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.
No comments:
Post a Comment