Hey All!

Who has played for a musical as part of an orchestra/band?

Just wanted to know your thoughts about it

and what musicals you played in!

Last Year I played in Annie as a Clarinet (GOSH THAT WAS MURDER)

And coming up in June Im playing Flute and Clarinet for The Producers!! WOOOOOOT

Do you enjoy playing in them?

Lol for Bb instuments its HELL

LOL

WE play like in 5-7 Sharps and 4-7 Flats most of the time..

Damn Transposition

But I personally think its good experience its more challenging then School Bands/Orchestra

Let ME know what you think

-ReubZ

Flute/Piccolo for Into The Woods, South Pacific, and Bye Bye Birdie, in that order. I did a little work on trumpet and synth., but flute/piccolo are my true instruments.

It's fun for me, yes, but our theater is not equipped for a pit orchestra. We're not even in a pit below the stage: we're on scaffolding in the left wing, breaking several fire codes and causing a huge hazard, but it's fun all the same! I mostly perform for the musical because it's great to learn to set up sound equipment, get to work with different groups (like the cast and crew), and perform something other than concert music. That and the directors always let the musicians mess around with the music to play it how we want it as long as we stick with guidelines, so it's a time to be creative!

Vamps. I love and hate them at the same time. Especially when you don't have a visual cue to go off of!

i play drums. i've played the set and random percussion instrements for Sussical, The Greater Tuna, and The Little Mermaid. it was ok.........except when one of the actors slipped and fell off stage right onto the drum set. he had serious cuts from the cymbals and he also got a broken leg.... {we are now dating}

i played bari sax in the sound of music.
i played off of the bassoon book so i had 5-7 sharps in everything. it was fun, and challenging.

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i hate the sound of music anyhow... so the sharps made it worse.
me and another girl (a euphonium player) sat there and made fun of it when we
werent playing... it was hilarious.
i even spent some pit time writing an alternate ending to the sound of music.

I was in the school musical orchestra for South Pacific. We had sooo much fun. South Pacific also had a fairly good bassoon part, soooo much better than most of the ones in orchestra.

I played flute and picc in the orchestra for our local Theatre Guild's production of My Fair Lady. It was a good experience for me, but I must admit that I was a little intimidated by the other players. The rest of the orchestra were professional adults, and I was a high school sophomore. Plus the score was rather challenging. It definitely helped my playing in the long run, and it kept me playing through the summer (which my band teacher was very happy for come the start of marching band season).

Ha, I think we can agree that key signatures in musicals are tough for all instruments. I played clarinet in Oklahoma, and we're about to start South Pacific. I swear, at aleast half of the music in Oklahoma was in the key of concert D, so I want to die whenever I see any other music in it. We don't have an actual pit either; they just set us up right in front of the stage. We only do musicals every other year, so they're fun when they come around. But the orchestra gets no love: in Oklahoma, they cut out all but 40 measures of the ballet, because the actors couldn't learn the coreography, which means we didn't get to play our beautiful 600 some measures of purely instrumental music. It was quite upsetting.

I am leaving RIGHT now to go play clarinet and bass clarinet in Oklahoma! i totally agree- the keys are ridiculous, but i love learning harder sections when they come along. Do you guys like being in musicals as well? I love to sing, and i am only playing because i didn't get into my production. What do you guys think of the show? I get annoyed with some of the singers who can't find a note in their head- we have to alter the music so they can hear it.
In response to an earlier comment, we cut out a lot of the dream sequence, but we got to keep some of it because the director chose people that could dance, so we can do a lot more dancing!
best of luck to anyone in a show!