NOTION Music Forum

I use Notion as my main tool to compose my music. I am working on a project composing music for musical theatre. Let's face it however, no matter how much I dream, I will never afford a whole symphony orchestra to perform my music in the theater. Should I bother?

This begs to ask the basic question. How acceptable is it nowadays to make use of prerecorded material in live theatre. I consider using a 5 or 6 piece band (excluding the singer / actors) playing live while the full symphonic orchestration is prerecorded directly from Notion. If this is deemed unacceptable, as alternative I may have to write for 2 extra keyboard players to do the same job live. They would however never be able to play the same intricate details as 60 musicians.

Anybody here who have done anything like this? Any opinions on the acceptability of using prerecorded material? The band would be hidden from the audience who would not see what is played live. On the other hand, one must never think that you can fool the educated music lover into thinking a recording is a real orchestra.

sepheritoh wrote:I use Notion as my main tool to compose my music. I am working on a project composing music for musical theatre. Let's face it however, no matter how much I dream, I will never afford a whole symphony orchestra to perform my music in the theater. Should I bother?

This begs to ask the basic question. How acceptable is it nowadays to make use of prerecorded material in live theatre. I consider using a 5 or 6 piece band (excluding the singer / actors) playing live while the full symphonic orchestration is prerecorded directly from Notion. If this is deemed unacceptable, as alternative I may have to write for 2 extra keyboard players to do the same job live. They would however never be able to play the same intricate details as 60 musicians.

Anybody here who have done anything like this? Any opinions on the acceptability of using prerecorded material? The band would be hidden from the audience who would not see what is played live. On the other hand, one must never think that you can fool the educated music lover into thinking a recording is a real orchestra.

Excellent question! In fact there are quite a few nationally touring broadway productions out now using NOTION3 in the pit! By using all the NTempo features NOTION basically becomes another performer who can react to the conductor and augment the live performers. When set up correctly this can yield outstanding results!

This is really great to hear! I have to play around with notion more and get to know the live playing functions of Notion better and figure out how they are using it.

Thanks