I wonder if any of you have used your arranger the way I used mine a couple of weeks ago.

Our local school was doing a production of "Anything Goes". The school always uses a pit orchestra for their musicals. I received a call from the orchestra leader (she is a friend of mine) to play in the pit orchestra using my G70 to cover parts they didn't have. I ended up using my G70 to cover the timpany, xylophone, banjo and rhythm guitar parts. It was different and kind of fun.

Tom

Tom, I haven't done that, except for sound scores, where I go back in and record sound effects on separate channels, but I take my grandkids to the circus every year, and the two kids that Ringling used the last few years worked with a sax, bass, guitar and drum. It was an awesome combination of tracks, additional horn parts (one keyboard) and sound effects/other embellishments (other keyboard). We were on a balcony directly over the pit, so I watched the group more than the tigers and lions.

Been working with a member of the University faculty on twin keyboard jobs. It's him on piano and me on synths, or me on B-2 and Rhodes and him on synths. We're going to start to integrate vibes into the act.

Worked "in the pit" with a 2nd keyboard at the Savoy Burlesque theater in Louisville years ago, but that was "a whole different "ball" game." "LOL"

Sorry!


Russ

Some of my favorite gigs are where there's another keyboardist covering rhythm, and I simply get to do sweetening's. Sadly, my pit orchestra days were all on trombone (although we got caught short in a production of The Merry Widow one time, and I had to cover the bassoon parts as well on the t'bone - very weird!). Especially on Broadway and larger venues, I'm afraid I don't like the idea of keyboards covering players a venue that size COULD afford. It just smacks of cheapness and a willingness to short-change the audience, I'm sorry to say.

Got offered a couple of circus gigs back in my trombone days, but a few friends that had done them said they weren't treated that well. This was all before keyboards COULD replace real players. Gig might be fun now, but I'd still feel guilty about replacing some real players who would have had a gig back in the day...

I do that quite a bit at church. I frequently have someone fill in tymp parts to majestic hymns along with pipe organ and grand piano and sometimes brass. I'll also have someone do brass parts on another board when I don't have real brass players. For Easter this year we did a cantata that was mostly rockin praise music. For this kind of thing I usually bring in my old band guys. Money was tight this year so I set everything up on my Yamaha PSR 900 along with piano and my little string ensemble and flute. It worked beautifully. People were clapping along from beginning to end. Keyboards are an amazing thing.

Joe

One of my favorite "showy" sounds is a grand piano layered with strings and a very high velocity triggered tymp sound .... so cool to play with expression. You're comping behing a strong vocal and in parts of emphasis, you smack down harder and the tymps come in ... thrillin!