Comment Re:What is the issue? (Score 1) 319
What is the issue here?
We automate lots of other work, why not this?
You are missing the point. Music is not the kind of work that can be duplicated like a car and still provide the same effect. Music has no identically interchangeable parts. If I swap out the principal trumpet in my orchestra for another equally-qualified trumpet player, I'll get the same basic level of performance, but the subtleties of that performance will change. The way in which that player interprets their part will change. It may be something so simple as playing a particular passage a little louder or a little softer, or with a change in crescendo during a particular peak moment, but those individual subtleties change the qualities of the music, and thus, the emotional response that the music evokes in the listener. Music is not an objective art. It cannot be distilled down into a bunch of ones and zeroes and still retain all of the qualities that make it special. Even if you don't notice those things, there are people who do and those people look for those kinds of subtle qualities when they listen to a performance. It makes the experience more real for them.
(edited for trolling)
Why where they not already using recordings was my first question when I saw this article.
The reality is that a recording is fixed and the performers on stage are not. The performers may (rightly-so) feel unnecessarily hamstrung if they have to try to fit their performances to a recorded track. Many very small production companies and some schools do it this way already (either out of lack of experience or out of financial need) but professional theatre groups have no business resorting to this tactic. It cheapens the experience and makes that $100 ticket you paid for worth that much less.
But what about pop music? Pop stars already use recordings, largely because there's so much movement on stage and parading around that your vocal ability is going to go into the toilet from all the movement - so lipsyncing to the recording is the only way it's going to sound even remotely passable. Choreographed performances in musicals are done differently - most songs are sung with a minimum of strenuous movement so that the vocals remain unaffected, and the more complex dance breaks are all instrumental - or if there IS a vocal part, it's either shouts or spoken words. So while I don't exactly condone it in pop music, with the attention on sex appeal, costuming, lighting, and special effects in a pop concert (rather than the music), recordings are necessary to retain what integrity is left of the musical performance.
Put simply, recordings have no place in live music or live theatre. Using a recording defeats the purpose of it being considered "live". I know I'd feel cheated if I paid for tickets to a musical and found that the musicians, singers, and actors on stage were all pre-recorded and that the people on stage just moved around without really doing anything.