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The Software Shuffle

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There’s an art to setting up online forms that are responsive and adaptable.

Anyone that works or does business with an organization—pretty much all of us—face an almost daily task that would have been unknown a generation ago. Not only do we use computers, and often depend on them for the payment of bills and the submission of forms and applications. We also no get the flip-side effects of messages we no longer control.  The requirement to use a group’s proprietary software in order to complete even the simplest transaction is so common we hardly notice. But sometimes the smaller the business, the more the software has you wandering into the weeds.

There’s an art to setting up online forms that are responsive and adaptable. Bad software is typically written to meet the needs of the makers rather than those on the receiving end.  Good software works on the principle of convenience.  Ever notice how easy it is to buy something on Amazon?

Software is the last to know when it’s stupid.

I am now regularly invited to meetings via an official looking Google form that lets me state my intention with a “Yes,” “No”, or “Maybe.” You probably get them as well.  My frustration is that there’s no space to communicate anything more meaningful.  Just this morning I was sent such a form announcing the cancellation of a meeting, but still inviting me to respond “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe.”  I pushed the green “Yes” button, but didn’t know what I was actually “saying.” Was it: “Yes! do cancel the damn meeting for sure; I’m glad to have the time back?” Or: “Yes, thank God someone came to their senses.” But what would a “No” mean?  Perhaps “I’m going anyway, just to soak up the silence in the otherwise empty room?”  Or, “No, and that was a career-busting mistake to call it off?”  Then there’s the middle option: “‘Maybe’ I’ll think about not going to the cancelled meeting.”  These responses pose quandaries inside of quandaries worthy of a diagram that looks like a ballpark pretzel.

Software “for interfacing with consumers” is designed with closed-ended options. Most of it converts the human experience into a set of comparative numbers, making all of us less aware and savvy. This is the result of a general overreach for quantification. Results of a questionnaire or an application for services seem to require simple responses so that the organizational chain never has to deal with the natural variability of human understanding.  Put simply, open ended questions don’t “code well.”  They require a listener/reader on the other end: a bigger stretch than some organizations want to make.

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Going Solo

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                          Leonard Bernstein

There must be nothing quite so daunting as standing in the wings, alone and ready to face high expectations.

All of us have experienced what it’s like to be the main event. The stakes can be small, as in a presentation to a class.  Or they can get quite large, if hundreds or potentially thousands are interested in what you have to say or sing.

We should reserve special appreciation to performers who are essentially solo acts, carrying the weight of an anticipated event on the strength of their singular effort. Among other challenges, there must be nothing quite so daunting as being a singer, standing in the wings, ready to perform songs that everyone thinks they already know. Pyrotechnics and backup singers can help bale out a weak pop performer. But most audiences are sophisticated enough to detect the difference between the real deal and a performance that seems less than authentically live.

 

Producer John McClure had clearly not counted on the slow humiliation of Carreras

The opening of West Side Story a few days ago in New York reminded me of a lonely moment for a performer singing the same show in 1984.  The  Spanish opera star Jose Carreras was in RCA’s New York studios with other singers and an orchestra recording Leonard Bernstein’s score of the musical for the prestigious Deutsche Gramophone label.  Of course no one less than the composer himself was on hand to conduct.  Bernstein had never had the chance to lead a cast through the music of his  show.

The label apparently thought that it would be a nice touch to make a video of some of the studio work as the tracks were carefully laid down.  But producer John McClure had clearly not counted on the slow humiliation of Carreras trying to sing Something’s Coming as the teenage Tony. Carreras simply couldn’t get the tricky rhythm woven throughout the score, one that was second nature to Bernstein. Sitting in the control room, McClure takes his own lumps from the maestro.

Take after take is botched and increasingly registered on the face of a frustrated Bernstein. Not only was Carreras’ diction alien and too formal for the Hell’s Kitchen character, but his execution of the dotted-note rhythms was blocky rather than the “hip.” Classical orchestras and singers generally have a hard time performing the looser and more improvisational style of American pop and jazz.  And this was surely Bernstein’s version of jazz.

People looking at the clip on YouTube at the bottom of this piece will find a singer from a different cultural and musical heritage whose ear was apparently never trained to hear generic syncopation that dominated American music when Bernstein wrote his score. It wasn’t that the music was supposed to swing. But it needed a kind of breathless spontaneity that was nonetheless in perfect time.  Had Carreras grown up listening to Mel Torme or Sammy Davis Jr., he probably would have been fine.

The program that aired on PBS raised the ire of many who thought Bernstein was being purposefully difficult.  I don’t see that.  But we do see what happens when a label and conductor miscast a piece in order to have a big name to splash on their album cover.

Carreras has gone on to have an impressive career in the operatic realm he has so easily mastered.