2018-03-11

【Aiden in English】

        After a certain amount of time at school, certain classes just get really easy. It isn’t an easier course, but the sense of belonging grows. I think this effect is multiplied in band and music in general since everyone can become more accustomed to playing in front of their peers. However, no matter how comfortable you get, music can always challenge you. While most no longer get embarrassed for messing up on their first attempt, it doesn’t look good if you don’t know music.

        This year for the pit orchestra, Pennbrook MS decided to rent a show from Broadway. It’s a show most of you should know. Really, it’s a musical, which isn’t something Pennbrook does often. It’s also called “Seussical”, a blend of at least seven Seuss books. It took me a while to get the gist of it because all the words were in song-form.

        Enter the problem. Our musical was rented from Broadway, which means hard music. Apparently, it wasn’t that bad for the cast. It only took them a day or two to figure out the overall sound of each song. The pit orchestra, lacking practice time together, continued to fall apart until the few rehearsals before opening night. So what was so hard?

        I’m not too confident in what I can say about the play that isn’t copyrighted, but I’ll go for it anyway. The music is hard, mostly due to four things. First of all, there is an excessive amount of key changes. In a single song, which is usually a few pages long, the amount of sharps and flats that appear on the staff is incredible. This explains why the cast could breeze through the notes: they didn’t have to worry about seven sharps! Singing can be based on relations between notes, which isn’t possible on instruments, so no luck for the band there. Secondly, I don’t even think the beats-per-minute ever drops below 130. That probably isn’t true, but for most of the songs, the rhythmic feel was up-tempo constantly, which tires out the band a lot. In fact, I’m willing to say a run-through of the show is more mentally taxing than anything else. Your mind just gets tired of thinking about notes and upcoming solos. Speaking of which, I have three solos in the show in total, of which only one is longer than ten measures, and a plethora of soli’s. Thirdly, time signatures never seemed to be a problem for me. I mean, when I play the piano, I study time signatures in theory. There’s nothing to be afraid of, right? Right? Well, I was wrong. This experience alone has shown me 12/8, 6/4, 9/8, 1/2, and plenty of odder and rarely used signatures (except 12/8. It is extremely common). It made counting a mess, and the cues were always weird since there wasn’t an actual conductor’s score for the conductor. Finally, the most annoying thing of all was the length. I mentioned it earlier, but after twenty pages of music, you feel really tired. And then add another twenty. In total, the show contains 40 songs, each split into two to three sections. We cut around seven songs, but the idea is there: the show of Seussical is long. I can’t stress how taxing it is to play for two and a half hours for four days straight and tossing jazz rehearsal after certain days. I don’t even think these problems are that hard to deal with, but toss them all together, and you’ve got yourself a mess.

        Now that it’s done, I actually really miss it. This will mark my final Pennbrook show, which is awesome to go out on a bang. The shows were all performed well, in exception to terrible mess-up on Friday night when the cast completely missed a cue (that happens a lot too). Regardless, we brushed that error off with two nice performances to end off the season. Next year, the high school offers a pit program…sometimes. Nevertheless, it was a fun time, and I enjoyed it every night.

【紅霞譯文】

        在學校久待一段時間，某些課程會變得相當簡單，其實並非課程越來越容易，而是歸屬感增強，我覺得這種效應普遍適用於樂隊和音樂領域，因為人人都能逐漸當着同伴的面演奏自如。然而，無論你多放得開，音樂總要向你挑戰，即使不再為首次嘗試出現失誤而甚感羞愧，如果你對它一知半解，那麼還是收穫不大。

        今年伴奏管弦樂隊要演奏賓溪中學租賃的百老匯歌舞劇，很多人都知道這齣戲，沒錯，它是一部音樂劇，並非賓溪中學經常干的把戲，被稱為“蘇斯狂想曲”，匯集了至少七部蘇斯著作，讓我花費不少心思才搞清作品原意，畢竟所有台詞都是以歌曲的形式演唱出來的。

        直擊問題吧。我們的音樂劇是從百老匯租來的，言外之意音樂作品難度可觀，對於演員來說倒沒那麼糟糕，只要花上幾天功夫就能搞定每首歌曲基調，而伴奏管弦樂隊則因缺乏合練機會，直到首場演出前幾次預演依舊錯誤百出，究竟難在哪裡呢？

        出於版權原因，我不敢在此信口開河，只能針對性地說上幾句，作品難度可以歸納為四個方面。第一，調式變化過多，一首歌通常光譜子就有幾頁長，五線譜上升降號此起彼伏，簡直不可思議，這恰好說明演員為什麼能夠輕鬆自如地唱准音符：他們不必擔心七個升號！歌曲可以按照音符之間的音程關係來演唱，而樂器彈奏談何容易，因此樂隊沒法用音符來辨別歌的元素。第二，我覺得音樂速度沒有低於每分鐘130節拍的，或許不都是這樣，但對多數歌曲來說，節奏感不斷增加，樂隊伴奏起來非常辛苦。實際上，參加這部音樂劇演出更需要做好精神準備，不然你對樂譜和隨之而來的獨奏部分唯恐避之不及。說到這裡，我有三段獨奏，其中只有一段獨奏超過十個小節，同時還有很多不同配器的獨奏曲。第三，拍號對我來說似乎永遠不成問題，畢竟本人彈奏鋼琴，其間免不了跟拍號打交道，犯得着擔心拍號嗎？對不？我大錯特錯，實踐告訴我諸如12/8、6/4、9/8、1/2以及其它偶然使用的拍號（除了12/8例外，該拍號屢見不鮮）都給數拍子帶來厄運，況且開始切入部分總是怪怪的，甚至沒有譜子確切地告訴指揮怎麼做。最後，令人討厭至極的就是歌曲太多，前面我曾提到，當奏完20頁樂譜之後，你真的精疲力竭，後面還有20頁等着翻篇，全劇總共40首歌曲，每首又分成兩到三個部分，幸虧已經剪掉七首，但歸根結底：“蘇斯狂想曲” 冗長，我難以說清兩個半小時接連表演四天的劇目怎麼攪和爵士樂隊排練時間，本來對之不以為然，但當所有的事情都往一起湊，準保叫你無所適從。

        眼下“蘇斯狂想曲”結束了，我反倒十分想念它，這將是我在賓溪中學參演的最後一齣戲，值得好好慶祝。演出進展順利，僅有星期五晚場因演員拿捏不准開唱的地方（其實經常發生）而造成混亂，幸好接下來兩場勁爆一掃先前不快，並給整個表演畫上圓滿句號。明年時逢高中組織伴奏管弦樂隊……並非年年承辦，不管今後如何，這段開心的日子讓我每晚樂在其中。

Today in History(歷史上的今天):

2017: Eighth-Grade Pit Orchestra(初三伴奏管弦樂隊)

2017 Twp Rec B-ball Quarterfinal(2017年鄉村娛樂籃球四分之一賽)

Crosslinks(相關博文):

2017 Winter Concert of Ninth Grade(2017年高一冬季音樂會)

2016 Winter Concert of Eighth Grade(2016初三冬季音樂會)

2016 Seventh Grade Spring Concert(2016年初二春季音樂會)

2015 Winter Concert of Seventh Grade(2015年初二冬季音樂會)

2015 Sixth Grade Spring Concert(2015年初一春季音樂會)