Dan Baker: Heart of America's Executive Producer

Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Show Choir Sessions.

I’m Garrett Breeze, and today we’re going to be diving into the world of keyboard programming, specifically how show choirs can use mainstage to enhance their sound design.

My guest today is Julianne Merrill, who works on Broadway as a music director, pianist, and electronic music designer.

Both of us are alumni of North Central High School in Indianapolis, where we have worked together for the past several seasons on the Show Choir creative team.

We’ve also collaborated in making the Breeze Tunes Mainstage Library, which you can get from Julianne, and which was designed to cover the most commonly requested types of sounds needed by keyboards in Show Choir.

It’s a good middle ground for groups that want to get started using Mainstage, but don’t necessarily have the budget to hire someone like Julianne as a custom sound designer.

That being said, she’s extremely generous with her time, so if you’re on the fence about some of this stuff and you’re listening to this episode and not really sure, I’d really encourage you to reach out, because taking advantage of this technology does so much to enhance your show.

And frankly, I think this is where the future of Show Choir is headed.

I think there’s going to be a lot more integration of technology at all levels of performance.

And I think there’s both artistic and educational merit to that.

But that’s enough of me talking.

Here is my interview with Broadway music director and keyboardist, Julianne Merrill.

Julianne, welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing?

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I’m doing quite well.

Thank you.

So first of all, I get to call you Tony award-winning Julianne Merrill, don’t I?

Because you worked on Strange Loop.

Yeah.

How does that work?

I definitely worked on a Tony-winning show.

Okay, that’s fair.

Well, how would you describe what you do for Broadway?

I am a programmer and a music director.

So I work on the music teams of Broadway shows, and in one capacity, I can work as a keyboard programmer, which means using this program called Mainstage, which is an Apple program, and it’s also a sibling of Logic Pro, and I can program keyboards to make different sounds at different points.

So let’s say in one song, you need a harp and then another song, you need timpani or strings on your keyboard.

I work with the music department and the orchestrators to program those keyboards.

Programmer would also include drum pad programming, guitar rig programming, and so that’s one area of programming that I work with the music department.

And then the other part of programming that I do is called playback engineering, which is using a program called Ableton, which is another DAW, Digital Audio Workstation, that can be used to playback pre-recorded audio in synchrony with live musicians.

So I program clip tracks, I produce and program pre-recorded audio.

So let’s say you have extra vocals that you want to run at the same time, you have extra strings that are pre-recorded that you want to run at the same time.

In addition to that type of programming, I also program what’s called show control, which is synchrony with other departments.

That could be synchrony with video, that could be synchrony with lighting, with various sound cues.

As long as the music is playing and the clip track is running, I can send out signals to other departments, so that everything is really tightly aligned.

In addition to that, I play and conduct and I substitute conducted on Broadway, and I conduct and play many cabarets and other shows and galas.

I just work within the various music departments in those capacities.

Is this something that happens primarily when a new show is being developed that you’re going through and you’re programming everything and choosing the sounds, or is this something that happens every time a show is put on, even if it’s something that’s been performed in another theater?

It definitely happens when a show is new and being developed.

It also happens all the way down to any theater that wants to put on any show that calls for programming.

Sometimes the programming can be rented with the show, or sometimes you would pay a programmer to read all of the programming notes and program on their own.

But programming really happens on most modern shows.

Is it something that’s notated in the sheet music?

Yeah.

A lot of times you will see programming requests in the sheet music, specifically for talking keyboards.

You will get a, let’s say, your keyboard one piano conductor book.

You’ll see it’ll say harp, and then maybe at measure 72, it’ll say harp right hand, left hand, timpani.

That is a programming request that was done in the original show on Broadway or off Broadway, depending on what it got licensed from.

Then the expectation is that it is performed with some keyboard programming where the harp is in the right hand and the timpani is in the left hand.

It’s your job to choose which harp then?

Yeah.

As a programmer, then it’s your job to choose, well, what harp sound do we have?

Are we going to pick a harp sound that’s on the physical keyboard, or are we going to use a program like Mainstage that uses virtual instruments and uses the keyboard simply as a MIDI controller?

You’ll also see in most modern shows, you’ll see notes for click, click in, click out.

You’ll see notes for vocal sweeteners.

This is all original programming that has been notated in the music that then if you’re producing a show regionally or in community theater, you would want to figure out what that click was and program that click or record your own vocal sweeteners and play them back.

So what’s the rehearsal process like?

I mean, do you have just tech rehearsals where you’re playing around with different settings or is that something you do on your own?

I mean, how do you put it all together?

So the very, very first thing that I do is create a click map of the show.

And a click map is a tempo map.

They will say, okay, this song is going to be at 96 beats per minute.

And then let’s say at the dance break, it’s actually going to be 110 beats per minute.

And then we actually are going to slow down and we have this colo voce section, which means that the musicians are following the singer.

So there’s no click.

So the click drops out, but then we’re going to bring it back in.

So that’s something that I would work with the music director from the very beginning.

And as they get into rehearsal, they may come back to me and say, you know what, that 96 actually feels a little slow.

Why don’t we start at 100?

And that dance break felt a little fast.

So let’s drop that dance break to 108, for example.

So that’s definitely based off of rehearsal.

So that’s where I would begin, as far as playback engineering and click programming.

And then as far as keyboards, the first thing I would do is just look at the score of the licensed materials for a musical, if you’re producing regionally.

And just, I make a spreadsheet on this song, at this measure, it’s calling for this programming request.

And that’s actually the same, even working on a new Broadway show.

They will send me the score as they currently have it.

And I generally work very closely with the orchestrator.

And they will have already mapped out, I want this sound at this section.

So it all starts, frankly, with a spreadsheet.

How much rehearsing does the orchestra do on its own for a Broadway show?

Generally, for a full Broadway show, we’re talking maybe, you know, 24, 25 songs, full songs.

They would rehearse for three, two to three solid days with three to four-hour sessions.

So we’re talking about 18 hours of orchestra rehearsal, and then we would have a zits probe, which is where all of the full company comes in and meets the orchestra and we just sing everything, top to bottom in order, and it’s a really exciting day.

And then we go into tech rehearsal where actually the orchestra is not present, it just is the music director playing a keyboard.

And once we get tech sorted out, then we have band seating, which is where each instrumentalist gets to sit down and claim their space and say, I need a microphone here and I want my mutes to sit here, and at the keyboard I want my monitor stand to be right here.

And then, let’s see, how much should they play?

They probably play two full runs of the show, plus an invited dress rehearsal before they would actually get to first preview.

Yeah, something like that.

Now what you do, that would fall under the music director, I assume, but it is very technical.

Are you also working with the technical director of the show, or is that just a whole different animal?

I really do live under the umbrella of the music department, but part of my job is to coordinate specifically with the sound department.

I’ll have conversations with them about this is what type of signal I’m running, this is the levels that I’m running at.

There’s a whole thing called gain staging that starts at the very beginning with me and my singular keyboard patch, what level that’s outputting at, and then what my master level is outputting at, and then how much gain they have to bring me up at front of house.

If I’m sending one stereo channel of audio, or am I sending multiple stereo channels of audio?

When we get into bigger shows, I’ll say, okay, all of my keyboard synthesizer sounds are coming down channels one and two.

Any B3 Hammond organ type sounds are coming down channels three and four.

Let’s say any orchestral sounds that are not so synthy, but strings, horns are coming down five, six.

So it’s a major conversation with the sound designer, as well as the orchestrator of how we want to split out the various sounds because it gives more control to front of house.

The engineer who’s mixing the show every night, do they want to bring up the timpani in this one part?

Do they want to duck my program strings a bit under the real strings?

So that’s a major conversation.

Then another major conversation is with a video department and light department.

That is when I start to get into show control and what’s called timecode.

timecode, also known as SMPTE, is an audio file that was used in primarily television to synchronize audio and video.

I primarily work in 30 frames per second non-drop.

It’s just a 24-hour clock that tells the computer exactly where we are.

It’s hours, minutes, seconds, and then frames per second.

So 30 frames per second.

So I would program this audio output of timecode in coordination with video and lighting so that they can synchronize with me.

That’s about as much tech as I collaborate with.

I’m not ever involved with the set or costumes or things like that, but specifically audio, video, and lighting are very much integral to my programming.

That sounds like quite a bit to me.

What is a typical show day like?

Once you have everything up and running, you’re doing eight shows a week or whatever it is.

What’s your day like?

Well, honestly, I don’t have anything to do with it.

Once a show is up and running and the computers are up and running, and everything is programmed, I really truly automate everything from the moment power gets turned on to a computer.

A computer automatically turns on.

It is programmed to automatically load the show file, and then the technicians do what’s called a line check.

So I have a little queue set up that they push a button, and it sends signal down all the various audio channels to confirm that, yep, everything is working.

Then the conductor or whomever is operating the rig, we call it a rig, they play the show, and then I always program a shutdown queue at the end of the night that safely shuts the computer down, closes the program, so that when power gets turned off, everything is safe, and then just rinse and repeat, repeat, repeat.

About every quarter, I’ll go in and do some maintenance on the rigs, which means unplugging all the cables, dusting everything, making sure everything’s seated correctly.

I go into the computers and dump any sort of cached files or make sure everything is working really well.

But the beauty of it is once the show is up and running, my computers are actually playing and running the shows in tandem with the live orchestra, so I am not there.

What do you wish people knew about what goes on behind the scenes?

That’s a big question.

I think it’s important to know that every single little thing that you see or hear is supposed to happen.

Somebody spent a lot of time over every single note, every single nuance.

It’s very much programmed and I think it’s important to really realize that it takes a very large amount of people to put these shows together.

And it doesn’t just come together on its own.

Every single thing is thought about and carefully stitched.

So it’s truly a crafted experience.

And if someone listening wants to do what you do, how do they get started?

How do they find their way into this career path?

I think the first thing would simply be to learn the programs.

I’d say the major programs that are worth learning are Mainstage, Ableton, QLab, and Logic.

So those are all software programs.

We haven’t talked about QLab as much, but QLab is another queuing type software that’s mostly used by audio professionals, and it’s a playback device and software.

Mainstage programs, keyboards, Ableton is a digital audio workstation, but it’s also great for playback.

Those programs, they have free trials.

There is so much information online about these programs, so many YouTube tutorials, as well as on Coursera.

There are courses about it.

That’s the first thing, is just really learn the programs and then start to get involved in your local productions and say, hey, I’m interested in programming.

And because you can learn so much simply by doing, I would say if you’re interested in schooling about it, to be honest, Berkeley in Boston, I think, is a really good place to go if you’re considering a school for it.

I think, to an extent, a lot of it is simply learned by doing it on the job and just developing yourself.

But knowing the programs is essential.

Mainstage is only $30, which is incredible.

Ableton is not that cheap.

QLab is free unless you want to use the more advanced features.

And then you could pay a day rental or you could actually buy it.

So each program has levels to it.

But Mainstage is $30, period, which is great.

So learn all the programs and then move to New York, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I’d say learn all the programs, but just start working in your local regional productions because, yes, the business is in New York, but it’s really everywhere.

Everybody needs programming.

That’s good enough.

If they’re wanting to produce these more modern Broadway shows, they all require programming.

So that’s an interesting point.

When did all this start happening?

Is it a specific era of shows?

Is there a specific show that kicked it off?

Because you hear it in everything now, but you’re right.

Going back and doing a lot of the old shows, they wouldn’t have, I suppose they’d have keyboard patches, but they wouldn’t have as much technical stuff involved with the score anyway.

Right.

Yeah.

It truly comes along with the development of keyboards and the development of what’s called MIDI, which is Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and the integration of them.

I’d say you could see keyboard programming on shows as early as in the 90s, but you could find keyboard programming on any of the shows.

Let’s say in the early 2000s, it starts to come in Mainstage as a program was developed in 2007, and I’d say Mainstage really started coming to the Broadway pits in about 2012, 13, 14, in that area.

Then I would say playback engineering.

When I talk about playback, now we’re talking about click programming and show control and Ableton.

Playback really comes from the concert pop production world, where things are more regular in as far as tempo, and they were coordinating with lights and video as well as pyrotechnics, which is really big in concert pop production.

You can find playback going all the way back to, let’s say, about the early 2000s in the concert pop production world.

But as those things got more refined, they’ve been coming to Broadway, I’d say for the last decade, at least since around 2010.

But it has been evolving and developing because all of this programming stuff is a very sensitive topic because in theory, playback and programming is used because it can make up for missing instruments.

When you’re looking at a live orchestra, traditionally on Broadway, you had orchestras that were 20, 30 people.

But when producers are looking at budgets, 20, 30 people in an orchestra is a lot of money.

You’ll see Broadway pit sizes getting smaller and smaller.

You’ll see a pit size of, let’s say, 14, then a pit size of nine, down to a pit size of, let’s say, five people.

What programming does, whether it’s keyboard programming, drum programming, playback engineering, click, show control, etc., is it is augmenting the sound coming from the pit with a computer musician versus a live musician.

There’s a lot of pushback that comes specifically from the unions because they are advocating, hire real people, someone real to play the timpani, someone real to play the harp versus one person playing a computer that can make up for several people.

I think that Broadway has been very tentative in welcoming this type of programming because of unions involved and the job scarcities.

Most recently, you saw that with the new show, Here Lies Love, that just opened on Broadway, the Emel DeMarco story produced by David Byrne, where it was just a DJ and just straight playback, no live musicians, even though the union had a collective bargaining agreement with that specific theater for 19 musicians.

There was a big strike and a big picket line, and the producers and the union finally agreed on 12 live musicians.

Because otherwise a computer can in theory replace all of those musicians.

But there is a line, of course, between how do you play organically and as humanly as possible and things like that.

Well, and as an orchestrator, I approach this sort of two different directions, right?

You have the budget on the one side.

It’s like, well, how can I use a keyboard string to fill out the section?

But then you also have stuff that you are never going to get with live musicians that you want to add to the show.

All of the virtual drum kits and the swooshes and the pops and whatever it is.

So there is a part of it that’s not replacing musicians, right?

It just has to do with the style of the show.

As Broadway has become more contemporary and more pop influence, you see more of that stuff anyway, right?

I mean, you’re not going to have full symphonic orchestra in six because that’s just not the kind of music it is.

Right.

But those conversations, I assume, are happening as the show is in development, with the producers and the orchestrator and the composer and all of that stuff.

By the time it gets to you, those decisions have already been decided, right?

Or do you get asked sometimes, hey, this was the show written for 30 people, but we only have 10, so can you figure out how to make it work?

Yeah.

It’s actually both scenarios.

If I’m working on a new show, then yes, generally the orchestrator and the producers and the composer have figured out the best plan of action.

Just like you said, some stuff is totally computer swooshes and risers.

But sometimes we’ll even figure out how to make that playable on a keyboard by sampling a sound and then we call it a one-shot, where you can program it to a key and the player just hits that key in tempo and it just plays the sound cue.

That’s a way to still use a live musician and not have it be totally a computer.

I used to deal more in reduction programming, which is another style of programming of saying, hey, this musical was originally scored for a 25-person orchestra, and I have a budget for nine people.

How can we consolidate the missing parts into one or two keyboard books with main stage programming so that it’s still sounds full and we’re still honoring the original orchestration, but budget-wise and space-wise, because space in a modern pit, also you might not have room for a 25-person orchestra.

That would be called reduction programming.

I don’t see it as much on Broadway because they’re developing new shows, but I definitely saw that a lot in regional productions.

Since 2015, Heart of America has been hosting performance events for the finest choirs in iconic cities across the US.

We’ve become the leader in professionally produced educational experiences for both performers and fans.

Located in family-friendly entertainment meccas, HOA events light up the stage so your star can shine bright.

Heart of America delivers a competitive landscape perfect for beginning choirs and national champions alike.

Think you’ve got what it takes to perform on a national stage?

Contact us today at hoacchoir.com to begin your journey to a top-notch, affordable, and once-in-a-lifetime performance destination.

Well, let’s pivot and talk more about Show Choir.

You and I actually graduated from the same high school.

We grew up together and now we both worked together on the show choir music for North Central in Indianapolis.

Me writing the arrangements together with the director, Mike Ronick, and then you doing the keyboard and the percussion and doing your Broadway thing.

I see all the time in our secret Show Choir Facebook groups, people popping in to ask questions about keyboards and ask questions about synths.

Can you just give us a good better best of what the options are and how much money is involved in each of those levels?

Because there’s some people that are just asking, what keyboard do I buy?

Then some people are wanting to do the live mixing and the main stage programming and all of that.

So there’s this whole range.

Can you just talk us through what the options are?

If I’m a new director and I have no idea of any of this, but it’s my job to decide, how do I approach it?

I’m going to start with actually, since we had been talking about Broadway, I’ll tell you that a Broadway rig, which is a redundant rig, meaning that we run two computers at the same time.

In case one computer fails, another one can take over.

A Broadway rig with a professional keyboard is going to be anywhere from $7,000 to $10,000.

I just wanted to give you that idea of what the Broadway rig costs.

We’re just talking about the hardware, not the programming.

What’s involved in the hardware?

A computer, keyboard, cables?

Yeah.

That type of a rig would be a professional-grade keyboard, like a Yamaha YC88 is a professional-grade keyboard.

That would actually be two keyboards because you always want to spare, just in case, two of those keyboards plus two Mac mini computers, at least 16 gigs of RAM.

In theory, hopefully, an M1 or an M2, the new silicon processors.

Then it would be an audio interface.

That is what you’re actually plugging your audio cables in to connect to front of house.

It would have a MIDI router in it because we operate on MIDI, which you’ll see either USB cables or what’s called 5-pin.

Then MIDI cables and it would include a network router and an actual power conditioner as well as a rack unit for that.

That would also include a keyboard stand as well as pedals for a mainstage rig.

The standard pedals would be a sustain pedal.

We really like Yamaha rigs, so a Yamaha FC4A sustain pedal, an expression pedal, the Yamaha FC7, and then we really always like to have a patch advance pedal, which the preferred pedal is a Boss FS5U.

So that’s the standards of a rig.

So let’s say let’s start at the beginning.

If you’re doing any keyboard programming, you need a keyboard for sure.

You need a way to get audio out of that keyboard to either an amplifier or your front-of-house sound mixer, whoever is accepting that signal.

I would say the most basic thing is you need a keyboard that has on-board sounds.

And sometimes keyboard programming can be as simple as we want a piano here, we want an electric piano here, and we want to switch back to piano, and then we actually want like a B3 organ here.

And those type of sounds can still be found with GM for general MIDI.

They can be found on most standard keyboards, have electric piano, regular acoustic piano, maybe an upright piano, an organ.

They probably have a pipe organ.

They have some sort of synthesized strings.

And so you can hunt around in keyboard.

You can plug a stereo output directly out of keyboard into an amplifier.

And make sure you have a stain pedal for your keyboard.

And you could start there.

I’d say that would be the most basic and you could probably get a keyboard for $500.

The Casio Privia is actually a pretty decent keyboard in that price range.

Also, the Yamaha P515 is a pretty decent keyboard in that range.

So that would be the most basic level of keyboard programming.

And just to plug it into an amp, I highly recommend the Roland keyboard amps, which seem to be pretty standard at most schools.

And that way, you’re amplified from the pit and you can have a decent amount of control of your volume levels.

If you wanted to start to build more programming in, and let’s say get Mainstage involved, you could still use the Casio Privia, you can still use the Yamaha P515.

Mainstage is $30 and will run on any Apple computer.

It is specifically an Apple product.

Definitely people run it on MacBook Airs, people run it on MacBook Pros.

I think for a school setting, a laptop would be best so that you have the keyboard, you have a screen, and your computer is portable.

So in that scenario, you’d need some sort of Mac laptop and running the $30 program Mainstage.

You would need an audio interface.

Some of my favorite audio interfaces are the Scarlett.

I would recommend the Scarlett 4i4.

It’s a Focusrite.

What an audio interface does is it’s a digital connection via USB to your computer that outputs audio to quarter-inch instrument cables that then you could plug into a DI box direct input that converts it to balanced XLR cables, or you could go straight out of an interface into an amp.

The other thing that the Scarlett Focusrite does is it’s a MIDI interface.

You could plug a MIDI cable out of the back of your keyboard into the interface and it would convert your MIDI signal to computer.

I’d recommend that.

Then for a main stage rig, you need a sustain pedal and an expression pedal.

Then what would be really great is if you have a patch advance pedal.

Patch advance can also be programmed to, let’s say, the very bottom note of your keyboard, or that top B-flat of your 88-key keyboard or popular patch advance notes, if you’re not going to play the full range or you can program it to a pedal.

I would say that’s your next level up.

That’s probably going to run you, I’m thinking cost-wise.

Well, if you have a laptop, despair.

Anywhere from, let’s say, $750 to $1,000 just once you start to get your instruments and your computer and you have to get an audio interface and the proper cabling for that.

Then it comes down to sounds.

Mainstage has stock sounds, stock presets.

That sound, some of them sound pretty good.

The preset piano that comes in Mainstage needs a lot of tweaking to actually sound good.

Strings, they’re not great on Mainstage.

If you’ve ever used Logic, they’re just the basic Logic sounds.

I would say the electric pianos are pretty good.

The B3 organ is actually pretty good.

But if you wanted to start to have better sounding sounds, then you could purchase, let’s say, Native Instruments, Contact Libraries.

These are now sampled audio or synthesizers that are more powerful.

Although Mainstage has some really powerful synthesizers, it uses Absinthe, it uses RetroSynth, it uses the synth called ES2.

But I definitely, when I’m programming for my shows, I use Pro, like Session Strings Pro and Session Brass Pro, which is, and a couple of different pianos.

There’s the Galaxy Vintage D piano.

These are all instruments that have been brought into a studio and actually recorded and made and then sampled so that you could play them on a keyboard.

Once you start to get into that world, your prices are certainly going up.

You might be more in the $2,000 range to start getting really good instruments.

As I talked to you what the going rate is on Broadway, now you have these top-level keyboards, you have dual computers, they’re networked, etc.

The price certainly goes up.

But I would say if you can get a nice Mainstage rig with your pedals and a computer and some decent sounding instruments, you can really do a lot with it.

Let’s see if I understand this accurately.

When you are using a program like Mainstage, that is what you are using to trigger the sounds instead of the keyboard.

Instead of playing the sounds that come out of your keyboard, you’re playing sounds through the computer.

Your keyboard, your piano keyboard is telling the computer what sound to play through the interface and that sound is then coming out of the amp or whatever you’re using for your audio.

Do I have that right?

That’s correct.

At that point, we refer to the keyboard as a MIDI controller.

It’s just controlling Mainstage.

In theory, you could use any garbage keyboard to trigger Mainstage as long as you had the right MIDI USB connection, correct?

Yeah.

In theory, any keyboard, any MIDI can control it.

It now just becomes the playability, how intense a part is, and how much you’re banging on it.

Right.

You wouldn’t necessarily want to, but in theory, you could go to your closet, pull out whatever old keyboard you have, and if it has the right hookups, you can hook it up to your laptop and start messing around with that stuff.

Correct.

I did want to add that in theory, every keyboard has some sort of a MIDI connection, because that’s how keyboards are built and that’s how they’re programmed.

It’s all through MIDI.

Either they will have traditional MIDI connection, which is called five-pin MIDI, or it’ll have a data cable USB-B connection, which looks like the same cable that you would plug your printer into.

Almost every single keyboard that I’ve ever come across, except for let’s say a child’s keyboard has a MIDI connection on it.

Then with the patch advance thing, what you’re talking about is using a key on the keyboard to switch the sounds.

Rather than having to fiddle with the mouse or fiddle with the knob, you can just have it programmed or preset in order.

Like in my show, I’m going to use these 20 sounds, and whenever I hit A0, it’s going to advance to the next sound.

That’s the benefit of using Mainstage, aside from access to better sounds, because you can sequence everything in the order you need, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you can switch fast.

Do I have this right?

That is absolutely correct.

It’s the sequencing in order, and you can patch advance in the middle of a measure, and your sounds will instantly change, and all of your levels are saved, everything’s saved.

Now, I’m glad you brought up how terrible the basic sounds in Mainstage are, because one of the things I asked you to do last year was to create me a Show Choir Mainstage Library that I could use with my schools and my arrangements.

Could you talk a little more about what you did for that and how directors can also use it?

Sure.

What I did is I collaborated with you, Garrett, on what type of a library you would want, what sounds are really popular, what sounds we generally see, and I created a library of what I think to be really good sounds.

I took a lot of the mainstage presets and I tweaked them, and I feel like I made them more playable.

I feel like I made them sound better.

I also recorded some of my own instruments and just made a whole bunch of really easy to grab sounding good files.

So here’s your strings, here’s your horns, here’s your saxes, here’s your timpani, here’s your like a timpani roll, here’s your standard synthesizer pad, etc.

Here’s an upright piano, here’s what’s called a tac piano.

Like when you go to the saloon, kind of that classic sound, here’s a really big grand piano.

Here’s a big pipe organ versus a rock organ, etc.

So I put them all together in a library that’s organized by the instrument.

So anybody would still have to program their own show, but they wouldn’t have to search for the sounds, which is definitely a time suck.

I spend a lot of time auditioning sounds, tweaking them, looking for the right preset.

Part of it is just finding the right stuff.

So what I feel like I’ve done with Garrett is find the sounds that you’re most likely going to use and made them easy to grab in your programming.

Well, I love it too because as an arranger, I can say, I want you to use this sound and then I’ll know what it sounds like.

Because sometimes I’ll write charts for somebody, I have no idea what keyboard they’re even using, and then sometimes it, because sometimes things in one octave will sound better than another and it’s always a crash in a way.

This way, I can just say, use this patch number right here, use this string or use this piano, and I know what it’s going to sound like and I know it’ll sound good and I know it’ll work well with everything else that’s going on.

Yeah, that’s correct.

Where can people find that?

I have a link that goes to my website and we can share that link.

Then basically you just talk to me and I would give you the download link and talk you through how to program it, how to download it, get it installed, and then how you would start building your own programming based off of a chart that you see.

Yeah, we can put that link in the show notes so people can check it out.

I mean, if this is anything that you have any interest in doing, like Julianne is the right person to get you set up for sure.

Cool.

Taking a step back and going sort of big picture, how should music educators approach rehearsing a band that has so much technology involved?

I mean, that’s not something that’s touched at all in choral music education, right?

I think generally most people understand the ranges of the instruments and how to get the horn section in tune and that sort of thing.

But all of these keyboards and amps and electronic elements, that is so far outside of the typical classical approach to music education.

Do you have any thoughts on just how to run a rehearsal, how to break things down and put it all together?

Especially because most of the time when you’re rehearsing, at least in show choir, you’re not rehearsing in your performance space.

You’re not rehearsing with your monitor setup and everything else.

Usually, you’re just in a choir room somewhere, and so you’re not getting the real experience until you get to Tech Week.

Well, to be honest, it feels to me like the first thing you should do is find a student who’s really interested in this stuff, and find the student that maybe doesn’t play an instrument as much, but still wants to be involved, or the student that is really interested in computers, and find that person and see if they’re interested in working on the programming with you.

I would say that goes all the way up, is it is a dedicated position, it’s a dedicated member of the music team.

So if you can find a student who is interested in it, and wants to take some ownership of it, it really helps because then they are aware of the programming, and it becomes too much to manage when you’re trying to do it all.

Then really, for rehearsal purposes, it can be run very simply, just your laptop and your audio interface, your keyboard, and then plug it into an amplifier.

Everything can easily go down just that stereo output, and everything is quickly editable.

Let’s say you decide, oh, you know what, I actually want that organ to sound an octave higher, that’s easy to fix.

Or I want that celeste patch to sound an octave higher.

But if you can have a student, even if it is your keyboard player or someone else, kind of be the one who’s looking at the screen, and if there’s a comment, be able to quickly change that programming.

I think that that would really benefit you, because it’s just so much to think about and to kind of integrate into the process, when you’re also trying to think about costumes and scheduling and all of the other things.

That really just truly goes all the way up.

It is very detail-oriented work, and it is a lot to manage.

One last question, and I know this is an unanswerable question, but I’m going to ask it anyway, because I know there’s a lot of arrangers listening or perhaps aspiring arrangers.

Could you just give us keyboard 101?

You’ve got a band and you’ve got three keyboards.

What’s the best way to use them?

I think generally in Show Choir land, most everybody wants their key one to just be piano, because that’s usually what they have in the room.

They usually have a dedicated accompanist.

But what’s the right way to approach arranging and using these keyboards to the fullest?

Yeah.

Well, three keyboards is quite generous.

Yes.

I think so if we call them key one, key two, and key three, and you list those in order of dominance.

Key one, I think in that scenario, you should definitely keep to just keyboard sounds.

Whether it’s a piano, whether it’s electric piano, maybe there’s a world in which you need a harpsichord.

That’s another popular one that I’ve seen a lot of programming or an organ.

But key one should be whatever is driving the rhythm.

So it’s really whatever the singers are listening to for rhythm, whatever is synchronizing with the drummer on rhythm, and the bass and guitar.

Don’t let your key one part go outside of your standard rhythm section.

Then key two and key three, I think would be more auxiliary keyboards.

So I would say a lot of things that would be missing probably from a show choir pit or high school pit would be strings, for example.

Strings, extra organs, glockenspiel, cellist, still kind of still playing melodic type structures.

And you could put some horn stuff on it.

And yeah, I’d say things that are still filling out the melodic structures of the piece.

It is difficult.

Strings are going to be tough, but I think it’s best to use synthesized strings so that we know what it is.

We know there’s no live strings.

We’re not pretending like there’s live strings, but it still sounds good.

And if you do have a lot of brass in your horn line, you could still use some extra synthesized brass to fill out your horn line.

And then I’d say key three in that three key scenario.

I like to save key three for more special things, specifically synthesizer type things.

You could put a Bono synth on there.

You could put some pads on there.

Maybe that would also be the keyboard to do some fun.

I talked about it earlier where you sample a one shot.

They might be playing the risers.

They might be playing the claps.

They might be playing like the other, like an explosion sound at the end of your song is really popular.

Various things like that could all be programmed into key three.

So that kind of gives some differentiation, but really key two and key three can also pass off back and forth, those different things just depending on what hands are available between the two.

Both keyboards can also add some auxiliary percussion elements.

There’s certainly conga patches.

There’s marimba patches.

You could play like if necessary.

I think we did for one year where like an electronic snare drum, we put on a keyboard.

So those are really used to just fill it out.

Well, there you’ve answered the unanswerable question.

That’s why we have you around.

That’s why we just do what you say.

Really appreciate you taking the time to walk us through all of this stuff.

Any parting words of wisdom before you go?

Anything you want to promote?

Anything you want to say that I didn’t ask you about?

I think we definitely covered a lot.

It is a lot of fun.

It’s a major puzzle.

It takes a lot of dedicated time, but I would say that’s the same as any arranger or orchestrator.

You’d have to think about every single piece and how it works.

I guess the other thing to add to your three keyboard scenario is playing levels.

You could have your key one be the more complicated part.

Key two could be medium complicated if you’re playing string lines and celesta and glockenspiel.

Maybe your key three part could be for someone who’s just playing very simple lines, maybe using one hand.

It doesn’t have to be the most complicated part to still have an effect.

I think that in that way, when you’re thinking about programming and you’re thinking about orchestrating, making it accessible to people who maybe aren’t the highest level players but still want to be involved, I think it’s important to have some accessibility to it.

The other thing to add is this stuff can get very quickly overwhelming, and it can be very easy to just want to scrap it all.

My piece of advice is to take a breath and walk away, and then come back to it because I feel like there’s always a solution.

There’s always a reason as to why something’s not working.

That’s what I actually really like about programming, is in many instances, a computer is very binary.

It’s either right or it’s wrong.

There’s a reason as to why something’s not working.

A cable’s unplugged, something’s not connected correctly, etc.

So when you get into these inevitable parts of troubleshooting, you just have to take a moment and take a breath and maybe walk away, and then come back and just start looking at everything very carefully and thinking through it logically.

And generally, the solution is very simple.

It’s just about finding it.

So I would encourage you to stick with it and just systematically find the solutions.

Well, that’s great advice.

Thank you for all your insight.

It’s really helpful.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Show Choir Sessions is written and produced by me, Garrett Breeze.

Visit breezetunes.com to get episode transcripts from the show, other resources for Show Choir Directors, and browse our extensive catalog of more than 1,000 custom Show Choir arrangements available for your choir to perform.

You can get in touch with me by emailing garrett at breeztunes.com or using the contact form on the website.

Post-production audio is done by Jacob Belaski, and our show music is by Garrett Breeze and Kaz Brindis.