You know that cool intro music for Monsters, Inc?

September 8, 2006 7:12 PM

Ever heard of Andy Martin? Probably not. But have you ever watched Family Guy or King of the Hill, or watched movies such as Spiderman, The Day After Tomorrow, or Monsters, Inc? Andy is on all of them. Trombonist Martin is one of many studio musicians (aka session musicians) in the LA area who are called upon day after day to record the music that we take for granted. Although it may not be the most fulfilling job, it pays the bills, and for someone with a talent as relatively obscure as trombone playing (or clarinet playing, or drumming, or anything else), it's one of the few careers left. Even so, drummer Russ Miller reminds us that studio musicians are rapidly being replaced by synthesizers (Hans Zimmer's score for Gladiator, for instance, uses lots of synths in lieu of real players) and that "we don't have the luxury of just playing our instrument like we used to".
posted by rossination (26 comments total)

Wow. Musicians generally have to pay a fee to audition for a paying gig in an orchestra? That's unsettling. Can you imagine if you had to pay fifty bucks every time you had a job interview?
posted by solid-one-love at 7:34 PM on September 8, 2006

It seems odd to say that trombone playing is 'relatively obscure' because it is a career skill that is actually taught in almost every highschool in the country. Many career skills (accounting, real estate, law, medicine etc etc) arent even taught in high school; so instead of being obscure, I'd say that trombonists are a dime a dozen, and this is why its difficult to make a career being one, they are just too common.
posted by Osmanthus at 7:39 PM on September 8, 2006

So I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy because he's a paid musician? My response is the same one I gave a friend who was complaining that his career in the LA Philharmonic just wasn't as romantic as being a Rock Star:

"Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh."
posted by lekvar at 7:46 PM on September 8, 2006

People who program synths are "real" too, you know.
posted by dydecker at 8:01 PM on September 8, 2006

All those people moaning about the death of 'real music' and the dominance of the synthesizer should do a little retraining.

I'd recommend a course in playing the rusty trombone, myself. That's a skill that will always be in demand.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:02 PM on September 8, 2006

All those people moaning about the death of 'real music' and the dominance of the synthesizer should do a little retraining.

Y'know, I use synths. I like synths. And I understand the economics of using synths instead of live session musicians. But there is something undeniably real and romantic and visceral about a person sitting down with a carved or pressed or machined musical tool and making it work. It's not merely a skill transfer, it's a change in the fundamental way of doing a thing.

It may be the things are simply bound to change, but to dismiss any resistance or sadness accompanying that change as scare-quoted moaning is to miss a great big fucking chunk of the point.
posted by cortex at 8:36 PM on September 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

That may be so, but doing it in order to do the score to an episode of Family Guy sort of takes away the grandeur, doesn't it?
posted by Silentgoldfish at 8:44 PM on September 8, 2006

Osmanthus writes "It seems odd to say that trombone playing is 'relatively obscure' because it is a career skill that is actually taught in almost every highschool in the country."

You could write well enough to do your assignments in high school, but that doesn't necessarily make you capable of writing for a living.
posted by clevershark at 8:45 PM on September 8, 2006

That may be so, but doing it in order to do the score to an episode of Family Guy sort of takes away the grandeur, doesn't it?

Why? What's the "grandeur?"
It's less grandeur because he's not playing it in a symphony? He's good at playing an instrument and is making money at it, great for him.
Can you play the trombone? Do you ever go out to see live trombonists?

Real instruments rock and there's nothing like them, to echo (and paraphrase) cortex.

Slightly off topic but still apropos...
I think the greatest thing in the world is twofold:
i) to be able to write a song
ii) to be able to perform that song, in front of people, on an instrument that you can play.
I wil never, in my life, cease to be impressed at watching someone perform a song they've written, nomatter how raw or amateur or un'professional.'

But as for the demise of professional working musicians and oh my god everyone's being replaced by robots, the one guy said himself that today's musician just has to adapt a little:

On the other hand there are a lot of movies and records getting made at budgets that they couldn't get made for before. There's that whole new grass roots level of production that is happening, and somebody's got to play the music. So there is opportunity there.

Technology steals some jobs but ultimately new avenues are created, you just have to be savvy enough to take advantage.
posted by chococat at 9:19 PM on September 8, 2006

Anyone who can play a piano or organ, can play sampled instruments on a synth. It takes considerable skill to play them so they sound like the real thing. It's quite fun to run through set of different instrument samples and play each in a way that matches the instrument. The mind does some fun shifting of gears as you adjust your style.

IMO, anyone who can earn a living in music has a great deal to be thankful for. Whether it be playing a banjo or a trombone or even a synth.
posted by Goofyy at 9:35 PM on September 8, 2006

I was just talking with my better half about something similar, albeit slightly different. We were watching an older sci-fi movie and she commented on how well it had held up. I commented that it was largely because they used good models and miniatures. I think we are just now reaching the point were CG is advanced enough that you can't distinguish it from a miniature, which means that there are about 20 or so years of films that aren't going to age well because they opted for the state-of-the-art in CG at the time.

Which leads me to wonder if this translates to music at all. The Hans Zimmer/ Gladiator point referenced above suggests that we may have already crossed the line a few years ago with regard to being able to note the difference between 'real' and 'electronic', but I can't help but be curious as to whether or not directors in a few years are going to want to go back and re-cut their movies with more advanced CG and electronic scores.

I must be getting old, because I find the idea of a time where movies are made totally without miniatures and people playing instruments slightly distasteful.
posted by quin at 9:46 PM on September 8, 2006

I know a local guy in this situation. He made a comfortable living in New York for many years, playing on soundtracks like "The Cotton Club", plenty of shows, a well known novelist penning the liner notes for his CD, etc. Then the work dwindled quite a bit, and he started playing on cruise ships to make ends meet. Last I heard, he wasn't even playing anymore.

I know it's an inevitable byproduct of progress, and I'm forever amazed at what I can do musically just sitting here in front of this computer, but it's sad that the large musical ensembles of old are rapidly becoming such a thing of the past. A live big band makes a very distinctive noise that just isn't the same as samples on a synth. It's an experience we are collectively losing. It bums me out in a way similar to that thread awhile back about zeppelins.
posted by First Post at 9:58 PM on September 8, 2006

Wow. Musicians generally have to pay a fee to audition for a paying gig in an orchestra?

Yup. You also don't get to see the audition materials until you pony up the cash, too. (Granted, there is a standard repertoire.)

This is all old news for recording and pit musicians, but I still don't get the use of prerecorded soundtracks (as opposed to a guy on synths) for live shows, like theater and ballet. How the hell do they handle vamps or quick cuts when actors flub their lines, or a dancer has to take longer to hit her mark?

All those people moaning about the death of 'real music' and the dominance of the synthesizer should do a little retraining.

Retraining is difficult if you still want to do performance in an industry that is highly competitive and has insane commitments to perfection. Learning a new musical instrument late in life is about as difficult as learning a new language; you'll probably never become as fluent in your first. So, most folks turn to teaching, or end up at places like Walt Disney World as costumed entertainment.

That said, there is a reason why I work full-time in web development. It pays the bills of being a professional oboist part-time.

There is still work out there, but many musicians have to get over the stigma that the only "real" jobs are full orchestra concerts. For example, I find it unbelievable that so many of my colleagues poo-poo church gigs, when they pay well, are reliable, and are a great opportunity to program baroque repertoire (I play a new sonata just about every week). And I've had more people in churches come up to me and thank me for playing than I ever had at an orchestra concert. So, I'm just thankful for every gig that decides an orchestra, or WW quintet, or just me and an organ is worth it.
posted by Sangre Azul at 11:08 PM on September 8, 2006

rusty trombone. ha.
posted by the theory of revolution at 6:24 AM on September 9, 2006

It may not get any easier for session musicians with the Vienna Symphonic Library around. You can probably still tell from the demos that it's a synthesizer, but it sounds pretty close.
posted by NemesisVex at 6:41 AM on September 9, 2006

rossination, I find it a wee bit funny that you've chosen to quote a guy like Russ Miller in order to put forward your premise that studio musicians are in such dire straits, are a dying breed, etc. Russ Miller is doing, uh, great. I mean, check this, from his interview: "I've got it now to where I'm home about sixty percent of the time and traveling about forty percent of the time. That's working out good. I've been doing a lot of different records and movies and all kinds of different stuff. When I'm here, I'm either at one of the studios in town, or, I have a studio at my house so a lot of composers and producers that I work for will just come to my place to do drums." My man Russ is a top session player, with his own studio fer chrissakes. He's pulling down nice bread, man, don't think for a minute that he's not. Union scale, baby.

Also, Miller wasn't really saying, exactly, that session guys are being "replaced by synths". He was saying that with increased affordability of home studios and digital gear, it is now possible for songwriters, producers, etc. to not have to hire session players, and in fact pointed out just how prohibitively expensive session players can be:"When you call someone like me to do a session at a studio, you pay my fee, you pay cartage fees, you have to pay for the studio time, and you have to pay for the engineer, and that ends up being a costly thing to do a record in a big studio".

Otherwise, this whole musicians-being-replaced-by-robots thing is actually a pretty old story, something people have been saying for a looong time now, and while it's certainly true there's not the same amount of working session musicians as in years past, that's not a situation that can be blamed entirely on the use "synths", not by a long shot. Plus, there's still a lot of folks out there doing session work, and there always will be. Miller also mentions in the interview that there are a lot of new opportunities for musicians because of the new increased affordability of recording studio setups.

Finally, I'd like to briefly mention: "sampler" and "synth" are so often confused in the public mind: witness the above post regarding the Vienna Symphonic Library. That's a collection of samples. You play them back on a sampler. Folks, if you're gonna talk about this stuff, you should get your terminology straight. You wouldn't call an oboe a saxophone, right? A synth and a sampler are two entirely different things.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:20 AM on September 9, 2006

In a related story, I had to caution my daughter's preschool teachers that her older brother had mentioned to her that the sound of her brand new slide-flute was actually the sound you hear when someone loses their pants.

So, she spent all night the evening prior to school playing her flute and saying: "I took your pants off!!!"
posted by thanotopsis at 7:36 AM on September 9, 2006

flapjax, "synth" is reasonable shorthand for the whole class of digital/computer-driven composition and performance tools that includes both synthesizers and samplers. It's not necessarily a terminology problem.
posted by cortex at 8:22 AM on September 9, 2006

cortex : "flapjax, 'synth' is reasonable shorthand for the whole class of digital/computer-driven composition and performance tools that includes both synthesizers and samplers. It's not necessarily a terminology problem."

I disagree. Expressions like "You can probably still tell from the demos that it's a synthesizer, but it sounds pretty close" in regards to a sampler set indicate that 1) people aren't differentiating the two, and 2) they're letting their assumptions, based on using the wrong terminology, lead them to totally wrong conclusions, like that a recording of a real instrument doesn't sound like a recording of a real instrument, but that the recording of the real instrument is pretty close to sounding like the recording of the real instrument.

I agree that it would be nice if folks used "synth" as a catch-all word for "synthesizer" and "sampler", understanding the nitty gritty but using the general term, much like we say "brass instrument" to refer to both saxophones and tubas. But, unfortunately, as NemesisVex's quote shows, that's not the case.
posted by Bugbread at 8:45 AM on September 9, 2006

Russ Miller's a pretty cool guy--he did a clinic at a high schoool percussion camp I was at a while back, and actually addressed a lot of what was said in the post. I htink I still have a poster of him back at my parent's house.

Fortunately for us drummers, though, I think it'll always be easier for the garage band down the street that needs a drummer to recruit some teenager with ambitions to be the next Keith Moon than for them to pony up the money for/find someone who knows how to use a synthesizer. And as far as not having real musicians for commercial music, what drummer ever cried over having their childhood dream of playing the theme to (insert show here) ruined?

I think a lot of people over-react to this idea that musicians could ever truly be replaced by artificial music producers. I think for most people, music isn't so much about the right notes and pretty sounds, but about the emotion behind the music, the humanity that drives it. For me, music produced by a synthesizer is empty, and I would never purchase it over music done by a real, live professional. Yeah, this doesn't hold true for session musicians so much, but there's still a point where the human will be preferred over the artificial.

Oh, and bugbread--since when has a saxophone been brass? I've always heard them lumped with the woodwinds. Just curious, really.
posted by internet!Hannah at 10:34 AM on September 9, 2006

internet!Hannah : "I think a lot of people over-react to this idea that musicians could ever truly be replaced by artificial music producers."

I think you mistyped "I think a lot of people over-react to this idea that musicians could ever truly be replaced by other musicians."

internet!Hannah : "since when has a saxophone been brass? I've always heard them lumped with the woodwinds."

D'oh!! You're right, I was thinking "brass = made of brass", but a doublecheck of Wikipedia has shown me my assumption was weak and wrong.

So don't use synth to refer to sampler, and don't use brass instrument to refer to saxophones!
posted by Bugbread at 10:43 AM on September 9, 2006

there's still a point where the human will be preferred over the artificial.

This entirely depends on the kind of music you are talking about. Try making techno with your average garage band drummer and not an 808 and see how it crappy it sounds.
posted by dydecker at 11:35 AM on September 9, 2006

"People who program synths are "real" too, you know."

dydecker briefly touched on this , but I'd like to elaborate a bit. As a person who plays instruments and also uses these sample libraries ("synths"), I can say that it's NOT EASY to coax a convincing performance out of samples. Given the opportunity, most composers certainly prefer to work with live players.

Sample libraries are intended as tools with which one can :

1) Make very accurate mock-ups to show to production crews. It can be very hard to have directors/producers "get the idea" about a score without a very detailed mock-up. The closer you can get to what the orchestra will sound like, the better.

2) Augment or thicken a live score in post-production without dragging everyone back onto the soundstage at $10k/hour

3) Write convincing orchestrations where the budget simply doesn't allow for hiring an orchestra (video games are an EXTREMELY common example - many orchestral soundtracks have only gotten made because the Prague Philharmonic is so inexpensive)

The "Big Libraries" consist of single notes, embellishments like trills and runs, etc. Software to "automatically play" the instrument is still basically academic research, though a few products have emerged that claim to do it.

When you do it by hand as most composers do, it looks something like this. It requires a TON of instrumental performance knowledge - If you don't know how trombones are played, you will not write a convincing trombone part with sample libraries, period.

Live performers like Andy Martin are truly great. They add a human warmth to their performances that goes beyond reading a score, and to which samples can't compare. But to deny there is artistry in sampling is insane.
posted by jake at 11:51 AM on September 9, 2006

There was a story in the papers a long damn time ago about a session musician, a guitarist trained at Berklee College.

He worked on the hip-hop album Amerikkka's Most Wanted, providing hooks here and there for a group of guys who couldn't play an instrument if you put a gun to their heads.

His Berklee training earned him a couple hundred dollars for that job. The star who used his work and sampled it went on to earn something like two million from that album.

It was not an easy article to read.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:41 PM on September 9, 2006

posted by jason's_planet: His Berklee training earned him a couple hundred dollars for that job. The star who used his work and sampled it went on to earn something like two million from that album.

Reality check: If Amerikkka's Most Wanted were already major stars at the time that this Berklee guy did the session for which he was paid 200 bucks, then he would've almost certainly been getting union scale, which means if he was only in the studio for an hour or so (anyway less than 3 hours), then 200 bucks is probably about right. The going rate. If, on the other hand, AMW were at the time just another struggling bunch of hopefuls, then the guitarist actually did rather well picking up a couple of bills from them for the session. Either way, he didn't do badly for a session gig. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd like to see some sort of system in place where session players would get a nicer paycheck if the record (or film, whatever) they're playing on goes huge and makes a gazillion bucks, but that's never been the case, historically.

And the fact that AMW "couldn't play an instrument if you put a gun to their heads" doesn't really have much to do with anything. Throughout pop music history all sorts of singers with very little to no musical ability have been backed by session players who've spent years (and maybe Berklee educations) honing their craft. But it's the singer/rapper/front person who sells records (according to the conventional wisdom). But, hey, I think it's time for a good old fashioned dose of Marxist theory to be applied to this little slice of the economy. Session players of the world unite!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 PM on September 9, 2006

AMW was the album. Ice Cube was the performer.

Your reality check is very well taken. But I still think the situation sucks.

Session players of the world unite!

Amen.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:16 PM on September 10, 2006