Day 439: The Vamps

In musical theatre, a musical phrase that is repeated in a measure until the certain cue is known as a vamp. Please note that this is not to be confused with the other definition of vamp, even though the theater has a lot of those vamps too, lol. Vamps can get slightly annoying because of their repetitive nature and Music Man in particular has the two most annoying vamps in musical theater history. I can't really sing or play during the blog post, but you can look up the songs that I mention and you will notice the vamps within the song. The first is during ya got trouble when Harold is giving a long speech and under it the ensemble is whisper singing trouble and the orchestra is playing a boom chick accompaniment. The other is at the beginning of Marion the librarian and has a repeated base line primarily in the low strings and the bassoon. It was such an exhausting vamp that our players had to scatter play it in chunks. Both of these vamps happen several times. The first vamp I discussed we had to play 45 times and the second vamp was 72 times. That of course results in only 80 percent of it being played by the other instrumentalists while I kept the foundation continuously. Vamps are annoying, but an effective and necessary tactic in the musical theater world.