Canadian Musician September / October 2019 | Page 25

GUITAR
Tim Morey is a guitarist based out of Chicago, IL. His background includes everything from rock bands and wedding bands to jingles
and Grammy-winning records. His first experience in a Broadway pit was in 1993. He has since played in the bands for the national
tours of Mamma Mia!, Billy Elliot, Sister Act, The Full Monty, On Your Feet, The Book of Mormon, and more.
He has a jazz guitar performance degree from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL.
By Tim Morey
I
The Particulars of
Pit Playing
’ve spent more than 20 years playing guitar
on the biggest Broadway touring produc-
tions, but the truth is, I never thought I’d
play in a pit. When I finally did, I was sur-
prised by how much of the job wasn’t just
about the music, or was about aspects of music
that you don’t usually face on other gigs. Here’s
some information and a few insights that might
help if you’re ever asked to play under a stage
and in the dark.
Sight Reading
Show players often encounter key and tempo
changes, weird time signatures, and asymmetri-
cal phrases, so you have to be comfortable read-
ing music. That said, you don’t necessarily have
to be a great sight reader. An exception to that
is when a show is being assembled and tweaked
before heading to New York. During these pre-
Broadway runs, the score is still being written,
so the ink is sometimes still wet when the music
hits your stand and you’re sight reading in front
of the composer, orchestrator, and probably the
director and the contractor. I wouldn’t agree to
do one of those if you can’t sight read. Otherwise,
you’ll normally get the music a little in advance
with an audio file/conductor video.
Working Together
While most professional bands are made up of
like-minded musicians, a pit band is not; it’s one
of the few places where classical, jazz, and rock
musicians are routinely found playing together.
This means that some of the band might have
limited experience playing with a rhythm section
and that even the rhythm section players might
not agree on where to play within the beat. This
is one of the hardest parts of the gig, requiring
you to draw on your experience to find ways
to make things feel right. Adding to this, many
touring shows pick up a certain number of local
musicians in each city. This means that, by the
time you settle in with one group of musicians,
you switch towns and have to start over with
new players.
Tone Shaping
Shows have sound designers. In the past, these
people would choose the mic that would be
placed on your amp; now, they choose your
amp. You’ll likely be going direct and monitor-
ing everything through a mixer. If you’re the first
player to play the book, you’ll have the opportu-
nity to tweak the sounds, but if you’re a sub or
you join a show that’s up and running, you’ll be
expected to jump in and play with the sounds
the show already has. The show’s sounds may
suck. You might feel that they’re not flattering to
your playing, but understand that on a Broadway
show, the sound person is mixing 20 voices at
all times. There’s no extra hand available to mix
the band on the fly. If you come in and change
guitar EQs or gain structures, you’ve just messed
up their show. You can eventually tweak things
more to your liking, but in a working pit, you
have to coordinate and communicate with other
departments and might need to compromise.
Complicated Moves
Between the first and second song on my current
gig, I turn a page of music, change the patch on
my amp, roll off the volume pedal, unplug my
arch top and put it down, plug in my Strat, pick
up my nylon, check the tuning, un-mute the DI,
un-mute the mic, and then make an entrance.
This choreography is a huge part of preparing
the book. Mess it up and you miss entrances.
There can also be no unwanted hums or buzzes,
no open mics, no noise while switching instru-
ments. Juggling all the on/off switches, keep-
ing multiple instruments in tune, advancing all
the patches, all while playing, making the page
turns, and following the conductor is a lot to
think about. The way you do it is to simulate your
pit set-up at home and rehearse performing the
show in real time so that the moves become ha-
bitual. When it comes time to do it for real, you’re
on auto-pilot and can concentrate on playing.
Preparation
When I get a new book, beyond the notes and
rhythms, I’m looking for sections that are very
conducted. These passages might have to be
memorized so I can watch the conductor ex-
clusively. I’m also listening to the orchestration
to see how my parts fit, who I’m playing with or
against, where I’m exposed... I’m listening to stage
dialogue for cues to make the counting easier. (If
there are eight bars of rest I don’t have to count,
maybe I can use that time to tune something.)
Is there a tune or section that jumps into tempo
out of nowhere? If so, I’ll work to get that tempo
into my body so it settles in right away. Once I
get a sense of these sorts of details I can turn my
attention to the big picture of what I think the
composer and orchestrator want out of my chair.
Electric guitar has radically changed in the
last 70 years, sounding different in every decade.
When you add in all the acoustic guitars and
other fretted instruments that end up in the
guitar book (mandolin, banjo, uke, etc.), it cre-
ates a huge palate for the orchestrator. Because
of this, the guitarist is often used in the score
to denote time and place. Sometimes they just
want a Chuck Berry lick or a dive bomb with a
whammy bar, but on the pre-Broadway run of Big
Fish, my book, which included banjo, mandolin,
and slide dobro, was used to conjure up images
of Alabama. On Fosse, a score that featured music
from the late ‘50s to the mid ‘80s, the instruments,
tones, and effects I used made the songs sound
appropriate for each period. And then some-
times establishing time and place is not what’s
being asked of you. When I played Cats in the
'90s, the orchestration had been reduced from
the Broadway score and a lot of the cello parts
were in my book. Figuring out your role in the
score will put the finishing touches on your book
preparation.
So that’s basically pit playing. It’s a weird skill set,
more about consistency than creativity, con-
stantly challenging you to make music at a high
level despite all the obstacles, but it can be very
rewarding. Now, if you get a called for a show,
I hope you have an idea of how to approach it.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 25