The Chess Chronicles, Part 11: Anatoly & Molokov/Where I Want To Be

After doing so many customizations, it's kind of nice to have a song with very few changes in it.  The introduction to the Russian team is played pretty much like the book, although there are a few little cuts and vamps to make it work for the Lyceum.

When performing these older songs, I prefer to go back to the original source to determine how the songs should sound.  In this case, it means abandoning the original introduction  I cut m.1-5 and 8, and replaced the little counter melody line in m.6-7.  It looks like this:

And we vamp on this until the voice comes in at m.9.  Since the melody line is similar to the vamp "hook", it fits just fine.  

I cut m.35-41, and did m.42-43 twice.  For our timing, this worked perfectly.

It's clear that this music was written by someone who has classical theory training, as the enharmonics were respected:

The melody line goes from Bb to A# as the chords go from Em-5 to F#/E.  They are the same pitch, but they are different notes.

For "Where I Want To Be", I only needed to add a vamp to m.11, and ritard as we exited the vamp.  The rest of the song was performed as is, with some minor tempo changes at the ends of each of the verses.

I ended up using a straight piano sound for this song, rather than a "honky tonk" or "thin piano" patch as in the original recording.  Our Anatoly was a solid opera singer, and going with a conventional sound complimented his voice.

This is one of my favorite songs in the show, and I was glad that we didn't need to do too much with it.  It also demonstrates that we didn't make change "for the sake of change"; we had good reasons to do all the customizations that we did.

The Chess Chronicles, Part 10: Press Conference

 This song is one of the few that are NOT on the soundtrack album.  Which is too bad, as it's a really great song, featuring some crazy time signature changes.  Since the Lyceum doesn't have a pit, I decided to "pre-set" the number of bars before the song comes in, rather than having a Vamp: 6 bars of 4, with the drums entering on the last bar to help cue Reporter 1.

The verses of this song are "question / answer", like a traditional press conference.  The reporters from the "commie newspapers", so their questions generally defend Sergievsky, which causes Trumper to react aggressively. 

In the "pre-chorus" (not sure what else to call it, as the "real" chorus is later in the song), the Reporters all sing in unison, criticizing Trumper's treatment of his opponent.  This is where the crazy time signatures happen:  5/8, 5/8, 6/8, 4/8, 5/8, 7/8, 6/8, 8/8, and back to 5/8.  These time signature changes take place over all eighth notes, so it has the feel of a "patter song".  

The 8/8 bar is actually a 5/8 bar, but due to the fact that it's sung so quickly, I decided to change two of the eighth notes in measure 22 into quarter notes; it gives the Reporters a chance to catch a breath, and I felt like the melody actually sounded less frenzied that way.  Here's what m.21-23 and m.29-30 look like with quarter notes added:

For the first chorus, we played it kind of salsa-esque Latin, but without the horn hits in the second half.  I liked the straight Latin sound and didn't want to interrupt it.  If we had had a larger band, with a horn section, I might have been persuaded to change my mind; however, MainStage patches have their limitations, and I didn't want a lame brass sound in the chorus of this very cool song.  So each of the choruses was played as straight Latin, without any of the hits.

For the chorus after Trumper punches the reporter, I decided to have Florence sing the first half of the chorus by herself, so the choir was tacet from m.119-126.  They come back in for the last half of the chorus with Florence.  Then for the coda of the song, we jumped from m.133 to m.142.  Coming off of Florence's line, the Reporters therefore say:

It's sad that the best his country's produced is crumbling in front of our eyes, and reduced to a mindless abuse and assault on all of mankind.  I think he shouldn't have come back.  He should have resigned.

The rhythm for the last measure is the same as the rhythm for m.30 above -- making the last two notes into quarters.  This keeps it consistent with each time we do that little rhythm.

The Reporters are VERY combative with Trumper, and I was curious whether this was typical of Eastern journalists in 1984.  I asked ChatGPT the following:

During the Cold War, what was the general approach that Eastern reporters took when interviewing Western sports figures?

The response included several characteristics of the Eastern approach to journalism.  I've added examples of these characteristics below each of them:

• Framing Through Ideology – Reporters often framed questions to highlight perceived flaws in Western capitalist societies, such as inequality, commercialism in sports, or the lack of state support for athletes.

From the first pre-chorus:  "Admit you're under duress and that your only skill left is for money not chess."  Trumper's motivation for profiting as much as possible is a recurring theme throughout Act 1.

• Comparative Narratives – Interviews sometimes steered toward comparisons between socialist and capitalist sports systems, emphasizing the superiority of state-sponsored athletic programs in Eastern Bloc nations.

From the first pre-chorus:  "If Soviet life is as grim as you claim, then how come their boys are so good at the game?"

There's also a clear insinuation that Trumper is an inferior player in the questions the Reporters ask in verse 1:  "Does your opponent deserve such abuse?  Even you must concede he can play.  He hasn't lost for a long time."  And from Chorus 2:  "You protest too much, we see your ploy; a big noise to hide your fears."

•  Political Undercurrents – While discussing sports, reporters might subtly or overtly introduce political themes, such as Western imperialism, racial discrimination, or economic disparity.

Chorus 1:  "Are you an asset to East/West relations?" 

•  Controlled and Cautious Tone – Given the state-controlled nature of media in the Eastern Bloc, reporters had limited freedom in their questioning and had to ensure that their content aligned with government messaging.

Chorus 3 can be seen as a USSR talking point: "He's finally flipped and between you and me he's no hope of retaining his crown in this frame of mind.  He shouldn't have come here.  He should have resigned."

•  Highlighting Western Struggles – Some interviews sought to extract comments from Western athletes that could be used to criticize Western policies, such as dissatisfaction with training conditions, pay, or social issues.

From Verse 2:  "They pay all that you ask for, and then you demand even more".  This highlights Trumpers constant demands for more dollars. 

While it may seem that the libretto leans towards supporting the USSR, the creative team publicly stated their intention to present both sides equally.  The press is clearly antagonistic towards Trumper; however, the American does receive sympathy in the second act during "Pity The Child", and by the end of the musical, Trumper is somewhat of a "good guy" for helping Sergievsky to spot weaknesses in his opponent's game.

The two primary characters therefore don't become caricatures of East and West, with Sergeivsky as the hero and Trumper as the villain.  They are more complicated than that, thus mirroring the reality of the Cold War:  It's easy to choose sides, but the truth is far more complicated.

Time To Get Back To Chess

 Just the other day, I was thinking that I hadn't posted about Chess in a while.  I made through to Press Conference, and then life got in the way.  Actually, the Hidden Mickey Wiki project got in the way.  But then there was the knee surgery, and the passing of my father-in-law, and the new show at Vanguard.  So there's a lot that could be said to be "getting in the way" of posting my Chess notes.

But those are just excuses.  I've been procrastinating and I should really get back to it.

And then I come across this on one of the blogs I read:

This is a painting called, "The Game Of Chess", and the artist is Lucas van Leyden.

Looks like it's in the Endgame.  I'm not sure whether the player at the right is male or female ... or whether that's meant to be ambiguous.  One of the onlookers is clearly unhappy with their choice, and is reaching for a difference piece.  The player at the left reeks with confidence, and doesn't seem to care that someone else is trying to help his opponent.

In the musical, the brash American Freddie Trumper is like the player on the left -- seemingly not caring about the game, which appears to be beneath him.  And the meek player on the right does remind me a little bit of Anatoly.  But the kibbitzer doesn't really fit in with the analogy; I doubt that Molokov would ever dare telling Anatoly what moves to make.

Press Conference is coming soon.  It's one of my favorites, and it's one of the songs that did not appear on the double album soundtrack.

HM Wiki Updates

• HM Wiki has a Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572546510153
• There's a X/Twitter page too:  @HMickeyWiki
• Started a "Ballot" page, to gather together all the voting.  I still want to change the look of it - make it leaner, and easier to access using mobile devices.  Just need to figure out the proper CSS for it.
• It occurred to me this week that this collection will be the largest online.  Even after lobbing over all the Mickeys I know about on Runaway Railway to Steven B, he's still missing several that are in the HM Wiki catalog.
• Bing has started showing impression results, and Google has been showing them for a while.  Looks like the scans are producing results.  It's a slow start, obviously, but hopefully it'll pick up. 
• Still looking forward to my first real report.  It'll feel like getting your first dollar when you open a restaurant.

Once I've finished harvesting all the HMs I can find online, it'll be time to circle back to Genealogy.  I need to learn the fine art of presenting photos, and the best way is probably to work my way through Grandma's photo album along with Aunt Sue's oral annotations.  I could probably include Uncle Carl as well.

Hidden Mickey Wiki -- All Systems Go

Hidden Mickey Wiki has been launched, and is now available for public use.  The site was launched on 9-Jan, 10:25 AM, while sitting in the lobby of a physical therapy office.  No, I am not making that up.

I did a few Google-centric things to try and raise my "SEO Score", and we'll see how that goes.  It's not a complicated site, so if there's meta-info that needs to be added to improve my search score, it should be pretty easy to fix.

Still a few minor items to complete before the launch is official.  I still need to create a Facebook account to go with the X account, and I think I should probably announce it from my personal Facebook account just to get it going.  Also, need to reach out to all the email addresses on Tom's original site.  He hoovered up email addresses from contributors back before the "Days Of Spam", so that's a possible source of people that might still have an interest in contributing.

Most of the sites that have Hidden Mickeys are including them as part of their general articles.  "Top 15 Hidden Mickeys Of Disneyland", or "Ten Hidden Mickeys You Need To See Before You Die".  I haven't seen anyone doing what I'm trying to do, which is to build up a catalog of all current Mickeys as well as new sightings

To all who enter Hidden Mickey Wiki -- welcome! 

Of websites and 90-90 rules

 I asked ChatGPT about the development phenomena when 90% of a project seems to take only 50% of the time, but the other 10% takes the remaining 50% of the time.  It kicked this out:

The rule you're referring to is often called the 90-90 rule. It humorously describes the phenomenon where the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the allotted time, and the last 10% takes the remaining 90%—suggesting that projects often take much longer than initially anticipated.

This "rule" is typically used in software development and other creative or complex projects to highlight the difficulty of accurately estimating how long tasks will take, especially as a project nears completion. It underscores how unforeseen challenges or the final polish can significantly extend timelines.

Never heard it referred to as that, but it's appropriate.  I've nearly completed the Hidden Mickey content for Hidden Mickey Wiki, but I'm finding there's a lot more left to do before launching.  My hopes of starting up the site on Jan 1 are pretty much gone.

Shouldn't be too much longer though  I've been moving some of the "B-Tasks" over from the "Launch" project into the "After Launch" project, which is going to make things much simpler.  I'd really like to get it all rolling before digging into less importing things.

The Chess Chronicles Part 9: Commie Newspapers and Motifs

"Commie Newspapers" is the first song where "motifs" appear.  Wikipedia defines motifs like this:

In music, a "motif" is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance or is characteristic of a composition ... It is commonly regarded as the shortest subdivision of a theme or phrase that still maintains its identity as a musical idea. 

Anton Webern defined it as, "The smallest independent particle in a musical idea, which are recognizable through their repetition".

One of the most recognizable motifs is the "Curse Motif", also known as the Mysterioso Pizzicato.  It first appeared in the early 20th century, and was most commonly used by the accompanist in silent films:

I wanted the brief dialogue between Freddie and the chess computer to be in the clear, so we started at m.10 after "Bishop to A5, check".  We repeated m.10-13, and then Florence comes in at m.10 on the second time:

This little seven note motif isn't seen again until act 2, where it shows up several times, particularly in scenes where Florence and Anatoly are together.  Here's an example from "One More Opponent":

It's also played by Keyboard 2 without vocals.  Another example from "One More Opponent":

In the second act, the motif generally appears when Florence and Anatoly are together.  This suggests that it's a possible "love theme".  In "Commie Newspapers", Florence declares that she loves Freddie; is it possible that this is what Andersson/Ulvaeus intended?

Another example of this from musical theater is from Into The Woods.  There's a motif introduced in the first act, which then recurs later on in the second act as the melody line for multiple songs.  "I Guess This Is Goodbye" is the song where Jack has to say farewell to his beloved Milky White, and the motif is in ms.3-4:

This motif returns in "Stay With Me", and "You Are Not Alone", both in the second act.  

In both Chess and Into The Woods, the motif introduced in the first act returns multiple times in the second act.  However, in "Commie Newspapers", this happens more than once.  From ms.18-21:

This motif reappears in "One More Opponent", in ms.13-14; this example also shows the first motif in ms.15-17:

The third and last motif is in ms.27-31:

This motif appears later in "One Night In Bangkok", ms.89-93:

By the way, the tennis player Freddie was referring to is John McEnroe.  The two of them definitely had some things in common -- brash, young players at the top of their game, willing to defy authority.

If I ever got the chance to interview Andersson/Ulvaeus, I'd definitely ask them about "Commie Newspapers", and have them explain to me why they previewed these three motifs inside of a single song.  Are they just Easter eggs, placed there as a clever musical joke?  Or are there dramatic reasons for it?

Comments are welcome on this, and certainly from those who have music directed Chess.

Legally Blonde Is Complicated

 The first time I did Legally Blonde, it was with 3D Theatricals in October 2013.  I was playing one of the Keyboard books, which meant I was using MainStage.  

After finishing the programming, I decided to count the number of patch changes because I could tell that there were a LOT of them.  The final number was 320.  

Normally, a keyboard book for a show will run 150-200 patches.  Some shows have a lot fewer.  "Company" has 75.

When I did Legally Blonde for NoSquare Theater in 2024, the music director pointed out there were "a LOT of key changes" in the score.  So I decided to count them.  

Final number?  115 in Act 1, and 71 in Act 2 for a whopping total of 196.  "Chip On My Shoulder" in Act 1 has 32 key changes alone.

The moral is clear:  If you don't like playing in lots of different keys, then maybe Musical Theater isn't for you.

Hidden Mickey Wiki is almost ready to go

Mrs. Pianoman and I got our first annual passes in 1997, and started going about once a week.  Within a few months, I had discovered Tom Shaw's "Hidden Mickeys of Disneyland" site, and was forever hooked as a "Hidden Mickey Huinter".

Tom stopped posting updates sometime around 2006, and I'm not sure why.  Updates that should have been posted never appeared.  (For example, the "other hidden characters" from Country Bear Jamboree in the new Winnie The Pooh ride in Critter Country.)  It was never clear to me whether Tom was just burnt out, or whether it was something worse.

So that's when I got the idea of creating a wiki-based Hidden Mickey site, and registered "hiddenmickeywiki.com".  Due to the nature of Hidden Mickeys, and how they can appear and disappear at the whims of Imagineers and Cast Members, I thought it made more sense for Hidden Mickey information to be in a wiki format.  Perhaps a community solution would be better than just a single monolithic site.

The domain registration landed in my hosting account, and it has been there ever since.  Work on HiddenMickeyWiki never got started, mainly due to life getting in the way.  Work, musical theater, family, etc. etc. etc. -- there just never seemed to be time to get started on such a large project.

Retirement changed all that.

I still have work to do on California Adventure and the Disneyland Resort (including Downtown Disney).  Once that content has been migrated from Tom's site, I'll be ready to move all the data over to it's permanent home.

I'm going to be using my retirement blog to post updates and info about the site.  Makes more sense to do that than to create a new blog for it.  The site is directly related to retirement anyway, so it seems to be a good fit.

The Chess Chronicles, Part 8: Commie Newspapers and Computer Chess

 Computer Voice:  "Knight to D5"

Trumper:  "Bishop to A5, check"

This is the only "dialogue" between the end of Merano and the start of Commie Newspapers.  Freddie is playing a game of chess with a computer that has a voice feature.  The subtext here is that he has to do that with a computer because Florence either doesn't play chess, or she's so poor at it that she can't help him with his game.

Later in Act 1, Anatoly will sing the following:

Get out!  And get me a chess-playing second ... that is, if you want to win.

A "second" is defined as:

An assistant hired to help a player in preparation for and during a major match or tournament. The second assists in areas such as opening preparation. The second also used to assist with adjournment analysis before the practice of adjournments was largely abandoned in the 1990s. 

The city of Merano hosted the 1981 World Chess Championship match between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov, so it's reasonable to suggest that this is the year of the match between Freddie and Anatoly.  At that time, Fidelity led the industry in computer chess consoles, with its Chess Challenger series.  Chess Challenger 10 looked like this:

The first Chess Challenger was written by Ron Nelson, and produced by Sidney Samole, owner of Fidelity.  It ran on an Intel 8080, but was later ported to the more powerful Z80 CPU.  Chess Challenger 7 saw great commercial success in 1979, but it was the merger of Dan & Kathe Spracklen's SARGON with Fidelity that led to the Chess Challenger 10:

We [Dan & Kathe Spracklen] got in contact with Sid Samole, who was the President of the company [Fidelity], and he said, “Well, come out and see us and bring your- what you got out there and show it to us.” And so we got on a plane and flew out to Miami, and showed off our program to him. And they had their chief engineer, Ron Nelson [Original writer of Fidelity Chess Challenger], look at it, and they were impressed ... They had the Chess Challenger 1, I think, out at the time, or 2, and they were looking for something better [Chess Challenger 7 was out in 1979]. Our program, that we brought with us, just shellacked their program. We had a little tournament there, in Miami, just a little, between us, on our- the one we brought with us. And they were impressed.And so they offered us a big contract, basically, to go to work for them, basically, fulltime. And we didn’t have to go to Miami. We could stay in San Diego ... And we continued to sell Sargon through Hayden [The original publisher of SARGON]. And Fidelity didn’t mind that. The said that’s cool. They didn’t see it as a competition with them. 

SARGON 2 was the first microcomputer chess program that I played against regularly, on my father-in-law's TRS-80 microcomputer.  SARGON 2 surprised many people, and actually defeated a six million dollar Amdahl "supercomputer" in the 1978 ACM chess tournament.

It's reasonable to assume that by 1981 anyone could easily purchase a good computer chess opponent that could travel with you to other countries.  While Fidelity's Advanced Chess Challenger had a robotic voice, it didn't have the ability to "listen" to the player calling out moves.  The player would have had to manually type them in.  Having Freddie talk to the chess computer, "Bishop to A5, check" is a bit of artistic license.  The robot voice of the Fidelity computer is pretty much what you'd expect.

One of the major themes of Chess is Duality -- Black vs. White, East vs. West, USSR vs. US, etc.  This brief moment with a chess playing machine is another example.  While Anatoly is asking for match preparation in the traditional (i.e., "human") way, Freddie has received match preparation in the form of technology (i.e., "non-human").  Freddie is willing to abandon having a human being help him prepare, where Anatoly insists on a human opponent (a "second").  It's AI vs. Humanity, and in the end, humanity wins out when Anatoly defeats Freddie.

The Chess Chronicles, Part 7: Merano Reprise

 Merano is a song in three parts.  The first part is in the "Italian Alps" style; the second part is in the "American Rock" style; and the third part is a reprise of the first part.  As the old Schoolhouse Rock song puts it, "Three Is A Magic Number".

There were two choruses prior to this one, and the reprise uses lyrics from both of them:  "Oh I Get High When I Saunter By", and "Oh I Feel Great In This Bouncing State".  Kind of a clever idea, and it's one of those touches that an audience won't really notice.

The Coda starts at m.57, and in the Royal Albert Hall version, there's an accelerando here.  That never made any sense to me, as it's hard enough to understand the lyrics.  We weren't going to put up subtitles, and I didn't like the idea of my audience not understanding what the ensemble was singing.  So, we didn't do an accelerando.  We did do the subito piano, as it is notated in the score and helps to break up the Coda from the chorus.

For the ending, I abandoned the Grand Pause in m.80, as I think this confuses the audience.  Instead, I put a fermata over m.81, held it six counts, then spiked it on beat 7.  The audience went wild at every show, so I think this change worked.

We had a scene shift at this point, to get us from the Alps into Freddie's hotel room, where he's playing chess against a computer opponent.  This required some scene change music, so we played the Merano Reprise from m.16-31.  It's common in musicals for scene change music to repeat the song that was just performed, as it's still fresh in the audience's mind.  I usually pick a well-known section, and just repeat it as necessary.

Computer chess games appeared in the late 1970's.  I had a Fidelity Chess Challenger 3, and although it wasn't exactly a grandmaster, it was good enough for my skill level at the time.  Since the World Chess Championship in Merano was held in 1981, it seems likely that the computer chess opponent that Freddie is playing against is more like this one, with voice capabilities and playing at a ELO level of over 1750.

So we now know the history of Chess, and we know where the big match is going to be played.  We've briefly met Freddie and Florence, and now it's time to start telling the story.