In March 2020, I played percussion in the pit of Broadway By the Bay’s production of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic musical The Sound of Music. I was excited about this production because it was my first paid work as a percussionist in the bay area since leaving my job at UC Riverside.
…AND THEN CORONAVIRUS HAPPENED.
Unfortunately, on March 12th, the invited dress rehearsal became opening night and closing night rolled in to one.
But back to why this ended up being a fun show for me nonetheless. The book isn’t super challenging, but it turned out to be an opportunity to learn new things and use music technology to fill gaps in my instrument inventory. The bulk of the notes are on a small drum set and triangle. But it also calls for several things I don’t currently own, including a single chime, two timpani, glockenspiel, and temple blocks or different pitched woodblocks.
When I got the call about the gig, I thought about passing it up, because renting these instruments would eat up any money I would make. Also, I didn’t have a network of percussion friends who I could borrow from. I do however have access to some decent percussion sample libraries as part of Ableton Live 10 Suite. I spent some time listening and programming virtual instrument patches for the chime, glockenspiel, and temple blocks. But the Live timpani just weren’t cutting it.
Notice the labeled pads for instrument changes. This enabled me to play the quick changes called for in the part.
After some research, I purchased the Vienna Symphony Library Timpani Full Library ($66), which worked out great. I happened to own a USB security key that works with this library, which saved me some additional money.
I set up a session in Ableton Live, mapped various MIDI parameters and played the virtual instruments using a M-Audio Oxygen25. I changed between instruments by pressing the pad assigned to that instrument (see the image for details).
Other equipment used: Late 2011 13” Apple MacBook Pro, Focusrite Scarlett, Seagate external USB hard disk with backups installed.
Though the show only happened one night before getting shut down for quarantine, I really enjoyed playing with BBB and all the excellent musicians in the pit! I hope to be able to do it again soon…
