The Nutcracker Ballet Dances to GPO

[Garritan]

Four performances of the Nutcracker Ballet recently took place and GPO was used for almost the entire production.


http://www.northwestballet.org/images/nwb_nutcracker.jpg



The Nutcracker Ballet has been inspiring audiences for 100 years. I remember when I was a child my parents would take me to see the Nutcracker performed by the NYC Ballet. I never did forget the magic. Snowflakes and flowers dance, toys come to life, the mice do battle, the Christmas tree soars high, an ethereal on-stage snowstorm, Mother Ginger, the Sugar Plum Fairy and so many beautiful ballet dancers and dazzling sets. Here I am many years later and I feel like a child again experiencing the Northwest Ballet's performance of this time-honored classic.

What was really special this time is that the performance was almost all GPO! Before the curtains were raised, John Bishop, Artistic Director of the Northwest Ballet, announced: "The music you will hear tonight hasa been done by an amazing program called Garritan Personal Orchestra..."

John Bishop states: "I have danced with live orchestra most of my 30 year career in ballet ... I was not only surprised that the music Mr. Garritan produced for this year's Nutcracker by the Northwest Ballet Theatre was so incredibly crisp and sounded beautiful over the theatre's sound system, but that it was created on a computer without using a single live instrument. Listening to it, I certainly could not tell that his what not recorded by a live orchestra. I did not tell my dancers and you know what...the only comments I heard from them about the music was that it sounded 'great'. I hope to use the Garritan Personal Orchestra from now on."

The entire production was almost ann hour and a half of continuous orchestral music.

Many thanks to Danielle, Haydn, Francesco, FrankS and others who worked so hard to sequence the music for this successful performance. Especially to Haydn who did the lion's share of the sequencing for the show. Thanks also to John Biship who shared the vision for the first sequenced production of the Nutcracker. John Bishop, has been a professional dancer, choreographer, and teacher for over 30 years and has danced for many years with the American Ballet Theatre in New York as well as with major ballet companies throughout the world. An also thanks to the dancers for their sheer commitment and devotion they brought to this production.

When the video is available (and if I can get permission) I will try to post some movies. In the meantime, if there is interest I can post some MP3 demos - maybe a Nutcracker album?

Gary Garritan




http://www.garritan.com/images/Julie-Nutcraker2002.jpg

[Bela D Media]

Bravo G~Man!

[David_Maddux]

Whoa! What a coup! Bravo and bravo to all involved!
Congrats, Gary!

[stevegoers]

In the meantime, if there is interest I can post some MP3 demos - maybe a Nutcracker album?


I'm interested for sure!

Congrats all around.

[trentpmcd]

This is great. Congrats to you and to Danielle, Haydn, Francesco, FrankS and whoever else worked on it. I for one would love to hear mp3s.

[Styxx]

Excellent! My congratulations to all! Mp3's of the music will be nice.

[Joseph Burrell]

Geeze, its coming, its coming. Can't I take a stinking day off. LOL - :D

[Hardy Heern]

Gary, Of course we'd all like to have a listen. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif

This is great proof of the ability of modern sampling packages such as GPO to reproduce orchestral music.....I have believed for some time that, when painstakingly and sensitively sequenced, 99% of folk wouldn't be any the wiser. This proves it (yet again)

Haydn's achievement with the Beethoven demo (over a year ago!!) demonstrated/proved his talent and ability and the others in the team are all top knotch sequencists too as we have all heard many times!

This also explains the mystery disappearance, and recent reappearance of posters from this group!!http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif I had assumed they were working on a NAMM project! Perhaps they were too!!

Congratulations to all!!

Frank

[Garritan]

Gary, Of course we'd all like to have a listen. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif


Thanks everyone. We'll try to get some cues up in the next few days.

Gary Garritan

[Brian W. Ralston]

I hope to use the Garritan Personal Orchestra from now on. sigh! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/frown.gif

With all due respect to Gary and his wonderful product (I hope business continues to go well)...at the same time...live theatre is starting to move more and more away from using live musicians. This to me is sad. I understand the reasons behind it...I've been there myself...but sad none the less.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I have to say, this is pretty interesting.

I spoke recently about consolidating a few parts in a musical production (within the context of using and paying many live musicians, too), and I got flamed as if I were Satan himself coming to take the bread out of musician's mouths.

This announcement gets made, and everyone lines up to genuflect and take a lap at the lodgepole.

What a double standard.

I don't wish to portray this announcement negatively, because I think that for many smaller organizations, the difference between being able to produce a Nutcracker or not depends upon finding ways to cut costs. And by using music technology, a good performance can be had, while putting as much money as possible into the parts of the production that people actually see and perceive the most. It's a ballet. So that's dancers, sets, lights, clothes, and if the music can support those elements while coming in cheaper, that is the priority it should have.

I just find it maddeningly ironic that the opinion of this practice seems to come down more upon who's doing the discussing rather than what is actually being discussed.

[Haydn]

Most of the local productions here in Phoenix, Arizona use canned music. Only the biggest production uses the Phoenix Symphony. The same thing happened in Detroit where I used to live.

Smaller local productions cannot afford to pay a full orchestra to play this ballet. This is a little different situation than your normal musical. You would need a minimum of 40 players to make it sound decent and that would be a very small stripped down string section. The ballet calls for 10 brass, 12 woodwinds, 2 harps, 3 percussionist, 1 celeste plus the strings. Trying to find this many quality musicians to play this piece could be difficult. Some of the union musicians I've played with would have a tough time with the challenging piece of music.

With the sequenced versions, the conductor can have the tempos changed for various sections which is very hard to do with normal canned music. They can also make changes to the reverb to fit the performance location.

[Daryl]

Smaller local productions cannot afford to pay a full orchestra to play this ballet. This is a little different situation than your normal musical. You would need a minimum of 40 players to make it sound decent...


Well my orchestration can (and has) been done with 26 musicians, and it sounds very good, thank you very much. As to the quality of musicians generally available in the US, I have no comment, except to say that all the ones I have worked with have been top notch in my opinion.

However, I will say that any dancer who has ever danced to live music will hate recorded music because of the inflexibility involved. Making various sections at different tempi doesn't cut it, as often the dancer doesn't even know what tempo they need...!

Daryl

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Having worked with quite a bit of choreography and dance in my time, I would definitely say that MIDI-based "canning" is highly preferable to canning a live-player session...definitely the better of the two evils. I still fully can the tracks before performance, though, after the tempos have been worked out and rehearsed successfully.

What generally works best, IMO, is to just have a session with the choreographer before rehearsal begins, to work on the tempo maps together. Any good choreographer can "step through" a piece and work tempos very effectively in the studio.

Then, after the piece is on its feet, usually one or two more sessions for fine tuning will get the job done.

[Joseph Burrell]

Uhm... The purpose of this post is not to bring into the fray whether or not you personally believe in this process or not. Personally, I applaud everyone involved in the project and am very happy to see such use of Garritan Personal Orchestra. How I feel about it taking the place of live musicians is another matter altogether.

Congratulations on this wonderful honor Gary. Another amazing use of Garritan Personal Orchestra.

Haydn, your work here is astonishing.

[JonP]

Bert: This production should rock

Ernie: Yep, I'm amped. Are you amped?.

Bert: Totally amped dude, totally amped.

Ernie: Ok, so what do you want me to do?

Bert: Well, when you see that guy over there spring out from behind that curtain you hit the spacebar.

Ernie: The spacebar?

Bert: The spacebar.

Ernie: Too cool dude, too cool.

Bert: Yeah, but there's an art to it.

Ernie: how so?

Bert: Well, you gotta hit nice and firm. Kind of a slap.

Ernie: Ok.

Bert: Yeah, that's important. I mean, you can hammer it if you want - but don't tickle it.

Ernie: why's that?

Bert: It'll start and then stop again.

Ernie: Hell, that's quite some responsibility.

Bert: Yeah, and don't forget this IS performance art. Its a fusion of visual display and beautiful music. I don't want it screwed up by some limp wristed movement.

Ernie: I totally understand.

Bert: Ok, here we go......

(15 minutes later)

Ernie: How long till I hit the space bar again?

Bert: 4 minutes. Fancy a beer?.

Ernie: A beer?. Yeah, I could do with a beer.....and some nuts.

Bert: Sure. Here y' go.

Ernie: Cool. What's that other computer for.

Bert: Sound FX. Listen....in a minute you're gonna here the toy soldiers do some serious shooting. Comes out the back speakers and arches forward. Its amazing.

Ernie: I hear it. How did you did you capture that sound?.

Bert: Tied up a fat kit and fired some elastic bands at him. Ran it through IR-1, compressed the f*** out of it and bit crunched the result.

Ernie: you rock dude.

Bert: No, YOU rock dude.

Ernie: umm.....She looks pretty sexy in that skirt.

Bert: Its a tutu

Ernie: As in Desmond?.

Bert: pretty much..................................

[FredProgGH]

Wow Jon, so if there's no art whatsoever associated with these computer tools what exactly do you do and why are you here?? Do you realize on some level you've just totally insulted yourself??

[JonP]

Wow Jon, so if there's no art whatsoever associated with these computer tools what exactly do you do and why are you here??

I perform, often using samples - live :D

[Garritan]

I use samples - live :D
What if you can conduct your sampled orchestra live? http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[JonP]

What if you can conduct your sampled orchestra live? http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

I like my instruments played live Gary :D

[Garritan]

I like my instruments played live Gary :D I like my players alive too ...

Maybe for next year's performances I will put together an ensemble of live sample players.

[JonP]

I like my players alive too ...

Maybe for next year's performances I will put together an ensemble of live sample players.

I wouldn't have room to inflict my duff sense of humour then!

[FredProgGH]

I perform, often using samples - live :D


So?? Good for you, but you also then fall short of ever harnessing the potential of what these libs can do when programmed. By limiting yourself to the constraints of doing something in real time for the vanity of saying that's what you do you'll never make a sound like those of us who program.

(BTW, do you record?? Does your purism keep you from overdubbing? Do you only capture live unedited performance, like classic jazz recordings?? For that matter, do you rail against those who listen to prerecorded music in their homes and cars, instead of waiting for the band to tour??)

OK, I'm really sorry if I'm being a grumpy b@st@rd- maybe my humor meter is entirely broken tonight.
All I wanted to do was point out that IMO you seemed pretty insulting to the MUSICIANS (in this case, non real-time performers) and their efforts, implying it all comes down to some twit and a spacebar and it ticked me off. My bad.


I sleep now!


Oh, and I play live too. Here's a link to my DVD

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00024E6BS/qid%3D1103521640/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/104-2325050-3408761

[Damon]

Congrats Gary! Great news to hear. Hope you have a happy holiday as well :)

[Daryl]

Having worked with quite a bit of choreography and dance in my time, I would definitely say that MIDI-based "canning" is highly preferable to canning a live-player session...definitely the better of the two evils. I still fully can the tracks before performance, though, after the tempos have been worked out and rehearsed successfully.

What generally works best, IMO, is to just have a session with the choreographer before rehearsal begins, to work on the tempo maps together. Any good choreographer can "step through" a piece and work tempos very effectively in the studio.

Then, after the piece is on its feet, usually one or two more sessions for fine tuning will get the job done.

I certainly agree about MIDI "canning" if the programmer can bring it off well.

Regarding choreographers and dancers, I think that we are talking at cross purposes. Ballet dancers are athletes and have the same physical limitations. What might be a good tempo one day may be near impossible on another. Sure, the Corps stuff doesn't change much, but get into a solo or pas de deux and pre-recorded music often just provides a straitjacket for the dancers. Mind you, an inexperienced conductor is even worse...!

Daryl

[Daryl]

What if you can conduct your sampled orchestra live? http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Well, if the sampled orchestra could react to my shadings of colours and dynamic as well as tempo, then I guess that I could live with that....!

Daryl

[JonP]

....you'll never make a sound like those of us who program.



Fred, you know I think I can live with that :D

(oh...bear in mind I'm talking about live performance here. I program for commercial projects all the time).