[Trombone-l] Pit Stories

[Harlan Feinstein]

> However, I recently played Annie and had a nice spiral-bound computer
> printed part.  [...]

> Please tell me that this is the new trend, and that those crappy
> chicken-scratch parts are a thing of the past!  If that's true, I will
> be much more willing to play these gigs in the future.

It does seem to be the trend; at some point with most of the rental  
companies, parts get reworked.  Boy, the spiral bound ones are an  
improvement, eh?  Nothing like having those old-style parts where the  
pages turn of their own accord?

It's always amazing, though, to stumble on some of the really popular  
shows and still have them be the horrible, handwritten chicken-scratch  
that they originally were.  You'd think that it'd be just these shows  
that are so often done, that they'd attack first with some modern  
tools, but apparently not.  Been a while since I've seen the rental  
parts to Peter Pan, but that one stands out in my mind as horrible to  
read, way overdue for a re-haul.  (And no, not denigrating the show  
itself, just the parts!)

Oh, I guess this isn't precisely a pit story, but I remember doing an  
early big-band (i.e., 30's style) gig, and one piece of music had the  
following little box at the top of it:

---------------------------
|      TEMPO METER        |
|                         |
|              V          |
| Slow ------------- Fast |
---------------------------

There was a little arrow (the "V" in this diagram), somewhere  
arbitrarily between "slow" and "fast", and the group was expected to  
get some benefit from this.  If it had any quantifiable bit of info in  
it, I suppose it could have been useful, but there weren't any units  
to be found.

--Harlan