Nowadays, it is common to see salsa artists traveling alone or with their managers or musical directors to be accompanied by an orchestra at their destination in another city, country, or continent. They may have a performance of about an hour and a half, during which they will likely perform ten to twelve songs. This means that the artist or musical director has to send the arrangements in good condition to the event producer or the director of the accompanying orchestra several weeks in advance, best-case scenario. Unfortunately, the arrangements are often a real mess due to the poor quality of the printed document, the lack of adaptability to technology, and other reasons that hinder the process, leaving musicians, artists, promoters, and most importantly, the audience, dissatisfied. This can be avoided. In this article, we bring this issue to light and propose some possible solutions that we hope will be taken into account to help the salsa industry keep growing.
The director of the accompanying orchestra has the task of putting a band together (if they don’t have one) according to the orchestration of the arrangements previously sent by the artist to fulfill the commitment. They also have to coordinate the rehearsal date(s), which almost always last two hours, with the selected musicians. This means that the musical parts must be at least legible to ensure that the rehearsal and event run smoothly and that all parties involved, especially the audience, are pleased. But this is not always the case. Sometimes the musical arrangements are an indecipherable puzzle where you have to guess the notes because they are copies of copies of copies. In other cases, the rehearsal markings are different in various parts. The bass has one indication and the piano another, just to give an example. At other times, more than one transcriber works on the parts for a single song, resulting in incomplete parts or parts that have been photocopied over and over with corrections only understood by the person who made them.
On the other hand, with the increasing use of tablets or iPads by musicians, it has become imperative to modify the format in which the arrangements are written to ensure that musicians can read their parts effortlessly, avoiding unnecessary waste of time during rehearsals and catastrophic concert errors. This saves time, money, and energy. It must be said that the obvious disadvantage of tablets or iPads is that if they run out of battery, the musician is left without resources unless there is a printed copy of the arrangement. But that would be the musician’s responsibility, not the promoter’s or artist’s. These devices are highly effective and ideal for outdoor performances where the wind might blow printed sheet music away.
The solution to this situation is simple. Artists or their managers, who know they have parts that have been repeatedly reported as defective by musical directors and others involved, should invest in quality arrangements and transcriptions adapted to technology. This includes original arrangements of iconic songs that should be preserved for posterity. People like myself and many other colleagues who graduated in Contemporary Writing and Production (CWP) are at your full disposal. At first, you may think: "Who does this person think he is, telling me what to do?" But deep down, you know that nothing beats arriving at a place to sing, even without having rehearsed with the orchestra, and stepping onto the stage knowing that everything will go well and that, at least, if something goes wrong, it won't be your fault. If the parts you send are of good quality, good musicians will want to be part of the accompanying orchestra, the orchestra will sound as expected by the artist, the promoter, and the audience, and all parties will be satisfied. After all, isn’t that the goal?
Dear reader: What's your worst experience with “hard to read” parts?
Rafa Moreno
Singer, Composer, Arranger, Producer, and Educator.