Episode 96 - In it for the money

Welcome to show number ninety-six! In this week's show, I'll discuss money and music, and let you know about an amazing free resource I've found on YouTube. You may have noticed that the last show came out a day early, and the week before that, there wasn't an episode at all. That was because I was called out to help with the St Vincent de Paul van. Sometimes, other things just have to take priority!

In it for the money I was listening to the Music Show on the weekend, where a quote by Stephen Sondheim was mentioned. When asked what the difference between a musical and an opera is, he answered, "A musical is a way of making money and an opera is a way of spending it." This got me thinking about the influence money has on how we approach music. Comparing productions like Opera Australia's Turandot and the musical The Book of Morman, the audience experience is very similar, but the financials are not. The opera relies heavily on government funding to stay afloat, while the musical breaks box office records. Opera is marketed as elite entertainment, meaning it doesn't really have to go out and sell itself to a wider audience.

How does this affect us as piano learners? It is likely the reason why exam syllabus books almost exclusively feature classical or classical adjacent pieces. Piano learning relies heavily on hundreds of years of musical tradition instead of having to promote itself from the ground up.

Hal Leonard Choral My SATB (Sopranos, Altos, Tenors and Basses) choir encourages practising outside of sessions, but finding a proper SATB score for a song can be tough. Luckily, the music publisher Hal Leonard has six different YouTube channels where they show the score of a piece of music perfectly synced with a high-quality performance. The choral section has genre playlists containing hundreds of videos, making it very easy to follow along with the score and learn the music. It is an amazing resource! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hal+leonardhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f37Uf5Apj9w

Progress and Closing It is going to be a busy week with voice and piano lessons, school debates, and choir rehearsals. Because of this, very little piano practice got done this week. This week I'm including Daniel McFarlaine's Titans, recorded using the Kawai NV10, with the Kontact Claire Piano emulating a Fazioli grand piano in concert mode, via Cubase 15 and a Mac Mini Pro.

You can contact me:

• via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
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• all the podcast directories - list
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All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.

Transcript

Episode096: 0:00

G'day everyone, I'm David Reidy. Welcome to Piano Finally, a podcast by an old bloke who's getting around to learning the piano. Finally. Welcome to show number 96. In this week's show, I'll discuss money and music, and let you know about an amazing free resource I found on YouTube. If you're new to the show, I hope you find all of that interesting. And if you're a regular, I hope you're enjoying the content too. If there's something you'd like me to have a look at or to talk about, drop me an email at david at pianofinally.show. You may have noticed that the last show came out a day early. I was recording on Saturday because of the choir rehearsal on Sunday. But when I finished editing the podcast, I did all the usual things, like making the transcript and getting the Instagram reel ready, and then, just as usual, I pressed the publish button. It wasn't until the next morning when the episode popped up on my podcast list that I realised I'd forgotten to hold it back as planned. Don't worry, I plan to stick to Sundays. Except for last week. There wasn't an episode. That wasn't planned. Late on Saturday, there was a call out from the school for someone to help with the St Vincent de Paul van on Sunday night. One of the staff members had become ill and was unable to attend. I've done the van a few times, so I said I'd help out, but it meant that I needed to leave home in the afternoon and I didn't have the show recorded. Sometimes other things just have to take priority. I'm hoping to have everything back to normal soon, although I'm recording on Saturday again this week. I have the first of this year's Sydney Symphony Orchestra concerts tomorrow. In it for the money I was listening to the music show on the weekend where a quote by Stephen Sondheim was mentioned Mr Sondheim was asked what's the difference between a musical and an opera his answer was that a musical is a way of making money and an opera is a way of spending it and that got me thinking about the influence that money has on how we approach the piano and music in general, even if we don't intend to make money from it ourselves. I've been to both operas and musicals, and the audience experience is similar. There are sets, musicians, singers, a story that sometimes makes sense, and a reasonably large number of other audience members. The opera probably won't be in English, but otherwise they would appear to be very similar. The biggest difference will be the number of people who get to see the run of the show overall. The Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Opera House, the home of the Australian Opera, seats just over 1,500 people. The Capitol Theatre in the CBD, which is where many musicals are staged, seats around 2,000. So the venue sizes are comparable. But the number of performances varies just a little. Opera Australia's big opera this year was Turandot. Over three months, there were 23 performances. The Book of Morman was the production at the Capitol Theatre at the end of last year. It played 220 times, with eight performances each week. Average ticket prices were different too, and although the best seats at the opera can be over $400, The Book of Morman seats were mostly $150. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two lies in the distinction Stephen Sondheim makes. Opera Australia received $33.8 million in government funding, which meant that a third of their revenue was from that source. If they were to rely on ticket sales alone, the company would have lost about $50 million. The Book of Morman, on the other hand, broke box office records with more than $5 million worth of tickets sold just on the first day, and nearly every performance sold out. So if the audience experiences, once they are sitting in their seats, are so similar, why is there such a difference in the financial situations? I'm guessing that it's probably partly to do with the language, Turandot is in Italian, but I'll bet it has more to do with the marketing. Opera is marketed as elite entertainment, despite the fact that much of the music from it is used everywhere. Nessun Dorma from Turandot is a much more widely known piece than anything from The Book of Mormon, but it is seen as the elite choice, inaccessible to the general populace. I'm wondering if this is because opera, and many of the classical music organisations, don't have to make money. They can rely on subsidies from governments and corporations to get by. They can market themselves to a small group of people who can afford the expensive tickets, and they don't really have to go out and sell themselves to a wider audience. Would it be possible for an orchestra to switch from playing a few concerts each month to playing eight shows a week, with lower ticket prices being offset by greater sales? Would that happen if the approach to marketing changed and an evening at a concert became something that everybody felt was for them? So how does this affect us as piano learners? I think that it is behind the music that turns up in the piano and other instrument exams. So far, all the music in the exam syllabus books have been classical pieces or classical adjacent. Why? Because those pieces don't have to be popular by themselves. It is learning the piano that is the sought-after experience. I've yet to see any advertising for pianos that includes a pitch that you will be able to play the Tchaikovsky Third Piano Concerto if you just buy our instrument. Piano and other formal instrument learning doesn't need its own promotion in most cases. Primary and secondary schools encourage music learning. In many families and cultures, there is a tradition of learning to play music. So the only advertising needed is to let people know where things can be obtained. But what if it were different? What if learning an instrument had no cultural place and you had to promote it from the ground up? How different would a learner's journey be if courses had to sell themselves rather than relying on hundreds of years of musical tradition? I think it's worth considering, especially as traditions start to fade. The choir that I am part of is an SATB choir, which means that it's split into four main groups, sopranos, altos, tenors and basses. and each of those groups has two parts covering the upper and lower parts of the respective ranges. Generally, during the learning part of a rehearsal, our music director will run each group through its music and then start to combine them. It works pretty well, and it gives you a rest while the other sections are learning. Practising outside of the sessions is encouraged, and so the choir has practice tracks for each of the voice types. But what if you're trying to learn a song that isn't one of the ones provided by the choir? Music services such as Apple Music provide synchronised lyrics for many songs, but unfortunately they are rarely any good for choir singing. Choir versions of the songs have the different vocal ranges, singing different notes, and often slightly different words, so a single voice sing-along isn't helpful. You need an SATB score. One thing it took a while to get used to was the way music is set on the score. There are no separate scores for each section. Instead, all the sections are included in the same printed score. The score will have the piano accompaniment on a grand staff, and then the voice parts on a treble and bass staff, or perhaps on four separate staves. Clearly, this is a lot more information than a simple lyrics follow along. But all is not lost. If you look for them, there are a lot of SATB scores available as YouTube videos, with accompanying music tracks. And these usually aren't bootlegged versions. They come from the publishers, Hal Leonard in particular. Hal Leonard, which is a huge company in music publishing, has not one, but six different YouTube channels in which they show the score of a piece of music along with a performance, and the two are synced. I'm interested in their choral channel, of course, but there are big band and marching band channels, church choral music, orchestral and jazz channels as well. What really surprised me was just how much of their music is available this way. It's not just a couple of really popular tunes. This is extensive. The choral section has genre playlists, many of which contain hundreds of videos. The videos are very well produced. The music tracks are of excellent quality with proper backing instruments and vocalists. The older tracks are in 720p resolution, so it can be a bit difficult to see some of the smaller score markings, but the latest ones are 1080p, and it is very easy to follow along with the score, and even use it to learn the music. Of course, you'd buy a copy if you were going to perform it long term. I'll put a link to the channel in the show notes, and another one to just one performance, one that I really never expected to find as a proper score. Have a look at the site. It's an amazing resource. It's going to be a busy week Voice and piano lessons on Monday And the second round of debates for the school teams on Wednesday evening And the normal choir rehearsal on Thursday With an added half an hour for a one-song rehearsal for a charity I do remember a time when life was much quieter But currently everything is a lot of fun Although the piano practice suffers If you'd like to contact me, email is the best way. You'll find me at david at pianofinally.show and the website at www.pianofinally.show. In both cases, Piano Finally is all one word. The show is also available on Spotify and is an audio-only stream on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram reel If you're learning an instrument, or you're learning to sing let me know where you are in your journey what's going well, and what are the challenges what are you enjoying the most So until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the Keys Very little piano practice got done this week. After lessons on Monday, I had a bass section rehearsal for the choir on Tuesday and a full choir rehearsal on Thursday. Wednesday night was debating and we were the hosts, so that meant three pretty late evenings in a row. I got home on Friday after doing the shopping for the week and just went to bed. I'm hoping for some more time next week, but there is another evening of debating on Wednesday. On the bright side, all the choir practice has really improved my music reading ability. I'll cover that in next week's show. I'm recording my first practice session for this week, which is on Saturday afternoon, so I'll only include the beginning of Daniel McFarlaine's Titans, although really I haven't made very much progress since the last time. The music was recorded using the Kawai NV10, with the Kontact Claire Piano emulating a Fazioli Grand Piano in concert mode. All of that was via Cubase 15 and a Mac Mini Pro.