Musicals and music education in high schools etc
After seeing a high school production of a popular musical:
The production was clearly special to the kids, and that's a big part of it. That aside:
- This has been true for some years, but everyone on stage was something none of us ever were on stage - miked. Once you mic kids, you no longer have to worry about whether they can be heard, can project, "can sing" -- anyone with a nice enough tone can have it blasted through the performance space, and sure enough, the students don't learn how to project, no diaphragm -- you hear no vibrato, and sometimes muddy enunciation even among the principals - and unless your school has an awesome sound system, they're actually a bit harder to understand than without mics. If there were truly strong voices in the cast, you might well have no way of knowing. If one wants to mic k-8 students, they should -- at those ages it's about building confidence and having fun and exposure to music. But by high school, it is time to start to teach something about performing. Plus, the mics taped to cheeks and even foreheads (!) are seldom invisible and generally look bizarre.
- that same sound system pumps everyone's voice out through the same speakers, so it can be hard to tell who's speaking at times -- the sound from the stage is not directional, voices don't seem to come from their actors.
- There was barely a set -- there was instead a huge video screen that showed pre-bought animated graphics for each scene, some of it bizarre. So that whole carpentry and painting social scene, the kids who built sets and lighting at our high schools, perhaps now those students must be greatly reduced in number.
- no live instruments = BASICALLY KARAOKE. All the students sung along with a prerecorded soundtrack, instead of the insanely good sight reader faculty pianist that every high school used to retain for this purpose. The kids lost that sense of signalling and responding to an accompanist, and there was no room for them to improvise - they were basically doing an on-stage singalong. (I think I even heard some background vocals supplied by the track, to help prop up the actors.) Consequently, you get a kid who does a song well, but stands there through it like a recital, because they've got no sense that they can move and stretch and shorten bars as they actually act - they're trying to keep up with the recording, or not get ahead of it.
Yes, Broadway and grand opera mics everybody and has for decades, but those theaters are usually very big or huge, and have great directional sound systems - and you also hear the singing discipline that cuts through the piped sound. Disturbing thing is, mics have for some years invaded college a cappella also. Back in the day, there were no mics in that scene, except one stand mic in the center of the stage for soloists (and not even that in the smaller spaces - it was a point of pride). These days, everyone on stage is miked, not just soloists -- and if they are singing in, say, a lecture hall with a poor sound system meant only for the spoken word, the singing gets lost, and there is also recently a great wish to integrate on-stage video that detracts from the performance. And the miked sounds really affects the singing, which at that level is supposed to showcase semi-serious talent. The soloists sometimes therfore have the leisure to mumble through a verse, then hit a few notes in the high points like a rock star, all their friends cheer, and then wait for the big chord-chasing finish. It feel, more or less, like a simulacrum of performances in our earlier day. I’ve heard current college a cappella unmiked too, and the talent is still there, same as ever really, but this all-over culture of amplified sound and video in stage performance ruins things -- it ruins the talent.
Certainly kids also now grow up thinking that this is what high level performance is, because pop stars from the last fifteen years, from St Vincent to Billie Eilish to the stars of “bedroom pop," make popular niches for their music — and sometimes produce good, attractive sounds, possess nice natural tones — by getting right up on the mike and singing in what is essentially a weak voice, as dependent on amplification as an electric guitar. Singers with limited vocal talent are a cliche in pop, of course, but it is particularly hard to think of many post-2005 pop vocalists who don't need amplification to make an impact. (Two interesting exceptions are Beyonce and Lady Gaga - think of the vid of Stefanie Germanotta at NYU before her stage persona, or years later with Tony Bennett.)
This is an artefact of pop music, too -- by contrast, there's never been a weak-voiced famous jazz singer -- jazz vocals used stand mics from early years, but on matter how softly or close up they may croon, the jazz singer's voice can't hide in the amp -- because amplified sound is native to pop but not to jazz.
In a small amount of online debate about these trends, I note one person remarking that, in the case of high school musicals anyway, it's partly parents who want the full amplified Broadway feel when they come to see their kids' shows, instead of the humbler entertainment that earlier generations of parents got (and with which they seemed quite happy, though they also knew what a Bway show was like).
Put one more way - I thought the point of singing from the stage in high school was to be able to project to a large space. I don't think that's standard in music edu curriculum anymore. The vibe may be more, let's have students feel what it's like to put on a production, even if not fully do it in the way that we knew. It's too bad, it was an education in hs for us, for example, marvelling at the handful of upperclassmen who had crazy strong voices.
