Even if you could obtain what you were looking for (no certainty), the instrumental parts supplied never seemed to match the ensemble (too many clarinets and not enough flutes, for example). That problem was- supposed to- lead to an order of extra parts from the publisher (frustrating, with long delays and outrageous per-page charges), but was (usually) solved with a bit of clandestine copying (a.k.a. *PIRACY*) instead.
I bounced this off Trini, who (apart from being all those other wonderful things I’ve mentioned) was a major band geek, and she confirms: “Oh, the days of standing at the copier for hours running sheet music through…”
There would seem to be a potential solution at hand:
Even back then I was wondering why arrangements didn’t come as a printed conductor’s score plus a disc of PDFs.
Probably due to the Dread factor.
sya »
17 March 2010 · 12:54 pm
I’ve played in bands and orchestras and I always assumed that the number and kind of parts that got sent were for some sort of “ideal”. So of course there was plenty of copying or transposing or just plain substituting (like a bassoonist playing a cello part) because no large musical ensemble was really an ideal.
As for the trios, quartets, and quintets I’ve been in, there were always exactly the right number of parts. Although it would be interesting to have four people playing a trio…
Eric »
17 March 2010 · 1:47 pm
It was really even worse (or better, depending on your perspective) than that. In high school, many of us band geeks photocopied our music ourselves and turned the originals back to the director. That way, we had our personal copies to mark up as we liked (I still have some of those never-mind-how-old-but-I-assure-you-they-were-NOT-carved-in-stone scores) and the director managed to distribute the proverbial few loaves and fishes among the multitude, as if by magic.
Donna B. »
17 March 2010 · 3:50 pm
I remember a bit of a problem with copying some music for my personal use just a few years ago. I wanted to eliminate page turning and Kinko’s wouldn’t allow me to make copies from a book.
Of course that didn’t stop me…