Summer musical 2014: Bat Boy!

alparrott

Diamond Member
Hi guys, it's time to start a thread about my summer musical experience. I've apparently become the "on-call drummer" for the local big theater and their edgy summer musicals. You may remember my experience last year doing Rocky Horror with these folks. This year, the musical is "Bat Boy"... not quite as in-your-face edgy, but certainly provocative in its own right.

Some big differences right off the bat:
1) Before getting the call for this musical, I had never heard of it, let alone heard the songs -- quite different to my Rocky Horror experience where I knew almost every line of the show!
2) A real score with a real drum and percussion book. Several songs have orchestral movements in them, and a lot of ancillary percussion (especially triangle), so my sight reading is getting a workout after several years off for good behavior. (Kids: "Why should I learn to read?" Because paying jobs often require it, that's why!)
3) The world debut of my refurbished Ludwig Standards. I had agonized as to whether to just fall back on my Yammies for this job, for a more refined sound. But I am having so much fun playing them, and they sound great. It'll be a wonderful introduction for them.

Woodshedding now, and I'll let you know how it's going as the summer progresses. Show starts July 31st and wraps August 16th. Plenty of mayhem to ensue between now and then...!
 

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I've had the score for a little over a week and I have been working on the songs represented on the soundtrack recording the producer provided for reference. While the song pipes into my IEMs I am reading the score and marking in work notes based on vocal cues, dynamics, etc.

One of the most important parts of most musical scores is getting the little stings and band hits spot-on, because they tend to happen around very precise stage and vocal timing. If you get one wrong, it really sticks out. It's challenging on this score because they have not written any vocal cues into the drum score at all, and I have always keyed in on vocals. Again, reading is fundamental here, and while I could get away with some very rudimentary cheat charts for Rocky Horror, the more traditional musical style of this production will mean sticking tightly to the written score. It's unlikely I'll memorize as much of this piece as I did Rocky.

The bass player and I are good friends stemming from our work on Rocky together, and we're planning to get together at least once before real rehearsals start and do some shedding together. I'm questioning the wisdom of taking a sub gig this weekend... I really ought to be working on the musical, not a bunch of blues covers!
 
I played this one in college. It's a lot of fun, but I can't offer much advice. Working with the bass player is definitely a great idea. Several of the most iconic tunes feature some really neat bass and drum grooves. As I recall, the songs with minimal percussion were some of the trickiest. There's not much to play, but what you play is really important- pretty much what you're worried about. I think I had the most trouble with "I'll Show you a Thing or Two". It's just a whole song of things that aren't hard to do right but they're easy to do wrong.

Have fun!
 
I played this one in college. It's a lot of fun, but I can't offer much advice. Working with the bass player is definitely a great idea. Several of the most iconic tunes feature some really neat bass and drum grooves. As I recall, the songs with minimal percussion were some of the trickiest. There's not much to play, but what you play is really important- pretty much what you're worried about. I think I had the most trouble with "I'll Show you a Thing or Two". It's just a whole song of things that aren't hard to do right but they're easy to do wrong.

Have fun!

I can definitely agree with you on "Show You..." Missing any of those percussion cues throws the whole thing off the rails. Cool to hear from someone else who's played it. Thanks!
 
This is turning into a regular gig for you - that's awesome! I've never heard of the musical though. Perhaps you can strap a GoPro to your head and film it while you're rehearsing so we can all hear the tunes ;)
 
This is turning into a regular gig for you - that's awesome! I've never heard of the musical though. Perhaps you can strap a GoPro to your head and film it while you're rehearsing so we can all hear the tunes ;)

Since this is year two of two, I guess you could say it is turning into a regular gig... only issue is, most of the bands in our region get really busy in the summer, and having this one gig almost prevents me from doing anything else all summer long. Don't get me wrong, it's a great gig and I love it, but I can see transitioning to a band sort of thing after a few years for a change, or maybe taking a year off to do something else.
 
So after two straight weeks of blues gigs, I am doing rehearsal venue bookings (as the hometown guy with the connections) and getting the kit mapped out for what I want to do.

The score has a bit of electronic percussion but not only am I not an electronic guy, I don't own any sample pads or anything. I'm not likely to plunk down $700 for something that'll do the job (nor am I at all likely to plunk down $150 for an Alesis toy), so it looks like keyboardist #2 will be doing the samples this run.

However, I do have a lot of "organic" percussion to do almost everything else that the score demands (in actual fact, aside from the triangle, which is all over this score, most of the percussion shows up in two numbers). In this photo, you can see (from left to right) my Yamaha 16" floor tom, retuned to do "tympani" duty; an LP stealth block, cowbell, and triangle, a Rhythm Tech tambourine, and an old 8" bell thing I cut with tin snips out of a Pearl B8 cymbal in the 80s. The percussion is mounted on Gibraltar cymbal arms rather than on 9.5mm mounts, which long ago I discovered simply don't really stand up to the pounding as well as knurled 12.7mm posts do.

So I'll be working on the score for the next week or so until we get into rehearsals. More to follow.
 

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Looks like fun !!

I did "The Music Man" three times. Twice in the pit and once on the side of the stage.

I really hated being in the pit. I could not see the action on stage so I had to take all of the sound effect cues from the conductor. It really sucks !!!
Also I enjoy watching the show, but I could not see it when I was in the pit.

Will you be in the pit?

.
 
Looks like fun !!

I did "The Music Man" three times. Twice in the pit and once on the side of the stage.

I really hated being in the pit. I could not see the action on stage so I had to take all of the sound effect cues from the conductor. It really sucks !!!
Also I enjoy watching the show, but I could not see it when I was in the pit.

Will you be in the pit?

.

Sort of. The summer musicals are all staged and seated on the stage. We will be behind the set or off the front of the stage. We will have audio and probably video monitoring.
 
I completely missed this thread first time around :( Fabulous sounding gig Al, but I see WIND CHIMES! Chimes I tell ya! Young Hyde - beware, I'm not alone :( :( :(

Oh come on Andy, you simply CAN'T do a musical without wind chimes. What would you have me do?
 
Agree Al, I'm in your camp my man, & not just musicals. I'm proud of you for bravely stepping out before the throngs of non believers! :) Andy loves wind chimes! (currently considering another set)

I had them on the kit for Rocky Horror last year and I believe you noticed them then as well...
 

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So is this a baseball themed play or a young superhero play? Congrats Al on being the first call guy.
 
So is this a baseball themed play or a young superhero play? Congrats Al on being the first call guy.

Neither. If you are not familiar with the musical (I wasn't), here's the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy:_The_Musical

It's based in part on the infamous "bat boy" article in that paragon of investigative reporting, The Weekly World News:
batboy_1_2.jpg


Here's a clip of the lead-in number, "Hold Me Bat Boy" (not as performed by our cast -- I think this might be the original cast): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oSbR4MVoNM&index=8&list=PLlItxGdMXS8NbzAF1yRoaRx54p-31T3jn

And here's our playbill:
 

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Well, after a bit of homework and some tinkering, discussions with the director and the MD... turns out I will not be using the Standards on this project after all. The Yammies will be back on deck. I'm a little wistful that my beautiful blue tubs will not be working this summer, but the sound needs to be a bit more direct, modern, and punchy (read: Yamaha).

Working through the soundtracks and live videos of performances, the best sound for this musical is a very precise sound, one that I would have to muffle the poo out of the Luddies to achieve, which I'm unwilling to do. Also, the fills sound better with multiple, smaller toms rather than two large toms. Finally, it occurred to me the gear is going to be moved and stored at the theater for weeks on end, and if anything happened to the Luddies I'd be devastated.

The Ludwig floor tom probably will be used as a timpani stand-in; I'm contemplating taking off the bottom head and tuning it boingy to provide more contrast.

The producer, who also is a lighting designer, says he's looking for triggers for my drums -- not for samples, but to cue lighting at certain points in songs. Guess that means I'd better be precise!

Today is a woodshedding day and attending the music runthrough with the cast this evening. I attended a 4th of July party last night for cast and crew, and since most of us worked on RHS together it was a great time. We're all pumped to get this going, and there's even been talk of what next year's show might be...
 
First band rehearsal is in the can. Truth be told, I'm never happy with these rehearsals for several reasons:

1) We can't do full sound reinforcement in these rehearsals -- which means I end up tapping extremely lightly on the drums with Blasticks or Rutes while everyone else gets to play everything exactly as they would in the show.

2) No vocals, which is a bit difficult because only the MD is all that familiar with the show (however, due to my homework I have a lot of the vocal cues written in).

3) Everyone else gets to take their instruments home to practice for the next rehearsal. This is why I need two of everything.

Having said that, the MD and I are really starting to realize how much work will be involved. The score has 16 songs (!) with vocal harmonies, and the cast really only has three weeks to nail everything before dress rehearsals. Thankfully a couple of the cast have done the show previously, but still... yeesh.
 

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Ah, the stresses of live stage performance !

The stress of needing to perform things correctly always brings out the best talent people have in them.
It is fun to watch everything come together, sometimes at the last minute.
And all of this creates a bond in the cast and everyone involved in the production.

So much fun !

.
 
So I've not posted an update on this thread for a few weeks, because work and life have been pretty chaotic. That has cut into my rehearsal time pretty drastically. I'm genuinely worried about this show in a way I've never worried about one, mostly in terms of how much time we've been able to rehearse individually and as a band.

Cross your fingers! Band rehearsals are done, I have about 6 hours available to polish up some problem spots and then Saturday begins full rehearsals with cast and crew.
 
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