With studio time at a premium -- the maxim "time is money" certainly holds true in the recording studio -- there was a bit of preparation required on our parts in order to maximize efficiency. Aside from technology considerations, this included the making of cuts to the score and whatever dialog would be included.
(Beautiful logo design by Leah Becker)
Nearly every cast recording, including most "complete" cast recording, involves at least some tirmming of the score in order that the recording fit on one CD (or the occasional two -- or in the olden days, one LP, with the occasional two or three). It's extremely rare that you'll find a recording (other than a bootleg) that contains every bar of music, all the reprises and repeats, and all the dance music and underscoring. Our show contained over 100 minutes of music, so if we wanted it to fit on a single, approximately 74 minute CD, some cutting would be necessary.
We took several days deciding what should be cut, what dialog should appear, how to work transitions between cut sections, and what would be absolutely necessary to record in order to give the listener a good taste of the show and a good idea of what's going on. Lots of beloved material was thrown on the floor for reasons of necessity. (We also learned something about what we might be able to cut for the next production.)
In order to make things as linear and straightforward for the actors as possible, we ripped the vocal lines from the piano/conductor book, applied the cuts, and reprinted these. This had the added benefit of cutting down the number of page turns that could potentially ruin a take. We made up packets that contained only the material each actor would be involved in, plus several complete sets for the control booth personnel and engineer. Applying cuts to the instrumental books was more complicated: not only would this involve the printing of a huge number of pages, but over time the players had buried their parts under a mass of fingerings, warnings, annotations, and the like. All of this detail would have to be transferred to the new, pristine printouts -- an exercise that we really didn't have time for. So the decision was made to simply mark the cuts (lightly) in the original parts using a colored pencil. We wanted to make sure that if we needed an intact set of full parts we'd have them, so the colored pencil seemed the best option since if it couldn't be erased it could at least be ignored.
An additional consideration was whether a cut involved resting time that had been give to an instrumentalist to change to another instrument or make a page turn. In several cases we made note for the player to leave out the first few bars following the cut. We'd go back and overdub the missing bars.
We knew scheduling would be important, in order to make the best use of the actors as well as to make sure they had periods of rest but were not sitting around for too long a time. Scheduling grew to a much larger problem when, of course, Jacquie got a job that pulled her out for the morning and Cass was burdened with an additional obligation for her show that required her to leave early in the evening. Albert, our musical director, managed this tactical nightmare with efficiency and aplomb (although, of course, the schedule ultimately required additional revision on the day of the session).
Next week: Recording day -- and (finally) the links to the sample selections of the demo.
To read more about the production, see actor, staff, and creative team bios, etc., here are a few links.
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 1
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 2
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 3
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 4
Another Op'ning - The Immigrant,
Pt. 5
Recording The Immigrant, Pt.
1
Recording The Immigrant,
Pt. 2
The Immigrant,
A New Musical
CAP21's website
The Knapp-Alper Pages
And some esoterica for you trivia junkies, the play on which
The Immigrant was based was called, oddly enough, The
Immigrant, with the subtitle, A Hamilton County Album.
For awhile I jokingly -- jokingly, mind you -- referred to our
project as The Immigrant: A Hamilton County Record Album.
(Chuckle, chuckle, snort.)
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 2/20/01
| <---Previous article |