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The
Book: Don
Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra The
Musical Play by Dale Wasserman, lyrics
by Joe Darion & music by Mitch Leigh This
CD is not for sale All
arrangements are by Byron Tomingas |
Byron
Paul Tomingas Recordings Exclusively available on CD at
Performances
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If you haven’t seen the play, make it one of the “must do’s” before
you die or at least read the book
Spectacular singer/actor Ben Medina Intensely emotional dancing by
Emmy de Grappa
Reviews: http://offsquaretheatre.blogspot.com/2010/02/man-of-la-mancha-reviews.html. |
Man la Mancha Guitar Solo’s Recorded
in 2009 in Jackson Hole A long time ago in California, for
the first time, I played the guitar part for the Western Stage Production of
Man la Mancha musical. I really didn’t want to play the last chord on the
last night of the show as I didn’t want it to end; this show is as fun to be
a part of as it is to go see. The story by Cervantes is one of my
great favorites, the play is excellent and then to top it off, it has
exciting, enchanting music. So when I moved back home to
Jackson Hole which has a very fine theater and resident Theater production
troupe; “OffSquare”, I kept watching for them to advertise Man la Mancha and
after a couple of years they finally did, so I jumped on doing the guitar
part. The Guitar part is so important to
set the mood for each song with its exhilarating Flamenco rhythms and
emotional melodies. However it can be done very badly by guitarists if they
are focused on what other musicians will think rather than trying to get the
guitar score to sparkle. What I’m
talking about is an electric guitar hates open strings and an acoustic guitar
loves them. An electric almost never
plays an open string (no left finger needed) as they ring far louder and with
twice the sustain and tone of notes that are held by a left hand finger. Therefore electric guitarists are even
arrogant about never playing simple chords that use open strings and they are
used to playing in keys that don’t use open strings. An acoustic guitar on the other hand is
just the opposite and is at its best when it can utilize open strings to
increase sustain, volume and tone.
This is especially true in Flamenco to really get that “zing” into the
sound of the guitar. Now, a
significant point is that the orchestration for Man la Mancha was written by
a composer who wrote theater music for good sight reading Jazz players, that
means a lot of Brass and Brass means a lot of Flat keys which means – no open
strings on a guitar can be used, the opposite of what a Flamenco guitarist
needs. So, how do you get a Flamenco sound
in this score? A little diversion here from
the topic, do you know why brass instruments prefer flat keys? It’s so they can read the notes as if they
were in good old simple C. Before
they invented valves to change the length of the pipe and therefore the
pitch, they used to use different lengths of pipe called “Crooks” by pulling
one curved section out and sliding a new one in place that was a different
length which would change the pitch of the whole instrument. With each Crook
and a change in how you blew into it, you would get 4 or 5 different easy to
play notes, song’s usually need 8 notes or more. So as not to confuse the
player, their music was all written as if they were playing in C whether they
were playing in Bflat or not. When
valves were invented of all the stupid things, they kept the transposed key
of C being Bflat instead of C being a C. So all the other instruments that
play with Brass players have to play in Bflat and Eflat more often to make it
easy on the Trumpets and such. Sounds
ridiculous to me, but there are many things much worse than that in music;
just ask me about the missing keys on a piano sometime or the chord
construction number system. It should
be said though that each key can have a mood associated with it, that has
more to do with the resonance of the instrument playing it, for instance if a
guitarist plays in a flat key the mood is very dark, perhaps depressing or
anger brewing under the surface because the instrument doesn’t resonate with
sympathetic notes, duller might be another label you could give it and that
will probably bring war cries from the Jazz camp or pianists who love the
mood of Bflat or even a Jazz guitarist, but remember those guitarists are
using electric instruments with artificial tone enhancements which it
probably sounds like I’m against amplifiers, I used to play in bands and had
a whole arsenal of tone bending stomp boxes, you can get a huge range of
color from these things, I also minored in electronic music at college, I’m
not insulting anyone, just stating facts, there’s appropriate place for most
everything. There is of course a simple tool
used by every respectable Flamenco guitarist called a Capo or Capistado. It ties on the neck effectively shortening
it so you can have different “open” strings even if you have to have your
fingers way up on the neck, you can still hit or have a sympathetic string
resonate. However, then it appears to
the guitarist, just like the transposing trumpet player, that he’s playing in
a different key. That means all the
written music needs to be transposed which is a big job on a score as big as
la Mancha. In any case the arrogance
of many technically strong guitarists take pride in playing this score with
bar chords held by the index finger rather than use a capo, plus then they
don’t have to transpose all the music which is a lot of work as it is a lot
of music but they lose the most important aspect, the zing of that Flamenco
sound. They might be very surprised to
see me do this score, as a Flamenco guitarist would do, I use a Capo a
lot. So, for me, a great deal of the
time spent in preparing was selecting the right key for the guitar to play
each song in and finding ways to get more Spanish Flamenco sound out of the
score. Additionally, as people were
singing this, you had to be prepared to switch keys up or down, on a guitar,
that can change everything that you had learned as it might force a
completely different chord pattern sequence.
Aldonza’s main song was in particular giving me fits, I just wasn’t
finding the solutions I needed to make that song ring with aggression and
excitement. There was also the issue that the
composer would start each song off with a hot Flamenco type rhythmic pattern,
each one slightly different from the one before so it was very easy to start
the wrong rhythm which would foul everyone up. The composer also used rare time signatures
trying to get an exotic sound such at 7/8 or 5/4 or he would start with a
measure of ¾ and then switch to 4/4 and then back to ¾, he would then
indicate that he wanted a Rasqueado type strumming done within that
framework. I spent many nights for
weeks up until 3am trying to get the starts correct and the keys sorted to
the best possible solution. The
chords were written in studio orchestra style which means it was handwritten
standard notation, no chord charts. I
had forgotten how hard this score was, it changed the accompaniment for each
pass through the melody unlike most songs so you really had to read this
thing or it made for a huge amount of memorizing. The Rasqueados are another place
where most theater guitarists fall down, the technique is not something you
can learn overnight like a new chord, few Classical guitarist can do it, the
Romeros’ can, most Jazz guitarists can’t do it but they can read music and
Flamenco guitarists usually can’t read music and remember this score is
intense in requiring the guitarist to read well but they have great
Rasqueados. The Rasqueado technique
uses very weak muscles that have never had to work against resistance and
they have to act extraordinarily quick in perfectly timed sequence plus each
finger is a different length, weight, nail shape and has a different muscle
arrangement, they have to travel all the way across the strings before the
next one starts. You can substitute
traditional strumming but you instantly and very obviously lose that
distinctive Flamenco quality. This
show and story is about Spain, people in prison, pride, honor, striving for
chivalry, Gypsies, how can you live with yourself if you take the cheap way
out on the sound using bar chords and regular strumming, the actors might as
well not wear any period costumes.
Fortunately for me I knew several Flamenco guitarists such as Morrie
Mizrahi, Phil Boroff, Peter Evans and Jesus Cortez early in my career, had
seen some of the very best Flamenco guitarists in concert and learned how to
do a good Rasqueado a long time ago and incorporated into my playing of many
songs as it adds such a thrill to a strum. Here’s a funny, as I mentioned, I
was up until 3 am many nights before the first performance, mostly as I just
could not seem to find a good solution for Aldonza. It’s an aggressive song where she’s mad at
the world for being so cruel and heartless and how Don Quixote had ruined her
life by showing her kindness and making her think that there was hope which
in turn had stripped all her defenses away and then she had been terribly
abused. She’s lashing out at him raging
about the injustice of the world. It’s
in the worst possible guitar key and once again the guitar starts this
thing. And in the middle of the song,
it changes key to add more frenzy and it was the second worst key for the
guitar. As I battled away with this
song night after night without a good resolution and the show approaching, I
was beside myself, it just wasn’t coming out with the quality it
deserved. Then I hit on a possible
solution, but I had many such moments that couldn’t survive the entire song,
and then suddenly out of all the stress and effort, suddenly my hand tore
into the “Shock Relief Rag”, I had of course never played it before, in fact
is had not been written before that moment and too was not even in a good
guitar key, in fact it wrote itself on the spot, the hands just took over and
away we went. I often call it the
Duesy Rag as it has so many car horn sounds in it I have this story line
image in mind of a car aficionado transported back in time to the days of the
Duesenberg automobile. Anyway, it’s a
great little Rag, and I dearly love it.
I wanted to play that instead of work on Aldonza (my thoughts were
that moment that Aldonza was a bitch which had a fun double meaning). In any case, during that, I hit on the
solution for Aldonza, so opening performance that’s the way I played it. It’s scary before each song because as I
say, the guitar starts most of them with a lot of aggression, and if you do
dum te da, dum te dah burumm burmm instead of te da burumm te da, you would
destroy the performance. There is so
much that has been learned more than one way like Aldonza so remembering
which one in what key was it that solved the problem? Lots of tension and you REALLY have to
concentrate. So, my solution for
Aldonza worked and in fact worked very well, I played it that way for the
next three performances and then on the fourth performance, I realized,
that’s the same exact solution I came up with all those years before when I
had done this in California but I had forgotten the solution. I wrote it down this time. The show broke attendance records
and had an incredible set that was stunning, like so many, Aldonza (Katy
Deal) and Sancho (Chris Wright) were outstanding in every regard.
Now, (finally!) about this
recording I’ve made; I don’t disengage well from anything I like and I loved
doing Man la Mancha as you can probably tell, there was a lot of emotion and
effort poured into it. I had already
done several arrangements of the songs for solo guitar for the production
like Aldonza’s Reprise where Don Quixote is dying and she’s singing to him,
and a solo version of “The Impossible Dream” while Don Quixote’s is talking
to himself preparing to become a Knight.
So it was inevitable I would start doing the rest of the songs in the
months following the end of the production.
That summer for my annual Birthday Concert I played the entire CD and
made it the CD release party, introducing each song with a synopsis of what
was happening in the play. I’m
particularly happy with how closely the arrangements follow the play and
keeps the Flamenco feel, humor at the right time, sleazy sections for the
introduction of the “been there, done that, seen everything rotten that a man
can be” Aldonza who is seen by Don Quixote as the pure and innocent
Dulcinea. The chatter sections where
Don Quixote’s family is plotting to throw him in a nut house to avoid being
embarrassed and they are singing “I’m only thinking of him, I’m only thinking
of him”. If you know the play or the
Cervantes book well, then you will get a lot more from this recording. My whole purpose was to convey the mood as
it flowed through this, one of the greatest musicals of all time and one of
the most significant books in literature. Byron 26.June.2011 Jackson Hole, WY
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Emmy
& Byron
Looking
up
Finding
my way backstage in the dark
It
was great having a conductor (Michael Tilley) (the 3 handed music director,
see picture) with the seeming megaphone who trusted me to get the best sound
out of the guitar parts and made the solo’s possible. Trumpet,
French Horn, Trombone
My view in the Orchestra Pit after
the first song, I was on stage in costume for the opening bit trying to
protect my precious Oribe Flamenco guitar from all those degenerate
prisoners, then when the guards came I had to beat a hasty retreat to the
depths of the “Pit”.
Flute,
Percussion, Bass & Guitars One
of the things that strikes one when involved in a production like this is the
sheer amount of work and the fanatic like obsession at which so many pursue
making this the best possible performance,
humbling.
Bullwhip
practice
Mixer
man James Booth
Guess
who was the villain? |
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