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...