I suppose it's time for an update

On Friday Brent and I (it's so hard not to call him Mr. C, but he insists) are talking through ALL of the comments that people gave about the show and we're deciding what direction in which to take the redraft.

Some things I'll be angling for:

1.  More excuses for full cast songs.

2.  Fewer instrumental pieces.

3.  Heavily modified ghost pieces.

4.  Occasional lyric changes from the original Poe.

and 5. (not musical) The cutting of the doctor scenes.

I know he has some good ideas as well.  I'm excited about the new energy we're about to be pouring into this project.  Regular blog updates will no doubt return.

Happy Thanksgiving!

No editing or revising for the next few days- trying to look at everything with fresh eyes when it's time for the redraft in a few days.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

With Many Thanks to Christian Amonson

"Fall of the House of Usher" Read Through

By Brent Cirves and Mike Johnson

 

November 14, 7:30PM – Ewell Recital Hall

Courtesy Recording from http://ChristianAmonson.com/

 

ACT 1 (70MB) – http://ChristianAmonson.com/CBARecording/FallOfTheHouseOfUsher_Act1.mp3

 

ACT 2 (60MB) – http://ChristianAmonson.com/CBARecording/FallOfTheHouseOfUsher_Act2.mp3

 

Enjoy!

Thank You!

Since the House of Usher readthrough is now over, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped out in some way, either by reading or singing or stage managing or critiquing early drafts of songs or encouraging this project.

We got some great feedback from the audience, and I'm hoping to get a recording of the entire show online at some point for those who were not able to come see the readthrough.  I'll let you know when that happens.  In the meanwhile, there's a lot of work to be done...

49 Minutes of Music on the Wall

Sometimes things seem to just work out.  For example, today I had no homework or class to do after 9:30AM due to a field trip which forced me to wake up at 7.  This means that I had from 9:30-3:00PM to work on music, from 3:00-8:00 to record that music, and from 8-11 to rehearse.  

Tomorrow I plan on waking up early and writing as much instrumental music as I can (all of the sung music, with the exception of one song, is recorded) before 11:45.  At that point I will go to the recording studio and do a final mix of the songs.  Afterwards, if I have more time, I'll work on a little more instrumental music and then go to the recital hall to do a sound check at 3.  From 3-6 I will work on organizing the music and putting sticky notes in my script to let me know when the music needs to be played.  If there's time, I'll also try to type up a survey and get it printed out.  If there's still time, I'll come up with introductory remarks. 

The cast had a great rehearsal tonight, and at the end I asked them some of the questions on the survey that we'll be handing out to the audience.  They had some fantastic insights and solutions to problems in the show... I can't wait to see what a full audience can find.

Overall I'm very, very excited.  How could I not be?  If the audience enjoys it, then great.  If they hate it, then isn't it a good thing we had a readthrough so that we have time to change the things to make it great?  There's a little bit of rationalization in there, but not much...

5 Days and Counting

Went to the WFS-EHS game this weekend.  We won by a wide margin, as predicted.  I saw Mr. C but we didn't really have time to talk about the musical.  He did offer to fill out a form for the DC Fringe Festival, though, which is extremely nice of him to do (I think he feels bad that he can't help out with the readthrough in a more hands-on way).

I am currently in Studio 1 in the library waiting for songs to bounce (render, compile, turn into actual music- however you want to say it) and simultaneously trying to finish up some old songs.

There is a lot of work to do between now and Friday, but this should be a lighter academic week than last week (two case write-ups, an exam, and a 45-slide powerpoint presentation didn't help) so I should have time to scramble everything together.  

Sound Check

Ahh! I missed my official window for posting for the first time in 43 posts. Oh well.

I did a sound check today in the Recital Hall- couldn't get any sound out for the first fifteen minutes and thought, along with the administrative assistant who was helping me, that everything was broken. Then I found a small plug that was halfway out, and putting it back in its place seemed to fix the problem.

Also did some more sound mixing today.

Had individual character rehearsals yesterday. They went well, though half of my cast may have inflamed bronchitis. And by may I mean absolutely do. They should be well by the readthrough, though. If not, Annabel Lee may be a little more in character than I would prefer.

Halloween Weekend!

And what a lovely weekend it was.  I'm a little late on my posting, but hey, I haven't eaten dinner yet either, so it's not like I was procrastinating.

Went to Woodberry on Thursday for the weekend- I carved a very cool pumkin out of a pattern that Liza and I found- a barbershop quartet of ghosts.  Even though only four trick-or-treaters came down to her house, I feel as though it was worth the two hours it took to carve.

Saw Mr. Cirves's play- Moby Dick Rehearsed.  This was a play that we had seen about six years ago in a regional theater, and we thought it was great and were in a race to see who could direct it first.  He won.  The production was very cool- a bagpiper took to the stage between each scene change!  They also super-soaked the first four rows of the audience with the "sea," so I was lucky that I knew that beforehand and got a fifth row seat.

This morning before I left, Mr. C handed me seven beautiful black folders filled with draft five of the script.  I'll be handing these out to my actors tomorrow for our first rehearsal.  

When I got back to William and Mary, I went straight to the recording studios so that I could record Brian and Andrew at 5:00.  Brian stayed till 8 and managed to churn out every song that his character sings.  A few of them might need slight revisions, but overall he did a great and very efficient job (which takes a load off my mind since now I don't have to be in the recording studio every day this week).  Andrew stayed till 9:30, which was the point at which I realized I had nothing left for HIM to sing either.  I have a few songs that are almost written that he needs to sing next weekend, of course, but overall he's all finished too.  Now all that's left, for the most part, is the mixing.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I wouldn't be able to put up this read-through if not for the help of Robert Black, whom I have enlisted as stage manager.  I should have put his name up on the cast list as such.  He's been scheduling things for me so that I don't have to, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  

I am still, of course, delightfully behind on all of my actual school work because of this.  I think that I'll go get something to eat and then get to that.

Ramping Up

Since Sunday I've been in super-productivity mode.  I've been recording Andrew Collie (the singing voice of William) in the media center for a total (so far) of twelve hours, and I need to do at least that plus another twelve hours with Brian and another five with the girls before recording is finished.  

At the same time, I have a number of tests and case write-ups in my business classes, so that's fun.

Rehearsals start on Monday- while I'm at Woodberry this weekend I'm going to pick up the new Draft V scripts for the actors.  We'll have five rehearsals to make sure that everyone is correctly pronouncing all the difficult words that Mr. C put in the script.  Well, the words that I spared when I went on a difficult-language editing spree in the last draft.  

15 days till the show.

16 songs to record (doable)

5 rehearsals to run (doable)

3 songs to finish writing before recording (sort of doable)

Sleep- not so much.

Readthrough Cast List

I'm going to go ahead and post this before anyone has a chance to drop in the hopes that, because it's such a small cast... no one will.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Ewell Recital Hall

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Original Read-Through Cast

 

Readers:

William Reed- Brian Paljug

Listener/Roderick Usher- Thomas Baumgardner

Madeline Usher- Stephanie Driggers

Annabel Lee- Kay Schellman

Narrator/Doctor- Tim Page

Singers:

William Reed- Andrew Collie

Roderick Usher- Brian Paljug

Madeline Usher- Rebecca Phillips

Annabel Lee- Lauren Huyett

A Good Week

Tonight are auditions for the readthrough, so that's exciting!  Also, I'm going into the recording studios to record Brian today and I'm recording Andrew on Sunday (because I got my male singers).  Very busy.

Kay came by earlier this week to go through all the music and was extremely helpful in her criticisms.  The music is coming along better now, but very slowly as usual.

Psychological Breakthrough

I decided that I've been working under a very dangerous mind-trap ever since I got to school. There are many ways to phrase it: sunk cost fallacy, throwing bad money after good, etc... but it all comes down to the fact that I have been way too protective of my musical ideas.  Over the summer I killed songs left and right, mowing them down in an act of musical carnage.  Since I arrived at school, however, I've had this mentality that I didn't have enough time to arbitrarily throw things out.  

This has caused me a great deal of trouble, but now I can fix it by starting fresh on several of the songs that I was having the most trouble with.  This means that all of the songs will NOT be done by the time of the readthrough, and that some might be sketches, but that, at the very least, there will not be songs in the readthrough that I don't completely believe in.

Songs that I Dislike

"I Cannot Love You"

"Silence"

"Symmetry"

It really can't be this hard to finish three songs, can it?  I know it won't be the end of the world if there are a few incomplete musical numbers during the readthrough, but I'm worried that if that happens I'll have a permanent bias against these songs and they will never get written.  

We're recording some latin chanting in "Mysterium" today.  That, at the very least, should be enjoyable.

Home!

I'm home again, which means I'm getting lots of work done!  Well, a reasonable amount at least.  With the exception of not having a tenor to sing for the concept album, everything is going very well.  

I'm trying to come up with a survey to distribute during the read-through in order to gauge reactions to various things in the music and script.  If anyone has any good ideas for questions that should be on this survey, let me know.

Music Notes

I have four days in which to go through Draft IV and replace all of the dialogue before and after songs with things that musicians might actually say.  Mr. C did a great job of approximating things, but he doesn't really know a key signature from a time signature, so this is my job.

One new song written this week- "Ballad 2"- the song that William plays (along with the ghosts of the past) to introduce the listener (and the audience) to the larger story.

Analysis Continued

Radiant Palace/Lonely Palace-

Radiant the earliest song that I wrote and still have in the show.  The two songs mirror each other- one is near the start of Act I and the other is at the start of Act II.  Roderick and William sing it as a drinking song shortly after they meet each other, and it functions as a transition between the tavern and Usher's house.  Nothing too complicated in this- I just tried to think of a melody that would work for a drinking song.  I chose to write this one early on because I knew it would be one of the easy ones and would not be a song that I would expressly want the audience to remember upon leaving.  Lonely Palace is the twin of this song, and retains the same melody but in minor.  This is the song which looks at Usher's house in a very different light, ten years after William has been exiled.  

My Sister, My Savior-

I think I'd like to change the title of this one, but for now it reflects a few lyrics at the end.  This song is Madeline singing in honor of Annabel Lee ten years after Annabel's death.  I just finished the first draft recently.  It provided a very interesting challenge because it had to be beautiful, but within the realms of Madeline's universe.  I changed keys a lot, but I'm not sure if I really captured her within the song.  The songs near the end of the play, such as this one, are especially hard if they are written by the characters because the expectation is that the character's composition style will have matured by the end.  A lot of me feels as if I blew most of my own compositional reserves on the first act and so it's going to be very difficult to write something up to the standards of the second.  There is a chance I'm over-thinking this.

Mysterium-

This song is almost painful to write about.  After an initial burst of productivity with the musical, I decided to take a swipe at this one sometime mid-June.  I have something along the lines of sixteen drafts for this song.  SIXTEEN.  And a little piece of me died every time I realized that the draft I was on wasn't going to work out.  Eventually the grinding paid off and something came out which I like quite a bit.  It still needs some revision work, but Mysterium is one of my top three favorite songs in the musical.  I'm excited to see how it actually works in context, but I think I will always hate it just a little for being so difficult.

Nothing Beautiful is Simple-

In contrast to Mysterium, and to throw off any theories that I had been developing about how I write music best, this song took me about five hours to write and is also one of my favorites.  It is, ironically, just about the simplest song I have ever written.  

Rat Ratiocination-

Ratiocination is a concept featured heavily in several Poe detective stories.  Poe may well have invented the detective story, in fact.  That reference aside, this song has everything to do with the disintegration of Roderick User's mind.  It swings wildly between childishness and insanity.  It came very easily to me when I wrote it in Italy, and again disproves the idea that a song has to be painful to write in order to be decent in my eyes.  It was recently pointed out to me that the refrain melody is almost an exact copy of a short theme from Star Wars III, which I didn't recognize and haven't seen since it came out.  It's different enough that I can leave it in without any problems.

Silence-

This is the latest of the songs that I've "finished" though I haven't really.  I've been working on it on and off for a few months, and I may or may not have a melody that works.  I do have strong feelings against the song in general, though, so hopefully that means it will go the Mysterium route and turn out well.

Two/Three Songs Left

I've been chipping away and finished off another draft of a song, but I'm reaching the point of frustration once more.  I am never sure when this happens whether to take a few songs and delete them mercilessly or whether it would be better to suck it up and finish them (because probably I'll like them later.)

I'm going to do an analysis (alphabetical) of the songs that I HAVE finished for my future reference.  Maybe the next time I write a musical I'll be able to look back and see which creative processes seem to be the most succesful.  Half will be posted today, and half on Sunday.

A Love That Will Never Die- I like this song very much.  It's very simple and not at all in my style, and was semi difficult to write.  I got the idea while actually holding a guitar (a first!) and made up a nice guitar melody off of two slurred notes that I played while holding it.  The refrain came naturally and quickly, and the whole skeleton may have been written in just a few hours. The vocal melody was a great deal more difficult, and that took a few revisions- I'm happy with it now.

A Vision- This is the song based on some verses from "Kubla Khan" (which was inspired by an opium induced-dream, as I've recently learned).  I wrote this song early in the summer (EDIT: I just checked my blog, and found out that I wrote it in August, so that's a lie.  I have a terrible memory), so I can't recall too much of the process, but if I recall correctly it was very easy to start and very difficult to finish.  There are five drafts of openings that I have stored somewhere.  The one I settled on goes from simple to complex, but I don't know if it does so in any sort of interesting way.  One of the songs, along with Alone and Silence, that I am most uncertain about. 

Alone- I worked up several unsuccessful starts to this song before finally stealing a guitar melody that I had intended for Ballad back in April or May.  I got some minor ideas for a glockenspiel (which I'm not sure I'll keep) after listening to "Spring Awakening."  The refrain was influenced from a french film called "Les Choristes," and is basically just a sequence of scales going higher and higher that I've always wanted to throw in to a song.  I'm not sure about the end of the refrain, because it just stops suddenly at the climax.  It could be effective.  Maybe not.  The vocal melody was easy to write, but it might be a little low.  I need to hear it sung before I make a final judgement.

The Ballad of Annabel Lee-

One of the two hardest songs to write in the entire play.  I struggled for weeks with the awkward rhythm of the verses.  Poe does not lend himself well to musical settings, which is probably why you don't hear about them being done.  There are twelve versions of this song, including three that were completed.  The first was too slow, the second was too evil, and the third I think has finally struck the balance between haunting, beautiful, and urgent that the piece really needs.  The song does everything that it needs to do.  I don't think that it's the best melody in the show, and I don't think that it's the best harmony and orchestration... but I do think that it's perfect for what it needs to do.  

The Ballad of Annabel Lee (Reprise)-

This just steals the melody from Annabel Lee and makes it more evil.  Songs are easy to write when you know what the melody HAS to be and then just have to incorporate a general mood.  It needs to be lengthened for the storm sequence, but overall one of the easier songs to write.

Close to Death-

It's good that I've done this analysis, because I looked back on all of my posts to see if I could find information about these songs, and I have never once mentioned Close to Death.  It's a piece that occurs after Madeline has "died" and is put in the tomb alongside Annabel Lee.  It recaps both Ballad and Alone at the same time, and adds a third melody (which is new) to complement the two.  I have no clue when I wrote this song, though it must have been early August.  I remember having one very productive week back then.  For a very complicated song, the writing came very easily.  It could have been, again, that my melodies were very clear and set and all I had to do was figure out how to put them together.  Starting from nothing is always much harder to do.  I think this is a very cool, epic song.  

That's it for now.  I look forward to Sunday so I can see other ways that my brain has been lying to me about what I did this summer.

Readthrough!

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I booked the readthrough for the play.  

November 14th, 7:30PM in Ewell Recital Hall at William and Mary

This readthrough will, if all goes well, consist of four actors representing the four main characters who will read through the script while sitting on stage.  There will be one or two rehearsals beforehand, so they will have had some time to work on characterization.  In addition, there will be music and sound effects playing at the indicated times during the play, and this should provide a pretty good simulation of what the musical might sound like in a full production.  

Met with Cirves to show him the first recording that we've made, featuring Rebecca Phillips as Madeline's singing voice.  He seemed to like it.  All is reasonably on schedule as long as I can get the rest of these pieces recorded before November.

Inspiration of the Day

This doesn't really relate directly to the House of Usher, but I watched this presentation on appreciating classical music (among other things) the other day and thought it was really spectacular.  I encourage anyone to take twenty minutes and check it out.  

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

In musical news, we start recording tomorrow!  I've been working overtime to try and finish at least ONE new female song to hand over so that they can start learning it.

Audio Immersion

I've been having a lot of fun playing with the computers in the media center this week.  They're all Apple G4s with 23 inch screens and the Logic Studio Pack pre-installed.  If you don't know logic, it's basically a sound production tool that lies between Finale (all about the notes) and ProTools (all about the mixing).  It has tons of cool sounds that I can use- pretty much anything you can imagine.  It even has the Chinese Erhu Violin.  Now that's a sound library right there.

What I've been debating myself about is whether or not to use this concept/demo CD to create an immersive audio environment.  What I mean by that is taking sounds, such as ambiant noises, footsteps, gunshots... whatever... and putting them into the songs in order to make them more realistic.

For example, I took the song "Love That Will Never Die" and I first put it through a classical guitar sampler.  This makes it sound like someone is actually playing guitar (or at least as close as I can get with a computer).  After that, I grabbed some ambient noise- a dark city street- wind, rustling, etc- and then some footsteps, as if someone is walking down the path.  A latch to some sort of case opens, and a few seconds later a guitar begins to play.

I think that's much more powerful than just explaining to a listener how the show opens- it allows the listener be immersed in the world without necessarily seeing it on a stage.  

I'm sure I'll be talking a lot in the near future about the G4 computers and the CD creation process in general.  I had my first meeting with my female singers on Thursday, and they were quite good.  It's getting to be about that time when I should start asking my artist and graphic design friends if they can come up with some promotional images...

I Got Somethin!

I sat down the other day and was able to write a good first draft of "Music of a Dream," which is a new title that I've given to a song previously called "Seranade."  I don't like generic names in my song titles.

It's the piece that William sings in honor of Annabel but based on another piece which Roderick had written and discarded.  There can never be an uncomplicated song that a character, you know, just writes for themselves.

I guess that's the point.

Anyway, what's more exciting is that I've been meeting with Duncan Neilson, my fall semester advisor, and he's been very helpful on tweaking my existing songs.  We were able to look at "A Love That will Never Die" earlier this week and make it, in my opinion, about five times better by changing only three notes in the entire song.  That's not three notes which repeat over and over, but three notes total.

The issue, as with every song, lies in the musical shaping.  You can imagine this easily by picturing a song you like and forgetting that it has notes.  Just think about the contour- the general idea of where it's going. You could think of Holst's "Mars" as a series of increasingly big hills angled softly on one side and steeply on the other.  You could think of the opening of the Jaws theme song as a series of upward sloping lines which become shorter and shorter.  Etc.

By changing three notes, we altered the song from two mirror-image lines with bumps at the end to one long line that makes the entire thing cohesive.  Perhaps I'm explaining this very poorly.  I would do a better job and draw graphs and things, but I have a paper for Strategic Management due this afternoon.  Yay school.

I Got Nothin

I have roughly eight weeks before our first scheduled readthrough, and in that time I still have to finish 3-4 songs and record all 16.  And it'd be nice if I could write the incidental music, too.

This stupid school thing is getting in the way of my musical writing.  I need to start scheduling in writing time like I schedule my classes.  Alright, from 4-5:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays, mandatory composition time.  I think I'll do more than that anyway just because I end up composing at random times, but at least now I'll have that, and if nothing else I'll get in... 24 hours of composition before read-through time.  

That doesn't sound right.  I need to schedule more time.  

DRAFT IV!

Mr. C just sent me an electronic copy of Draft IV, or IIII if you hate roman numerals.  What I've read of it seems great- a honing and improvement of everything that came before.   Also in this draft are lyrics for "Mysterium," which I'm quite excited about implementing.  They certainly show Roderick off in all of his megalomaniacal, crazy, sacrilegious glory.  

VOICES

(Singing incantations.)

PER IPSUM, ET CUM IPSO,     (Through him, and with him,

ET IN IPSO EST TIBI       and in him is unto thee,

DEO PROMETHEUS            God Prometheus          

OMNIPOTENTI IN UNITATE         almighty in the unity

SPIRITUS PROMETHEUS,             of the spirit of Prometheus,

OMNIS HONOR ET GLORIA.         all honor and glory.

PEROMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.       World without end.

PROMETHEUS.  AMEN.    Prometheus.  Amen.    

PROMETHEUS.  AMEN.        Prometheus.  Amen.

AMEN.  AMEN.  AMEN.          Amen.  Amen.  Amen.)

He also added in a line that I suggested, in which Roderick is talking to William after playing "Mysterium" and says:

"Think of it:  world peace…!  And, if not, we'll have twenty 

thousand cannons at our disposal, and the high ground."

And just because I like it so much, I'll end this post with William's monologue at the end of Act I:

WILLIAM

And so I left, for the first time, anyway.  The sky was still dark overhead, and damage from the storm was everywhere to be seen:  broken limbs, the smell of sulfur in the air, greenish foam all around the tarn, great mounds of it, as if the sea itself had gone insane that night and was foaming at the mouth….  And then I heard—sounds of music coming from the lonely House of Usher.  Four hands playing a dark variation of Roderick's "Mysterium."  It sounded … it sounded as if the two of them … were trying to raise the dead.

("MYSTERIUM VARIATION/REPRISE:  RAISING THE DEAD," crescendoing in volume and madness as the lights fade.)

(BLACKOUT.)

(END OF ACT I.)

An Upbeat Song!

I've been procrastinating for a while, as I'm sure you can tell.  However, this weekend I did fulfil the goal that I set for myself last weekend by writing another first draft of a song.  It's rough, to be sure, but "I Can Not Love You" is at least conceptualized.  

In contrast to what the name might lead you to believe "I Can Not Love You" is a romantic ballad which is based on Poe's "The Raven."  Madeline sings it to William in mock-serious/playful tone (he thinks it is about a former lover) and the reveal in the lyrics at the end is that it's been about the raven the whole time.  I alternate between a tune so mockingly sappy that it could have been in Tragedy! and a 5/4 playful rhythmic party.  Because Madeline wrote it, there's a key change every twenty seconds.  I don't know why I decided that was something she liked to do, but it's fairly well established now.

I sent it to Mr. C this morning.  I look forward to hearing what he thinks.  

Next week: "Silence"- can I finish both the initial incarnation AND the reprise?  Stay tuned.  

I made a word-cloud!

If you click on the image below, you can see a word cloud that I made which shows the top 40 words (other than the, is, to, etc...)  that I have used throughout this blog.  The results (specifically the occurance of "time" words) are occasionally depressing, but I think interesting.  More interesting than hearing me say that I still don't have anything new quite yet, at least.

Almost missed it!

Whew. After more than two months of keeping on schedule with this blog, I just about forgot about it this weekend. Blame it on college.

Actually, blame it on insurance- I was out doing that all weekend. Well, two hours. But there was a lot of work involved in that two hours. I made my first sale (yay!)... but, for as much as I enjoy the effort to reward ratio involved in insurance, if I could make half as much working ten times as long on music, I would do that instead.

I'm still waiting for Mr. C to get back to me about some song samples that I sent him. I'll try to write something in the next couple of days, regardless.

Back in College

I imagine that my blogs will become slightly shorter now that I have fifteen credit hours to deal with while trying to write this musical. This was expected, of course, and the reason why I wrote most of the music over the summer.

My room is now nicely set up, but I haven't been able to spend much time on music. When I do it's usually minor tweaking.

What I've lacked in musical preparation, though, I've made up for in socializing. I now have two good prospects to sing the female parts for the demo CD, and I have one good male prospect. All I need now is a tenor. I've also reserved a media room (recording studio) in the library for next Tuesday. The rooms they have down there have the greatest stuff. All Apple G4s. Most with dual screens. Anyway, that's what I'll be working on while making the CD.

I have a meeting with my composition professor, Duncan Neilson, on Tuesday to talk about the project.

My goal for the next week is still to finish one of these stupid female songs. They're getting better, but "better" in no way means "finished."

A Type of that Twin Entity

As I was hoping, I've made a few breakthroughs with "Silence," which is another song derived 100% from Poe:

There are some qualities--some incorporate things, That have a double life, which thus is made A type of that twin entity which springs From matter and light, evenced in solid and shade. There is a two-fold Silence--sea and shore-- Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places, Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces, Some human memories and tearful lore, Render him terrorless: his name's "No More." He is the corporate Silence: dread him not! No power hath he of evil in himself; But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!) Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf, That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod No foot of man) commend thyself to God!

I'm not entirely sure what I think of the poem itself... very dark. Anyway, Mr. C. told me to ignore all conventions of music writing for this and just make a pretty melody. We don't need the audience to really hear or understand the poem because a character speaks it earlier and it doesn't make any sense then either. Of course, it makes lots of references to twins, shadows, silence, and death, so it's perfect for this show.

Though I've found some nice melodies which fit with the flow of the words, I'm still not sure in which direction I want to take it. I have now a "haunting" option and a "sweetly comforting" option. Either works for the ghost of Annabel Lee (who sings the piece to William while he's in his bed). My opinion, since there's plenty of dark already in the show, is that having the song be sweet, pure, and hopeful would be best.

I think it can be hopeful because, in some way of interpretation, it's Annabel coming back and saying "death isn't so bad. It's your perception of death which is bad. So don't worry about it."

Or something like that.

Regardless, there's a ghost singing, and that's the important part.


Speaking of twins and twin entities, I got a message the other day from someone doing their own version of "Usher" at the New York Fringe Festival right now! In fact, their run just ended. It's a very different interpretation than the one Mr. C and I are going for- and very cool, I think. The few snippets of music that I can hear I think are very good. You can check them out at http://www.usherthemusical.com/


Moving back to college today. Should be an interesting year.

I'm bad at math

Even though I originally told Mr. C that it would only take about three months to get first drafts of all the major songs in the show, I just remembered that it took me about NINE months to do the same for "Tragedy!" so I'm not too surprised that I'm five songs and two weeks behind schedule.

I tend to work in bursts of creativity- in the last burst, I finished four of the songs to be sung by Roderick and/or William. I'm hoping that the next burst hammers out the female songs, which are turning out to be the hardest by far, mostly because I think I've wasted all of the prettiest melodies in my head on satirical songs.

Every now and then I'll listen to what I consider to be a beautiful song: the "Moonlight Sonata," "Memory," "On My Own," "Falling Slowly," and many others... and my reaction is much like the listener's reaction at the start of this musical. It just seems so simple. Frustratingly simple. Part of me feels like if I keep trying out combinations of three to five notes at a time in random intervals I'll eventually hit on the next effortlessly gorgeous tune. I doubt that's actually true.

Ahh well. Like Edison, I'm finding the 999 ways that something doesn't work before the light-bulb turns on. And as always, nothing beautiful is simple.

Recruiting

Today I began the long and arduous process of musician courting. String quartet courting, to be specific.

Out of all the possible instruments that I'll need for next April, the string section should be the most challenging to find. I suppose it's my fault for having been in the Wind Symphony instead of the orchestra all these years, but I just don't know that many string players. The one string player I do know, however, is extremely outgoing and personable, so I've asked her to help me find three others so that we can do some experiments during the fall semester.

I'm scrounging for vocalists, too. The sooner I can get all the songs recorded, the better- because what a real singer does is bring out all the things that I've done wrong. And I don't want to sing on the demo CD.

The third prong of my attack plan involves coming up with a space and time to do a readthrough of the script sometime in November. I'd love to have the luxury of an audition and rehearsal process for the readers, so I'm planning that out in my head as well. I feel as though the lady who works the scheduling desk in the music department is going to get to know me very well in the first few weeks of school.

Out of all the steps of creating a musical, strategizing and human-resource-allocation is easily my favorite part. I finally get to transition from working all alone in the upstairs office to working mostly alone but while sending out lots of e-mails and organizing lunch dates. I'm really excited about the potential for this project, and so I hope that I can put together a good team (I seemed to get really lucky with the Tragedy! team so I'm going to cannibilize a bit from that production) and let them be smarter than me.

I'll probably need Kay to translate everything I say.

And Robert, as far as props go, I'm gonna need a full-sized house that can collapse on itself on a nightly basis. And an ocean. I just wanted to give you a head start on that.

No Post Today

Which makes this paradoxical.

Tal Fish, one of my old actors from Tragedy! came over today and recorded draft one of the opening song from Usher. I'd share it, but

1. I don't know how.

and

2. The above is a lie, but I don't want to post first drafts of things because invariably I'll change everything and post a second draft and someone will comment or e-mail me saying "oh but I really liked the first draft, I think it was much better" and I'll be tormented for weeks, agonizing about my editorial decisions and losing sleep.

I'm going up to Woodberry tomorrow and will meet with Mr. C at some point to discuss songs that I've written while he was on vacation. He already previewed them and wrote a note which included the phrase "I'm probably going to be as hard to please vis. the melody as you were for the lyrics."

Which makes me wish I hadn't been such a jerk about the lyrics. Ahh well- we all need someone to say that what we thought was our best isn't, in fact, our best. Usually you end up with something better just to spite them... which pretty much proves them right. It's a vicious cycle.

So much for no post.



EDIT- 1:34 AM-

Literally five seconds after I posted this, I went to check one of the blogs that I have bookmarked, and I read the following at the very top of the page:

Usher syndrome, Part I: an introduction to sensory perception

Because there's an actual medical condition called Usher syndrome.

Alone

I'm writing this from Myrtle Beach, where I drove down so that my sister could see a concert as an early 16th birthday present. Though I was not super excited about spending two days driving and doing essentially nothing, the screaming which nearly deafened me as she got into the car tonight to tell me all about how the lead singer signed her jeans made it all worthwhile.

Yesterday I did a lot of work setting "Alone" to music. The words, which are direct and as-of-yet unchanged from a Poe poem of the same name, is as follows:

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

It's a metaphor.

Anyway, I think that went pretty well. I have one more major piece in the puzzle before I start fitting everything together and finalizing draft one (please please, before school starts, please), and that is the CRAZY motif. Not sure exactly what that'll be, but I have faith in pounding random notes out in Finale and waiting for the Ouija board of musical ghosts to take over.

Pretty soon I have to start thinking about how and when to arrange auditions for the readthrough that we're planning in November. Closely related to that is thinking about when to record demos of all of the songs... and as much as I'm sure everyone enjoyed my singing voice on the "Tragedy!" demo CD, I'd like to get other people to sing it all. It would be beyond wonderful if we could have a well rehearsed readthrough AND a decent sounding CD to go along with it- helps to focus on actual problems with the show rather than performance issues. Here's hoping.

Old Becomes New

While Mr. C is in New Hampshire he doesn't have access to the internet, but he has learned to use the texting feature on the phone. I've been getting song lyrics via text message all day- it's been pretty fun.

One of the songs I was having a great deal of trouble with earlier was "Alone," which originally was a poem sung written by Madeline but sung by Roderick while being improvised musically by William. Complicated.

We decided to change it to a poem written by Madeline and composed by Roderick for guitar, which he doesn't really play. He sees a fine musician in William and asks him to give it a try. This way, we get to have sheet music on stage! They won't use it, of course, because they'll have everything memorized... but it'll be there, just the same.

After much head-banging-on-table, I was able to find an old draft of the Ballad of Annabel Lee that seems to fit the feel of the song fairly well. We'll see how long it takes to set it.

In other news, I have four days left to write six or so songs. Not gonna happen, but I certainly will try.

A Vision

I now have about twenty minutes of first draft music to show for two months of official work on the show.  That's about ten minutes a month, or .3 minutes a day, which I think is a pretty reasonable rate.  Honestly, if I knew that I could consistently write 1 second of really solid music per day, then that's all I would do.  After a decade or so I'd have a nice symphony and then what more would I need?

The most recent piece that I've worked on is a setting of Coleridge's Kubla Khan.  William sings it when asked to perform something old along with something new.

The text is as follows:

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The challenge, of course, for any text that doesn't have some sort of hook, repeating words, or sections, is to keep the song interesting and consistent without seeming random.  That's the challenge for romantic folk music, at least.  What I've done so far, which I'm not sure I like yet, is to create a two variations on a guitar loop that last for eight or ten bars each.  The melody is never exactly the same, but the guitar is very familiar and repetitive throughout.  

The melody itself is very lyrical and vocally demanding- we're going to need a pretty good tenor for this role.  

I'm still debating whether or not to add in the string quartet to this song.  I think I'm going to, but at one point I think a guitar-only song could be powerful...

Oh the Rats, Rats, Rats, Rats, Rats!

Mr. C left this morning on a long trip to New Hampshire, but before he left we had two days of meetings about Draft IV (he's calling it draft III* but it's sufficiently advanced for me to call it IV) and what I've been working on since Italy.  

In the new draft, the tertiary characters of rats take on a much larger and creepier role.  Apparently some daddy rats eat their children shortly after they are born.  It's a metaphor.

The mystery surrounding the rats comes to a head in a song that Roderick sings while going mental during the storm sequence.  It's called "Ode to Rats" and is in two movements.  As Roderick describes it, "it is to be performed by a choir of a thousand counter-tenors and castrati."  For the purposes of the show, Roderick sings in falsetto.  I have written the first draft of the song, and it varies wildly between a childish little tune about rats and  an increasingly darker refrain which simply goes "Oh the rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats, rats!  Oh the rats, rats, rats, rats, rats!"  By the end of the song I was able to use the marking "scream/sing" which was my first use of that indication in music and quite a lot of fun.  

My favorite marking I ever used was in "A Suite for the Children, by the Devil, for Wind Symphony" in which I wrote, above a first trumpet line "struggle for survival," followed three bars later by "you lose."

I expect, at some point in the storm sequence, to be able to use something like that.

Flow Chart

I tried every way I could think of to post this in a way so that you could actually read it. Oh well. Think of it as abstract Usher art.

Last Day of Pavia

Tonight I see my piece performed, and tomorrow morning I go home. I've been debating whether there will be any sleep between those two events. I doubt it.

I've had an amazing time these past ten days, and I feel like it's going to really change my compositions for the better. I've made some good new friends, and I even have some new projects (secondary to this one, of course).

One of the composers, Steve, from Las Vegas, has told me that if I reorchestrate my band composition "A Suite for the Children, by the Devil" (just a ten minute piece that I did almost two years ago) then he could just about guarantee a performance out there by a band that he has close ties with.

The soprano, Amanda, and I started started spontaneously composing a country song while on the long walk back to our dorm (which is great fun and occasionally involves climbing over fences). So when we got back we sat down and wrote out some lyrics and tunes, and we're trying to get together a country song cycle sometime in the next year.

And, of course, Giovanni wants to write a dialogue-free opera/ballet/thing about zombies. I think that's the idea, at least. So I might be working on that, too.

But, in all of this, I haven't forgotten about Usher. If I could access the internet with my own computer, I'd show you a flow chart that I've been putting together which details the relationship of the songs to each other. It will help me know which songs to parallel and what elements to place chronologically. And I've gotten several new tunes down as well. I'm not sure I'll make the August 11th deadline, but I'll be close.

I'll be working with Mr. C early next week to determine our next move.

My Sunday post might be a bit rambly and incoherent (more than usual?) because I might be writing it on very very little sleep. Maybe I'll just post my flow chart.

I had a beer with a guy who was hit on by Aaron Copland

For real.

After amazingly full days of learning and concerts on both Thursday and Friday, we got a day of rest on Saturday. Though I was originally hoping to go somewhere outside of Pavia, we got back to our dorm at 4AM on Friday, so I decided to sleep in.

I wish I could say that I was out until four having fun with my friends, but in fact we started our trek back to dorm at the reasonable hour of two. There's a long story in this one, but to sum up: when there are no busses and you can't find a taxi, you walk, even if you don't know where you live. Eventually, you find it... eventually.

At 2PM my roommate Jason and I woke up and headed into town. We got some lunch, did a little bit of shopping, and then sat down at a cafe and talked with Dr. Hulse and our visiting composition lecturer, Karl Korte, for a few hours. Professor Korte is about eighty years old and was there at many pivotal moments in music history. He was present (I think) at the first performance of Cage's 4'33", he was friends with Bernstein and Copland, and he was a pioneer in the field of synthetic and electronic music. Definitely a very interesting man.

This festival so far has fired me up about different ways to look at and write music. Many people think of contemporary composers as being eccentrics and arrogant academics locked up in some ivory tower. What I've actually found, though, is that every single person in this program is probably more culturally aware and appreciative than the average person. The killer soprano loves country music, the composition teacher quotes South Park and Borat, and the moment you start to sing or hum any given pop song, half of the participants join in instantly.

My favorite part of the program is still working with Giovanni. We have very similar feelings about what makes a good piece of music. I'll see if he has a website, because I think that you all might be surprised by how accessible his music is, even though it is still very contemporary.

What day is it??

After a long and arduous journey over the ocean and Alps (which really make you go "what was Hannible THINKING?!" as you fly over them) I have arrived safely in Pavia, Italy.

The flight was uneventful, except I was sitting next to a very nice woman who was actually from Transylvania, which I thought was really cool. She tried to tell me a Transylvanian joke about Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) in which Vlad's troops capture a Turkish guy (apparently they were at war) and impaled him on a stick as a gift. They then covered the body and stick in a cloth and, when Vlad pulled off the cloth, his men gathered around and started singing "happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you..."

As with most jokes translated out of their original language, I feel that this one must have lost something important...


Already I have had a day of classes, and I've learned, as always, that I know far less than even the little I thought I knew about music. One of my new professors, Giovanni Albini, is a brilliant contemporary composer who also put me to shame with an amazing catalogue of commercial music that he's written for films and other things in Italy. Because he is Italian, he always manages to fit in a metaphor relating a musical concept to a woman. Our favorite so far has been "I believe you must have an idea and then stick to it and develop it. We do not need many many ideas. If I say that I would like to see your beautiful girlfriend, I do not also want to see her mother."

Last night he also told us a story (that much have been translated poorly) about hanging out with mobsters and their model girlfriends at a club in Milan and drinking communally from what could only be described as a "chalice, filled with champagne and fruit and I think extacy(sp? my spellcheck doesn't work here) because I could not go to sleep and I was shaking."

On the musical front, Giovanni has promised to show me lots of mathematical concepts which relate to music, from which I should theoretically be able to choose a method of composition for "mad Madeline."

I have my first lesson with Professor Hulse on Wednesday.

Oh, and I also got to sit in on a rehearsal of my piece for four-hand piano. The girls playing it are fabulous musicians and very kind to indulge me whenever I can't think of a musical term and replace it instead with a dramatic one.

"I want you to... uhh... fill the atmosphere with a sense of growing dread."

"Like... play it progressively louder?"

"If that's a dread-filling device, absolutely."

"At the end would you like us to stand up and scream 'there she is, outside the door!' like Roderick Usher?"

I think they understand me.

EPIC!

It's about 3:30 AM on Sunday, which I consider Sunday enough to go ahead and post.

I'm up because I was attempting to finish a first draft (again) of "Mysterium" - the little tune that has kept me occupied for longer than any other 3-4 minute musical piece I've ever worked on.

Except for the last 30 seconds, which I'm going to fix, I'm happy with how it turned out.

Now I have to get ready for Italy on Monday. Ten days of composition at the Soundscape Music Festival and not much else. You can check out the Soundscape website here.

I'll try to update on Thursday while I'm there, but if I don't then you'll know that I don't have internet. Or I'm just having way too much fun to post. In any event, I should have lots of songs to talk about when I get back.

The Mystic Chord

Alexander Scriabin, the inspiration for Roderick Usher's musical direction, based many of his pieces off of a series of fourths that he called the akkord plemory and we have since taken to calling "The Mystic Chord." From his wikipedia page, I find that this chord

"was designed to afford instant apprehension of-that is, to reveal-what
was in essence beyond the mind of man to conceptualize."

Which I think is a particularly fitting description that I can pass down to Roderick Usher.

I've been doubling back to work on Mysterium before doing some of the easier pieces that I now have pretty good ideas about. It has not gotten any easier to create a piece that will match the fervor of its description.

"Ten thousand strings- like only the Gods have heard before."
"Two-thousand cannons!"
"And a chorus of fifty-thousand to silence the cannons and drums of war once and for all!"

Most of my composition process involves staring at these words and thinking to myself "seriously?"

There is a chance I'm looking too far into it- but I feel like Mysterium is slowly (VERY slowly) writing itself. It knows what it wants, and I'm just here to click in notes until it tells me I can move on. It lets me know almost instantly if it is not happy with a note, but it gives me very little guidance as to what sounds it WOULD prefer.

We've got thirty seconds. We're looking for between four and five minutes. We've got eight months. We can do this.

Once I get to Italy in a few days, maybe I'll be able to crank out some of the other pieces that I need. I've only got until the very arbitrary date of August 11th to submit draft 1 of everything.

Stretching Realism

The initial concept of the intro to the show was to have the lights rise on a single street performer plucking out some haunting tunes on a guitar.  A listener arrives, and the performer demonstrates the different influences of the tunes- classical, folk, romantic, whatever.

I've decided to alter this very slightly for dramatic and timing purposes.  Now, when the listener questions the source of the particularly beautiful compositions, the performer will simply play it again and ask the listener to pay closer attention.  As he is doing so, strings, flute, and piano will quietly come in one at a time from the edges of the stage- filling in the song, expanding it, and making it complete.  The listener will not register that he is hearing these new sounds, but he will understand that something very interesting is going on in the piece.

This allows for more powerful music at the start (an overture of sorts) and it also means the performer won't have to play six different songs to make a very basic point- that music is the product of a multitude of influences, both stolen and inspired- and if you know the whole story behind a song, it usually makes it that much more poignant.  

As an aside, but to continue the above point, take Beethoven's Third Symphony- aka the "Eroica" symphony.  As the story (as far as I know it) goes, this piece was inspired by Napoleon.  It was a symphony to exalt a great man whom Beethoven admired greatly.  Around halfway through the composition of the piece, though, Napoleon declared himself emperor of the world and Beethoven scratched off any mention of him on the manuscript.  The piece then became an ode "to a once great man."  

Now, if you do listen to Beethoven's Third, I promise that the sounds will take on entirely new meanings as you try to understand Beethoven's feelings throughout.

That's all for now- didn't get to write much because I was in DC for the Fourth of July.   I was thinking that maybe the fireworks might inspire something for "Mysterium."  We will see.

A Funny Thing Happened

Though Mr. C was supposed to take this week off, he has e-mailed me to say that the characters wouldn't let him sleep unless he corrected some things and wrote a third draft. We are now at 82 pages (18 shorter than draft 2) and I'm very excited to read it whenever he allows me to.

From what I can understand, what he is trying to do in this third draft is create stronger characters with larger motivations. Madeline and Roderick have to be working on a cure for death (her scientifically, him musically) far before anything happens to Annabel Lee. Roderick's drive to write a symphony to end the world should be even more a part of his daily conversation. Madeline has to be even more psychopathic and potentially dangerous.

There is a giant ice machine that was in draft two (invented by a Dr. Gorrie in the mid-1800's), but I think that its presence has been diminished in the latest draft. Too heavy-handed, perhaps. There is a great allusion, though, that you can make to "The Tell Tale Heart" using the thumping of the ice machine as a constant annoyance. And WHY is there a gigantic ice machine in this New York seaside mansion? There is a fine line between making the audience curious and blowing the climas three or four scenes in advance.


On the musical front, I have worked a bit on a song that Madeline writes to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Annabel's death. It is very simple- a huge departure from her atonal experiments of the first act- but still progressive, with constantly shifting keys AND a shifting refrain that strikes different parts of the melody each time it is repeated. I'm not sure that makes sense in writing, but if you could hear it, you'd get it.

As I was writing an e-mail back to Mr. C about my various thoughts for future redrafts, I had an odd idea that will probably come to nothing but I thought interesting enough to pursue for a few days, at least. In the show, so far, we have happy songs and we certainly have sad songs, but we don't have any FUNNY songs. I know... I promised that this one wouldn't be funny- but I figured out a way to put it in and keep it internally consistant with the characters' logic. Basically, it would be Madeline singing the song of love that William can't because of his fear. She would be singing it as though she were him but to herself, if that makes sense, and in doing so would be mocking him and flirting with him at the same time. I'm not sure what I think yet, but I'm working out some ideas in my head. It's not knee-slapping funny... it's subtle.

Which reminds me that, last summer, my actors used to make fun of me by suggesting we re-title "Tragedy!" as "Subtlety! (A Musical Comedy)."

I'm just now starting to feel recharged on wanting to write comedy. Maybe by the time we're finished with "Usher" I'll be ready to go for another farce.

The Big Picture

No big update today. I've spent the past few days learning some insurance stuff for my part-time job, so I haven't been able to do much composing. I have, however, reviewed the things that I've already written and started doing some redrafts.

Redrafts are tough because I believe, as a general rule, that I should have just gotten it right the first go around. I know that's unrealistic, but it's how I work. Things change, though, and musical-writing is a much more dynamic process than I wanted to believe as I wrote my first show. The lessons learned from "Tragedy!" are helping me immensely this time. The biggest advancement in my own thinking has been the acceptance of the idea of "theme" in music. What I mean by that is basically what I talked about in the last post- that there's a puzzle and it all has to make sense at the end. The best way for a musical to make sense is to give it some sense of cohesion, so that's my big challenge right now.

There have been some requests, by people who are not familiar with the poem, to post "Annabel Lee." So here it is. I'll let you use your imaginations to figure out what kind of melody I put to it. I went through about ten drafts, so whatever you think of is probably at least related so something I wrote.

The "Ballad of Annabel Lee" is divided into multiple parts- some sections repeat. Overall, though, what is written below is what we're using as lyrics.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

3-D Sudoku

I have decided, during my ample time spent hoping the cows outside will sing me a brilliant melody, that writing a musical score is somewhat like doing 3-D sudoku, if there is such a thing. There are numbers, certainly, that are in place- and I absolutely know where I have to go in order to succeed. It's the time spent trying to match the songs to the pieces both before and after- and then to the theme- and then to a piece five songs previous- and then to a song I have yet to write (but it MUST have foreshadowing)- that represents what keeps me going AND what makes me want to repeatedly hit the "delete" button.

I'm back at home, after a very productive week at Woodberry. In spite of my griping, I DID manage to break through a wall of sorts and write (at least a first draft) of the "Ballad of Annabel Lee," which is of supreme importance because there are about six songs that are some variation of it, and it helps to know the general direction of where those have to go. To clarify the writing process: by "break through a wall" I mean I hijacked an actual (obscure) folk ballad for the first four measures and then went from there. I forget who said it, but there was once a very famous musician who, when asked whether he borrowed anything from other composers, replied:

"I never borrow. I steal."

All in all, I got four good drafts done in one week (five working days). I'll be lucky to get two finished in the next week- when I'm at home there are many distractions.

On the script side of things, Mr. C completed the second draft of the show and we read it aloud on Wednesday afternoon. It still has a lot of work to be done on it before it's ready for the stage, but I'm enamoured with the world that we have created in what seems like a few short weeks (to be fair, we were thinking about it for the past four months).

I think in the near future I will post short midi snippets of songs on this website so that you don't have to be confused every time I reference a type of song or something like that (does anyone know how to do this on blogger?). Also, I always welcome criticism with open arms.

"There she is, outside the door!"

It was finished a week ago, but only yesterday did I finally get to see the end of Act II. So the good news is that Mr. C is, from now on, just rewriting what is already basically complete.

Music doesn't quite work that way. I did, since I arrived at Woodberry to do some work, put down two songs that I consider "keepers." During that process, I learned that, occasionally, I go absolutely insane while writing music. I've deduced this because sometimes either can't remember writing things, or, in the case of this last piece of music, I am certain that what I am writing sounds completely different than the actual output. I had a conversation with Mr. C that went like this:

"Now, when you listen to this song, you may notice that I've completely ripped off another song."

(He listens to the song. After a moment.) "I liked it. But what song were you referencing?"

"Oh come on, it's so blatant. Here. 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.'"

"Which song?"

"You know... that song. At the end of Act I. Umm. Let me listen to that." (I listen to the music. After a moment.) "That sounds nothing like that musical, does it? Uhh. Nevermind. Yeah, I like it though."


Anyway, now that I know all the songs I'll be writing (and most of them are really great challenges) I will hopefully be increasing my output of actual tunes rather than the dreaded "sketches."

I'm very excited about the music for the second Act. There's a bit of a surprise ending, and the climax just about hits the threshold for epic...

We've also decided to remove the dulcimer from our instrument list and replace it with Franklin's Glass Armonica. Music of the spheres, indeed.

On Epic

In the first five days of officially working on "Usher," I wrote reasonable melodies for at least five songs. I came up with some guitar tunes for William... I wrote a drinking song.... good stuff. To be honest, I felt like my pace was a little slow.

How I long for those days again.

For the past week and a half, now, I have been working on one song: "Mysterium." "Mysterium" is Roderick Usher's attempt to "usher in" a paradise on Earth through music. It will be performed at the base of Mount Olympus by an ensemble of 100,000. Forty-five thousand strings, one thousand pianos, four thousand percussion (including two thousand actual cannons), and fifty thousand voices. There are only strings and pianos because other instruments drive Usher mad with pain, for some reason. Anyway- sounds easy, right?

I suppose it's reasonable, then, that I wrote ten drafts of the first thirty seconds of this piece... spending ten days doing so... only to toss them all and stare in fury at my empty computer screen. I need to go back to Woodberry- I think I work better there.

The good news is that I finally have at least one melody that has passed my strictest "epic" test.

Mike's Epic Test:

1. Would it sound reasonable if you heard it in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy?

2. How about "Star Wars"?

3. "Gladiator"?

4. "Batman?"

If you answer "no" to any of the above, the song is clearly not epic enough. Try again.


With any luck, I'll be satisfied with it as a draft soon enough. Then I can work on... you know... the twenty other pieces of music I need to write.

Full of Sound and Fury

I was informed the other day that this project has been accepted by William and Mary as an honors thesis. Awesome.

In addition to having another reason to get my composing done in a timely manner, I also get the privilege of having the music in the show performed as my senior recital. According to what I understand about music theses at William and Mary, 45 minutes of music = no paper writing required. You can bet "Usher" is going to come in with around 46 minutes of music (including lots and lots of underscoring).

So essentially, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is about four musicians who all come together in one house in an anachronistic 1800's:

William Reed: A wanderer from Virginia who ends up in New York with only a guitar to keep him company. He plays a beautifully emotional, progressive form of folk music.

A stretch because: I don't know anything about 1800's folk music OR writing for guitar. Luckily, my sister knows a thing or two, so I'm enlisting her to show me what's what.

Roderick Usher: A wealthy/sickly student in New York who has recently inherited his family's mansion. He is a Romantic composer who has far outstripped his professors, and his end goal is a musical event that will bring the world to bliss. His real-life inspiration, musically, is Alexander Scriabin (a composer in the early 1900's with a very similar idea).

A stretch because: A musical event that will bring the world to bliss? Outstripping professors? I am fairly confident in my ability to get into his Romantic composition style, but this may be TOO epic. We'll see.

Madeline Usher: Roderick's sister. A brilliant composer, mathematician, and scientist. She speaks openly about the theory of relativity a hundred years before Einstein. She has invented her own, "improved," form of music notation. She writes pieces that are extremely progressive and mathematically perfect in her eyes, though they may be abominations to our own ears. Her musical inspiration is the age of Serialism.

A stretch because: Serialism? Why can't she be a hardcore gangster rapper, or something else easy? Serialism in itself is not a difficult concept, but the actual production of something that sounds atonal without seeming like COMPLETE nonsense may be a slight difficulty.

Annabel Lee: Roderick's wife, or so he calls her. They are not "officially" married because Roderick doesn't believe in the church. She is a student training her voice for opera, but she also happens to play the flute.

A stretch because: This one isn't so bad. She's the only character who isn't labeled in some way as "progressive" for her time. That means I can stay in a nice, sweet Romantic mood while fiddling away at notes for her flute.


Overall, the music concept is one of stretched realism: the characters themselves will not burst out into song unless they are holding instruments and there is a good reason that they would actually be playing a song. In a house full of musicians, the excuses are many. From time to time, this sound will be filled in by chorus members playing string instruments on the side of the stage.

For an image of this approach, go out and rent the movie "Once." It also applies this realism-in-musical idea, and it does so quite well.

Building the House

It's hard to believe, but it's been over two and a half years since I started writing my first musical: "Tragedy! (A Musical Comedy)". I have forgotten nearly everything specific about the experience, which is a terrible shame.

Since the (for now) completion of that project last August, I have been contentedly lazing about... writing small pieces, going to China, etc.... It was going to China that inspired me to write my first blog, Digging for China. I had so much fun writing that blog and creating a permanent record of my travels that I decided to do the same for my newest musical project based on "The Fall of the House of Usher."

This is how it started.

After I graduated Woodberry Forest in 2005, I periodically hounded my old Drama Teacher/Adviser/Director, Brent Cirves, about a potential collaboration. I would say very subtle things such as "hey, when are we going to write something together?" or "you know, I'm not doing anything this summer. I sure wish I were writing a musical."

In China, I received an e-mail from Mr. C regarding some pieces that I had written for a production of "Hamlet" that he did at Woodberry. At the end of his debrief, almost an aside- was the following:

"As to the process--yes, let's talk about that some more....
I would like to write a complete show with you some day, if you're game."

I attacked like a feral mongoose, sending e-mail after e-mail encouraging this flame. When the time was right, I said "let's do it" and set a goal: a musical, to be completed in time for submission to the 2009 New York Fringe Festival. And that, my friends, is exactly what we are doing.

We agreed on "Usher" mainly because it was a story about a musician who can't stand the sound of music (due to a strange illness). It was also the story of friendship: people building each other up through grand music and philosophy... and the limits that friendship can reach. Mostly, though, we agreed because a house falls down at the end. A whole house. The Phantom (of the Opera) gets what? A lousy chandelier? Usher gets a house. As those of you who know me are aware, I enjoy epic.

Since the story of Usher is too short for a full length musical, we decided early on to make up a first act, before the events of the story begin. In this, the relationships of all the characters will be established, and we will, as Mr. C puts it, "shoot many arrows into the sky." While we were shooting arrows already, we decided to add another one of Poe's creations: Annabel Lee. With the addition of this fourth character, we are able to have love triangles, AND quadrangles. Plus, we get to include her namesake poem in a climactic death scene. High drama, indeed.

The division of labor is as follows: Mr. Cirves (who at one point asked me to call him Brent, which I won't, because it's weird) will write the book and a good chunk of the lyrics. I will write all of the music, including incidental. Edgar Allan Poe will provide some plot and a smattering of lyrics.

Last week, I was up at Woodberry and Mr. C and I officially commenced draft one. For now, at least, we're calling it "The Fall of the House of Usher." I think that it needs a new name... one that indicates something other than the short story merely placed on stage....

The music, which will be the primary focus of this blog from this point on, is going to be very challenging. But, as Roderick Usher says (at least in our version)... nothing beautiful is simple.