Jason and Trevor are partners at Double Bass HQ. Jason is located in San Francisco, and Trevor is in Chicago. This conversation has been edited for clarity.
Jason’s Experience Subbing on the musical “Parade” in San Francisco
Trevor: So you just jumped in on subbing on Parade, right?
Jason: Right. And I hadn’t done anything even remotely in terms of show work since Chicago at the Auditorium Theater. They did a staged version of Candide, and John Floeter was the main bass player, but I subbed in at least a few shows for him. Before that, I was the main sub for Forever Plaid in Chicago—they had been running for seven years, but this was their last season. The regular bass player had a minimum of three shows a week that he didn’t play, so I filled in at least three shows, but sometimes five.
That was sort of my thought of shows like, “Oh yeah, you just get in this groove.” But I hadn’t subbed in on a show until I did that for John, and then I just jumped in on Parade for Richard Duke here at the Orpheum.
The stakes—or my perception of the stakes—was really interesting. I’d never, except I guess for Candide, not rehearsed but then just jumped in and played. All the little things… some shows are musically or technically challenging, Parade not so much, but all the little things:
•The page turns that you watch somebody do, but you didn’t do that page turn.
•The C-extension—and we’re talking about just an upright show, let alone switching to electric.
Trevor: I think I’ve experienced all those emotions many times. What you’re describing is the choreography and administration of a part where you look at the part and go, “Oh, I can play all of this,” whether it’s isolated eight bars or an entire tune or the whole show. But then you put it in the context of the conductor’s metronome going off in your face, it’s just bass and vocals on stage, and it turns into a completely different beast, even if it’s on the page a relatively straightforward bass part to play.
For context, when these tours pass through major cities, some markets require a number of local musicians to be hired for the production. It’s something called Rule 24. A certain number of local musicians are hired, like for this production of Parade, Jason was the local bass player who got picked up in San Francisco.
How long was the run? How long did you get to play it?
Jason: It was three weeks, and I only played one show. Richard Duke does a lot of the Broadway SF work here. He picked up the run, but his son’s graduation was that day—a non-negotiable. So I came in for the five-hour rehearsal on opening night. I forgot about how that works, which is crazy. If you spend your life doing orchestra work, you have this nice long time to let the music marinate, versus the day the show opens is the day you all get together. The sound check and the show.
I was there for that five-hour rehearsal, and then you’re required to watch a show from the pit, which I fully understand. Just things like, “Oh, the monitor’s over here. Oh, he’s using the in-ear monitors. So I should probably do that too. Oh, he’s looking at the conductor here. Oh, I can see his part. He marked this and this—this has changed because it was like a week later.” Things that are written in the part that wasn’t there initially. A whole lot of work for one show!
The Rehearsal Process
Trevor: That’s a lot of work just to play a single performance. A lot of times when shows come to town, the tour travels on a Monday. The local musicians will usually get one rehearsal with the conductor. In the case of Mamma Mia, I was in a small room backstage with the wonderful conductor, Matt Croft, and we ran the show, but just keyboards and bass. Playing all those legendary ABBA tunes with no drums and none of the other parts—you have to really have it together before you get to that first rehearsal.
So you had the benefit of being in a rehearsal and then you also—this is what we call in theater—audited.
Jason: Yes.
Auditing the Chair
Trevor: Auditing the book typically occurs in the pit. The audit is so important because, often during our preparation for subbing musical theater, we use a conductor cam—a camera that faces directly at the conductor. So you can not only hear the music, but you can actually see what the conductor’s doing.
Sometimes, there could be a silent 3-4, or a verbal 3-4 count off. Sometimes it can come from the conductor and their mic. Sometimes, if the show is much more automated, it can come from a track—a mechanical voice that drops you into a click track.
But nothing can really replace just sitting there in the pit. There’s a heightened intensity. If you’re under the stage, you hear the actors on stage, and depending on the layout, you can see them. Of course, you should be focusing on your book! All of these things, when you’re taking them in help set you up for success.
Sometimes the parts actually don’t fully reflect what is currently happening in the show. Depending on the show, it can be through-composed, so the chair holder doesn’t have time to update their part. They do the best they can to remember everything and mark it in their part, but sometimes you, as the sub, have to pick up on those details when you’re listening to the conductor cam or auditing in person.
Preparing the Book
Trevor: When I’ve subbed on productions, sometimes the chair holder’s markings are not totally clear to me. Anything from an instrument switch, a dynamic, tempo change, etc., or a count off could look different than what you’re used to. When I go in and sub, I want to have a book where there is no question about what has to happen. So many times, I will get the book, then make my own edits.
Jason, you did an amazing video sometime last year on how you mark orchestral bass parts. I love that because it’s the same in theater. You don’t want to over-mark a book because if you sit there trying to decipher all these markings, it’s like, “Oh, too late.” The next downbeat already happened, and you’ve missed the cue.
I’m using an iPad now, so I use color coordination (light pink for instrument switches, and yellow for some dynamics.) The current show I’m playing right now is a new show called Always Something There.. comprised of 80s pop tunes at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, IL.
I’m playing a five-string fretted bass, a bass guitar, and a lot of keyboard synth bass on this. On my five-string, I play in passive mode with a pick, and I’ll use the Sansamp, which is a preamp pedal/DI. I add some overdrive to the sound for the more punky stuff. Then I’ll have it in the active mode, which engages the onboard EQ of the bass. And then I have the keyboard bass, which has all these different patches programmed by Ethan Deppe.
The book needs to be marked clearly. The book needs to be ready so that if someone had to go out in an emergency, the sub could come in and be able to sight-read the book.
Jason: For Parade, it was very much what’s on the page.
Trevor: Sometimes in show work, you can stray from exactly what’s on the page. Hamilton has some moments where you don’t have to play exactly what’s on the page. I subbed on The Who’s Tommy when it was here in Chicago before that production went to Broadway, and there are moments where you don’t have to play exactly what’s on the page. When the chair holder, Larry Kohut, said, “Pretend you’re in a band,” I understood what he was getting at.
The Pressure and Preparation
Jason: There was one number in Parade that is just bass and the singer, and it’s at exactly 74 BPM. I know that because as I was watching the rehearsal, the conductor had the metronome on his podium silently going at 74. I found myself walking around my condo going, “Do, do, do, don’t, don’t.” I was playing on a borrowed bass with an extension that didn’t quite work the same as mine.
I’ve never been more—I don’t know that nervous or stressed out is the word—but focused maybe, or keyed up to do a good job. I hadn’t been that on edge professionally in a long time.
Trevor: What you’re describing—I’ve experienced some version of that many times! Playing on a different instrument can be a huge challenge. Usually, if you’re playing in a pit orchestra at Marriott Theatre, you have one day of band rehearsal, and then we run all the tunes with the cast the next day. Then we do a run-through of the show, and then we’re public that night on our first preview. There’s not much time to develop your book during the rehearsal process.
The Chamber Music Experience
Jason: Something I might not have thought of until I got in there is how much of a soloist you are in a situation like that. It’s very different than subbing in a bass section where the conductor’s far away and you’re all playing the same part. I was sitting where the concertmaster would normally be sitting. So the conductor—I could reach out and touch him.
You’re new to that particular space. You got the in-ear monitors, the drum set player beyond the conductor on the other side of the pit. There is a monitor of the conductor that I can see just in the corner of my eye, which is like a millisecond behind the human that I’m looking at. I didn’t experience this until I was actually playing. I’m like, “Am I ahead?” because I see a motion, and I couldn’t figure out if it was one of the percussionists moving. I started to doubt myself because I want to fit in and I want to groove, whatever that groove might be.
In this case, there are all these 16th notes on the high hat, but they weren’t necessarily being accented on the downbeat. It was a bit variable. You’re trying to fit your line in. The way that, in my very limited experience, a pit conductor conducts is different than a symphonic conductor. They function very much like a metronome.
If you spend a lot of time in symphonic situations, you are responding to the conductor, and you’re slightly behind the conductor. But if that’s what you’re used to, even if you intellectually know that that’s what you’re walking into, responding and being locked in exactly—never was I so focused on playing a whole bunch of quarter notes.
Additionally, listening to the chair holder, Richard, in this case, reveals that there’s a lot that’s not on the page. How short are those quarter notes?
Physical Preparation
Jason: So I’m auditing on a Tuesday, I’m playing the show on a Thursday—I’m looking at how hard Richard’s digging in on these pizzicato lines, and I’m looking at my right hand and thinking, “Do I have the capacity to get through this show without blistering myself to death?!”
What I didn’t realize, and this is, you know, if I were playing my bass, it’d be a different situation, but Richard had these really gut wound strings on his bass that had a lot of give and were very forgiving. So I was able to pull, and I didn’t blister, but I was thinking that by the time it’s two days before the show, your time for building up calluses is gone.
In future situations, I’m going to put a reminder on my calendar to just dig in for a chunk of time every day just to prep for that.
Trevor: I know whenever a show’s coming up and I’m on upright (the show I’m playing right now is not), I’m doing more than a normal amount of pizzicato a couple of weeks before for the show in preparation.
Getting the Right Mix
Trevor: One of the experiences that you’re describing that can throw people off who are new to pit work is the amount of inputs that you experience in a pit orchestra. The difference, the lag between the conductor and the video, even if it’s a millisecond, can really throw people off. Playing in in-ears monitors can throw people off.
I play in in-ears basically 95% of my life at this point. Not playing in in-ears always reminds me of playing symphonies, where I’m thinking, “How can anyone hear anything?” There is a complete wash of sound, and you have to feel the vibration of the instrument, and depend on your technique.
Anyone who’s interested in theater work or looking to improve their theater work—the fundamentals of subbing are that you can’t be prepared enough! You can’t know the music well enough if you’re going to sub on something because things go wrong all the time, or I should say they’re unplanned.
Trevor: One of the things I see people struggle with when they come in sometimes is getting a good mix from the outset of the show. We have these little personal mixers made by Aviom. Different players will keep specific instruments very low. Some may have them muted all the time. Some may have themselves super loud, while others in the rhythm section may opt for a very rhythm section-heavy approach—featuring percussion, drums, bass, and keyboards.
The most important thing is that you can hear yourself, but you’re also able to hear it in the context of the orchestra. If you have an exposed bass part, let’s say it’s arco, where everybody’s hearing the intonation clearly. You need to match virtual keyboards playing synthesized strings. I’d better have that in my mix and lock into them intonation-wise.
Most of all, you go back to basics. If you’re playing a pop show, you want to understand where you are in the form of the song (verse/chorus/bridge). Just getting your head around what the piece/song is outside of your specific part is helpful.
The Unique Preparation Challenges
Jason: Something I hadn’t even thought about until Parade that Richard was using in-ears with his mix, which I was fortunate—I brought the headphones I’m wearing right now and plugged them into another one of those mix boxes. I had his—they just imported his settings to me so I could hear what was panned where, and his bass was very present in the mix. He also had one of those Peterson strobe tuners on his stand at all times, just to be sure.
There was a lot of arco in this show. As soon as he started playing the first number of arcos, my goodness, I am hearing every—it’s like a microscope—you hear every granule of rosin. I haven’t had Arco bass playing as much in my grill. It’s such a different feeling from practicing myself or playing in a section.
I only found that out on Tuesday that that’s how it was going to feel. So what I did on Wednesday for probably quite a few hours was I took my recording device and turned the microphone on, put it in front of my bass, put these headphones on, and just practiced the book, listening to myself in all my grainy, up close goodness. When I went in on Thursday, it was no big deal at all because I was prepped. That’s such a thing I’ve never in my life had thought about prepping for.
Being prepared for the unexpected
Trevor: That is such a smart way to prepare! I’ve never prepped that way before. I’ll give you an example of when something unexpected came up.
I subbed for Christian Dillingham on Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, a new show for which Jason Robert Brown wrote the music. Cue #5 is the first time the bass guitar comes in. Everything up to that point is on upright. After cue #5, there is a song that prominently features the bass guitar. There’s a solo break and feature where it’s this Rocco Prestia type line in a duet with the lead vocal.
On this show, the music team wanted the orchestra to be on wedges—traditional monitor speakers. So we were really hearing the band in a more live manner. Typically, I lightly touch my string to hear if my signal is on. I touched it and it was dead. Completely dead! I had just played on it and sound-checked it 20 minutes earlier.
We have about five or 10 seconds before the cue drops in. Tom Murray, the conductor, counts it off. I just came in, and I can hear my bass in the house—it’s coming through in the house because it’s an open pit, so I can listen to it coming off the back wall, but I couldn’t hear it through my monitor.
He looks over at me and gives me a thumbs up, like “Yeah, it’s going well!” I’m sure I had some look of terror on my face, and I made this motion like I moved both my hands and put my finger across my neck, like “There’s no sound coming out of my monitors,” and pointed out my monitor. His face said, “Oh!”
He gets on the phone and calls the A2 to get them to come out and try to solve the issue. All I can think of as we’re playing this little blues is the tune that has stressed me out the most on the show, which is coming up in about a minute, and I don’t have a monitor! I’m about to play this intricate, tight bass line, and all I’m hearing is my bass coming off the back wall of the theatre. Not ideal!
The A2 comes out, tries to fix the monitor, and we move on to the next tune, but it’s still not fixed. We have to play through the entire thing! The monitor never got fixed for the rest of the 1st Act, which lasted around 70 to 75 minutes. I couldn’t hear the upright because, as it turned out, the main cable to the monitor had somehow become unplugged between soundcheck and the downbeat.
In the 2nd Act, with the monitor fixed, I felt like I had a new lease on life! The only thing that got me through that, going back to one of our themes, is knowing the music like the back of your hand.
The Hamilton Experience
Trevor: Hamilton is truly a show like no other—51 cues through-composed. It never stops, and the bass is prominent! In the Chicago production, you were sitting right behind one of the subwoofers. The show was in the cultural zeitgeist at that point, and you’re feeling all this pressure performing with musicians that I hold in high regard.
You have an upright with a C-extension, a keyboard bass, a five-string fretted, and a four-string hollow body that’s approximating a Paul McCartney Beatles-era sound. You’re playing that with a pick.
I basically set up the Hamilton bass station in my apartment, and I would practice all the choreography because there were some tunes where I’d have my five-string, and I’d finish a song, and then I’d just set it on my lap and immediately go over to the keyboard bass.
There were other transitions where you had to immediately switch to a bass, change a patch, and use a pick. The transition into “Blow Us All Away” may have stressed me out the most! The chair holder, Tom Mendel, was very helpful in supporting me in preparing all of these aspects of the show.
I would’ve never been able to sight-read that moment and coordinate without that type of preparation. Preparing for a show from a choreography standpoint is just as important as preparing the music and being able to play the notes really well. I can only get that into my body with high-quality repetitions.
Advice for Getting Into Theater Work
Trevor: If you’re interested in getting into theater, bass playing, or trying to get gigs, you have to align yourself with opportunities that you think you can do a good job on. You should avoid trying to get your playing out there by taking on a show that is a poor match for your skill set.
We bass players have to be able to play—be chameleons stylistically in theater. That means starting from a place of listening to as much music as you can. Pursue shows that are a good fit for you, because if you come in and it doesn’t go well, then that’s what people’s reference of you will be. Whether that’s fair or not is not for me to say, but it can become your reputation.
If you do say yes, don’t count the hours of prep, don’t count up how much you’re getting paid, and what it works out to on an hourly basis. If you say yes to it, you have to do a good job. That’s the only thing that matters.
That selection process is hard because as musicians, we all need the work. We need to say yes to the gigs, but also say yes to the gigs that you are relatively confident that you can do a good job on.
Jason: It’s gotta be about how everybody gets in—just the nature of the work. It reminds me of something that came up at this bass camp we had a couple weeks ago. One of the new bass players in the San Francisco Symphony was getting a kid a masterclass. They said, “You play this way and your friends are gonna be like, ‘Oh, he’s not good at bass.’ Then you do it this way and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he is good at bass!” We all want to be good at bass, but what does good at bass or good at anything mean?
It reminds me of something James Altucher has talked about. What does being a great basketball player mean? That’s a whole bunch of skills that combine—great running, jumping, teamwork, hand coordination. The quantity and the diversity of the prep is enormous for anything that you do in music. Being a good musician is developing a whole bunch of different skills.
The Mental Game of Subbing
Jason: Theater work drains me much more than any regular contract I’ve held down. When you’re a tenured member of a group or it’s your group, it’s different than subbing, where I’ve been around enough that I don’t think my stepping in a rest is going to remove me from the sub list. Maybe a few rests!
I’m pretty good at not stepping in stuff. I’m a pretty good reader. But the few times, I will wake up in the middle of the night and think about something I did literally two years ago, subbing in on a symphony show. I remember that I moved to that B-flat; my eyes just went to the wrong line, and I could see that the principal noticed something was off, and it was probably me that he noticed.
We’re not perfect, but we can get a lot closer to perfect through prep. No amount of prep is enough. You don’t want to cause yourself to ruin your health like not sleeping and just obsessively going—there’s a point where you get diminished returns or maybe negative returns—but really doing the work.
As someone we mutually admire, Seth Godin, talks about just working like a professional—sitting down and putting on the headphones and putting the microphone in front of me and playing B-flat dotted half notes for like an hour and a half just so I get used to my sound, or putting on the metronome at 74 and walking around saying “Do, do, do” just so it’s in my body. I never thought that if you asked 16-year-old Jason, I would be practicing those two things specifically. But it’s all just part of your craft.
What artist or genre are you referencing?
Trevor: Another aspect of theatre work I’ve seen folks struggle with is that most times, we’re referencing something. The sound world is Count Basie, or if you play In the Heights and you’ve never listened to any Latin music, you might be in trouble. A lot of musical theater—you have to be able to draw on references of what the song or show is. Contemporary shows come out and they’re referencing some sort of artist or genre. A lot of times you have to take the notes on the page and make them what they’re supposed to be.
So much of this prep—it is immersion in all of the musical spaces. Frankly, some of it takes a lot more time than people are willing to put in, especially if you don’t have much experience with a particular genre. I feel fortunate that I came up with no goals of making musical theater my career. I have always listened to a wide variety of music, though I never grew up listening to musical theatre as a specific genre if that makes sense. My sister was obsessed with Phantom, so I would hear that coming from her bedroom, or I’d hear songs from The Sound of Music that my mom played, but I was never consciously thinking that I want a career as a pit musician. I think as soon as I started playing in theatre, I was open to the idea of having it be a mix of my freelance work.
Theatre does provide all these wonderful opportunities. The show I’m playing right now, we’re doing all 80s pop classics. There are a bunch of bass lines like “I Want to Dance with Somebody”—an iconic song, really an iconic bass line. Randy Jackson played the keyboard synth bass part on the original recording.
When I got the part for the show, I looked at it and was like, “Okay, this is a rendering of what the part is. It’s not really the part.” So I went and transcribed it because I’m thinking, “I’m going to be playing this however many dozens of times. I would like to at least start with the Randy Jackson part.”
Moving Quickly in Rehearsals
At Marriott Theatre, we have one day of band rehearsal, and then we run all the tunes with the cast the next day. Then we do a run-through of the show, and then we’re public the same night on our first preview. There’s really no time to do much exploring. So I’m at least going to start with the part that’s on the record.
That was the preparation approach to this show. We’re playing “Together Forever” by Rick Astley, which has this really slick keyboard bass line. Again, I got the part for the show and was like, “Okay, this isn’t really what’s on the record.” It was in the world for sure, but I’m going to go back and transcribe this thing because it drives the entire song.
I really enjoy that part of prep. As a chair holder, that gives me ownership over that book in that particular show.
One more example—Footloose. The title track is originally what Nathan East is playing off of an open A string. The show version are in F, which really doesn’t lend itself—you can’t use the open string for that trampoline effect. When you go back and listen to that tune, the playing on it is just brilliant! I remember getting that and was like, “Okay, well, at the very least, I’m going to transcribe it in F and then see if I can learn it.”
It didn’t have exactly the same feel, but it was a fun challenge to try to make it feel that good it in that key.
I really enjoy that aspect of playing bass in musical theater. Everyone’s under the gun all the time, and shortcuts are sometimes taken because people are not incentivized to create totally fleshed-out parts. They don’t have enough time.
It really turns into a collaborative space at that point. It can be a fun way to make the project the best version that it can be. Sometimes it’s simple—that is, a wrong note. I’m going to fix that note or fix that rhythm or whatever and make it sing within the group. Sometimes, you improvise a part, and sometimes, you simply need to transcribe the original. It all depends on the music team’s needs, but it is a treat when you are trusted to make the decision yourself!
Jason: I love it.
For a step-by-step guide to subbing, check out this awesome video by Chris from Made On Tape.
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