I love it! I'm assuming he never understood why it didn't work out as originally planned... I have a similar story involving a tango in 5/4. "Bum, Bum, Bum, Bump-DAH, Dum." The guy was counting the heavily accented "and" of four as the fifth beat. When I told him that it's actually in 4/4, he didn't believe me. Haven't heard much from him since.
On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Christopher Smith < [email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon May 24, at MondayMay 24 7:19 PM, Ryan wrote: > > I love hearing these "horror stories" from musical theater. I'm getting >> ready to conduct Fiddler on the Roof and the director has told me he's >> considering putting the orchestra on stage (partly in the wings), so that >> we >> can become the "wedding band" at the end of Act I. I don't like the idea >> of >> having 15 musicians trying to perform during a brawl... >> Christopher, I wonder if we've worked with the same choreographer. There >> always seems to be one like her involved in every show I've done! >> > > > Hey, man, I've got TONs of horror stories! Here's my favourite, which I > have actually heard variants of, from two or three different sources, aside > from the incident that I was involved with. This must happen more often than > I thought possible. > > I was preparing arrangements for a hotel revue (think cruise ship) and the > choreographer said, "I have an original piece in the show that I have > invented. It's very exotic, with an Arabian Nights theme, and it's in seven. > Can you compose something that will go with the style? I'll give you the > counts and the hits." I spent a lot of time working out a very cool (in my > opinion) original composition in 7/4, proud of my work. In the first > rehearsal with the dancers and band (time was very tight, so he had taught > it with counts and clapping) he stopped us after a few measures. "Oops, we > got off beat. Try again." Six or seven times we restarted, then he started > to blame us. We weren't playing it properly, the hits weren't right, the > musicians weren't good enough, I had written it wrong. Finally I asked him, > "Can you show me the counts as you conceived it?" "Certainly!" he said > proudly, and counted off emphatically with a clap on each syllable, "One, > two, three, four, five, six, sev-en." It was in eight, with two counts for > "sev-en". > > We faked Caravan and he was happy. > > Oy. > > > Christopher > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
