Introduction

Since September, I have had the opportunity to write for a variety of different scenarios, groups, assignments, vocal parts, and genres. Exploring these different opportunities has allowed me to branch out into different areas of music theatre, contemporary music, orchestral, and folk, which has broadened my skillset as a music theatre writer. Between Introduction to Collaborative Practice assignments, Performance Project productions, and my own personal projects, having been able to experiment with different musical choices has been incredibly valuable. To have access to a large group of singers and actors that are enthusiastic about new and developing work is rare, and I took advantage of their amazing skillsets as much as I could.

Coming into this course in September, I was confident in my abilities to write in my own style. I wasn’t exactly sure what that style was, but I felt that the pieces that I have written prior were of a quality that could be appreciated by the community. I knew the course was going to challenge my abilities, but I was ready to be pushed to new areas that would allow me to grow and develop as an artist and a creative professional.

The Mountain

The first assignment that we were given in our Introduction to Collaborative Practice module was to create a piece of work based on the prompt “Tomorrow”. We were put into small groups, and something that my group agreed upon was the neurodivergent experience of task paralysis. We came up with a scenario where our main character needed to find her passport to apply for a visa, as she was accepted into a school in a different country. The only issue was that the passport was somewhere underneath a mountain of other random things that she had on her desk, and she has been putting off cleaning it all up for weeks. From this idea, I wrote a song called “The Mountain” where the character battles the pressure of needing to achieve this task and the paralysis she feels when she thinks about it.

There are a few things that I really liked about this piece. I think that the music and melody both accurately portray a generalized feeling of neurodiverse task paralysis, creating a sense of unease without being too aggressive. It has a persistent rhythm akin to a ticking clock to emphasize the concept of time running out. The staccato motion of the piano really hammers in this effect as I wanted it to feel like the deadline is knocking on the door.

Partway through the song, there is a flashback to the last day of school where our main character is saying goodbye to her best friend. The best friend gives her a bracelet to remember her, and tells her to come see her tomorrow. The character completely forgets, and only remembers when she finds the bracelet in the pile of items on her desk. The piano vibe changes entirely for this flashback, playing a lovely relaxing chord progression with a flowing melody. When the best friend sings the line “Will I see you tomorrow?” The music returns to the more intense, driving motion that the song begins with directly on the word “tomorrow”. This throws the main character back into the present, remembering the task at hand but with the added guilt of realizing she forgot to reach out to her best friend.

As the song continues into the ending, the ensemble underscores while the main character has a panicking monologue about the things she needs to do. I think this part is very effective, as the ensemble vocals slowly grow in a round to add pressure to the character, repeating the words “yesterday”, “you said”, and “tomorrow”.

I think this song, though it is simple, is very effective at what I wanted it to do. I think it portrayed the very real and scary experience that is task paralysis, and the conflicts of emotion that come with it. Due to the short time frame, there were some issues regarding rehearsal time and execution, so if I were to rewrite this with the same kind of restrictions I would simplify the vocals a bit. I also think that as a result of either the time restriction or laziness, a lot of the main character’s story is conveyed through spoken word with underscoring. If I were to redo this song without the same time constraints, I would expand the musical storytelling element of the main character, but for the assignment and the context, I think this piece was a success.

The Perseids

For the New Works module, I decided to bring in a piece that is part of my musical, Flightless. The song, “The Perseids”, takes place near the end of my show, and is the pinnacle moment of two of my main characters’ relationship. The two characters go and see a meteor shower that is overhead, and they both open up about their relationship with their respective fathers, officially solidifying the respect for each other.

Something that I am finding particularly challenging with this piece (as it is still, at this point of writing, unfinished) is finding the delicateness of the subject matter, and how to bring in additional points in a natural way without it being a ‘trauma dump’. The first half of the song I think I found a nice balance, having natural hesitations in the melody where the character is deciding whether or not to say certain things. Specifically during the line “‘Till one day he looked up and saw the meteors… for the last time” there is a significant pause after ‘meteors’ where Martin is making the decision whether or not to open up about his father’s struggle with cancer. I also wanted to keep the energy from falling to far into despair, so I made sure to add a dialogue break with some humorous banter between the two to lighten the mood. I think the contrast allows the more emotional parts to hit harder so that the song isn’t just a sob story.

Presenting this song in New Works without prior context was really interesting. I did give a brief description of the plot leading up to this point, but due to its placement near the end of the show, I couldn’t say everything. It was actually really helpful to hear thoughts and opinions about the song out of context, and to hear that some people were actually able to extrapolate the relationship development without having watched the show beforehand. I think it is really important that people can have a semblance of understanding of the plot of a song in a musical without having to know every bit of context. They were able to conclude what kind of relationship they had, that it has been a bit rocky up until this point, and that this is the moment when they both decide that they appreciate each other. I think this shows that the song is a compelling part of the show, and has a clear arc.

I really like the way I wrote the piano for this piece. I think the piano having a sort of ‘twinkle’ in it lends itself well to the meteor shower concept. Also, I programmed my own synth to make what I call a shooting star, which you can hear in the background of the music as kind of a higher pitched soaring sound that falls into the distance. The response to the music overall was very positive. Many people said they could easily picture the cosmos or a meteor shower even before I told them what the song was about. I greatly enjoy painting pictures with music, and I think one of my strengths as a composer is the ability to convey a scene or complex emotion through music.

Some edits that I might make to this song have to do with instrumentation. I think the instrumentation during the dialogue break becomes too advanced too early, and it might be a better choice to have it a bit more limited until later in the song. I think the dialogue should be underscored with gentleness instead of it becoming grand all of a sudden. I want the song to earn the grandiose-ness as it develops. I am looking forward to making edits on this piece. I really am fond of this song and I think it fits quite well into my show.

Don’t Look Back

At the end of first term, I had the amazing opportunity to create and produce a piece for the Performance Project module entitled “Final Act”. This was a selection of four separate musicals, showcasing three songs from each, and weaving it together into a story. This was an excellent experience that taught me about different tasks a musical theatre writer may be hired to do, and I feel that I did it with efficiency. Each musical I picked served a dramatic purpose, and each cast was able to tackle different kinds of songs from each show.

On top of creating this production, I was tasked to write a group number for the class that was in the theme of the show. The show, having to do with death and the different ways it’s portrayed in theatre, allowed many different avenues that I could take my own piece. I decided to write a song about artificial intelligence and robots taking over the world due to humanity’s hubris and environmental damage. I entitled this song “Don’t Look Back” as an homage to Icarus who flew too close to the sun ending his own life as humanity may be doing as well.

I started this song by emulating the sound of a music box. I imagined the characters as robots with plastic coating making them look like dolls coming to life, and with the music box sound they would begin their robotic movements and blink to life. In the chorus, I made a reference to the oil production process. I did a lot of research into the science behind plastic and oil production so the characters are actually explaining the process and telling them about how it’s destroying their world. I had the music and melody slowly modulate down throughout the chorus as if it is melting, similar to a way that plastic would if it were heated.

The section immediately following the chorus, the time signature changes, and as does the tempo. I think that this part gets too intense a bit too quickly, and the instrumentation gets a bit too chaotic. If I were to rewrite this I would delay this section to after a second chorus to be more of a bridge instead of so early in the song, since after this part it gets really quiet again. The chorus repeats but with different lyrics, then there is a large a Capella section. I really like this part, as I think it is a very powerful climax to the piece, and the ending gives a double meaning to the use of “don’t look back” to allude to the humans running away as opposed to flying too close to the sun as Icarus did.

This song was largely inspired by Dave Malloy’s work. His musical Ghost Quartet was one of the four musicals that were showcased in the production, and his avant-garde compositions really struck me. I love when composers aren’t afraid for things to get a little bit ugly, especially when it is dramaturgically warranted. I definitely had his work in mind when I was writing the very end of Don’t Look Back when I decided to have the cast sing an augmented chord instead of resolving on the tonic. That chord really stood out to people, as they felt it tied together the horrific-ness of the plot and how this situation would never end in a satisfying way.

Other than the instrumentation and location of the bridge, some other things I would change would be adding a second verse that is similar to the first one. I think it would be interesting to dive a bit deeper into the environmental disasters that have taken place and more examples of humanity’s hubris. I also might have embellished a bit on the section leading up to the very end, giving some more depth to the threats that the characters are giving towards humans and diving a bit more into the evil side of all of them. I think this song could be really interesting with choreography and staging, so I plan on holding on to this one and potentially using it for something in the future.

Feathers

As part of my Introduction to Collaborative Practice final, I had the amazing opportunity to work with a group to pitch a brand new musical. We had two full dedicated weeks to work completely on every aspect of the pitch and the performance, and it was so freeing to have seemingly no other things to focus on other than one creative project. As a group we decided our musical would be about the decision between taking medication for severe mental health issues and not taking medication. It was an adaptation of Swan Lake, where Odette believes the main character should take the medication while Odile says he should not.

My part in this group project was composer. This was the first time that I have worked directly with a lyricist, and I found it really exciting to have someone else’s brain working with me to tackle on of the aspects of creative writing. It was interesting to see how her lyrical ideas would affect my composition, and how my compositions would affect where she thinks the song should be going. The process overall felt very efficient, and I was able to pull out all of the orchestral instruments that I wanted as we would be playing the audio directly from my DAW for the presentation. It was nice to bring out all of the instruments, as a majority of my focus before this was on my musical Flightless which has specific instruments that I had to adhere to. It was really exciting to use all of the orchestral instruments, as I was able to hide elements of the Swan Lake score into my own as an homage to the source material.

When it comes to pieces with large orchestration, I find myself getting a bit overwhelmed, and I start to leave things out as a result. I will start with a grand orchestra opening and then slowly I will have each instrument disappear and not make a return until a few instruments are left over at the end. I think that if I want to write for larger bands and orchestras, I have to be a bit more intentional with my instrumentation. Every instrument needs to serve a purpose and should enter and exit for a reason. I have to get over the laziness aspect of my writing habits and truly put the effort in if I want to write something on a grand scale. This piece specifically made me aware of this issue, as the instruments start to fade out near the end when dramaturgically it would have served the story to include a few more. I still think this piece served its purpose, and it was only one draft of it. Had I continued to work on this piece and this musical I likely would have come back to it and made significant edits. I did really enjoy this process and the result, and learning this about myself as a writer is an incredibly valuable thing to be aware of.

Innocent Clown

Innocent Clown is a song from my musical Flightless. It is a power ballad sung by one of my main characters after she gets rejected by her love interest after weeks of him flirting with her. This song is about betrayal, heartbreak, and anger. This song came quite easy for me to write, as it came from personal experience. I found that having this deep connection with the subject matter makes it easier to put it down on paper, but harder to find the exact words to use. The feelings are so complex, and regular metaphors didn’t quite cut it.

The song starts off with a rolling piano melody with a descending bassline. I thought that it made the song feel as though it was slowly melting and falling out of place. The first verse discusses how she truly believed everything that he said to her, that it was so honest and changed everything about how she saw him. She tells him that everything he said to her right before this about him not meaning any of it in that way sounded rehearsed as if he knew it was going to happen, and she tells him to take a bow.

She goes on to question him about his intentions and his goals relating to the way he has been treating her. The chorus draws in the metaphor of her being the “innocent clown” that was just playing along and is now the laughing stock. The ending part of the chorus is as follows:

This world that I built

comes tumbling down.

Let’s all have a laugh

at the innocent clown!

She did all she could,

paint her face to a frown!

There is a overarching theme of performance in this song as she accuses him of faking it all. She is able to put guilt on him by referring to herself as the clown that everyone laughs at even though she never did anything wrong, and she is a victim.

There are a few edits I am planning to make to this song. Though I really love the clown metaphor, I think it needs to be explored a bit more. Having it only mentioned in the chorus feels a bit jarring and I think it needs to be explained why she is referring to herself as a clown instead of just being the victim of being lead on. In the New Works lab, one of my colleagues gave the excellent idea that because she has dressed up and treated the evening like a fancy date, the “clown” imagery could be applied to her putting on all her makeup. This would connect the clown term to her actual appearance, as she could explain that she feels silly for going through the process to put on a face full of makeup for something that was fake. The song at this point currently lacks a bridge, so I think adding a bridge can connect together this idea, justifying the use of the innocent clown. Some other feedback I got told me that the emotion of the song is very clear and relatable, and that it is nice to see her actually stand up for herself and tell the man to his face what he did to her. It is really good to hear that people have found the song to be relatable and emotionally strong, as it tells me that I am going in the right direction with my writing.

I Didn’t Make This War

For my final Performance Project assignment, we were given Wonderful Town by Leonard Bernstein. This show has very challenging music, with tight harmonies and complex rhythms. For my portion of the assignment, I was required to write a song that either could be inserted into the show, is inspired by the show, or is inspired by the artist. Scott gave me the excellent idea to write a song for one of the shows that Leonard Bernstein abandoned, and gave me The Skin of Our Teeth as an example. Leonard Bernstein started working on a musical adaption of The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder when he abandoned it in favour of other projects, so I decided to write my own version of what the finale song might have sounded like if Leonard Bernstein had finished it.

Writing this piece was incredibly challenging but also incredibly rewarding. It was strangely freeing to mimic another artist and to break out of my own habits. While writing this song, I had to ignore my own compositional instincts and think about what Bernstein would do, which required me to analyze some of his famous works and find out what exactly made his work stand out from others.

Something that stood out to me about a lot of Bernstein’s work was his tendency to add in single bars of different time signatures into his songs to give the song a sudden breath. The song I wrote, entitled I Didn’t Make This War, is largely in 6/8 time, but I decided to add in a single bar of 2/8 to give the melody a feeling of suspension.

It was interesting to see both the pianist and the singer enjoy this addition. They had no trouble playing/singing it, as they said it felt very comfortable. It felt really nice to add in these kinds of choices, as I had never considered them as options before. In my previous writing, if something suddenly felt like it changed metre, I thought it meant something was wrong and I would immediately ‘fix’ it. After working on this assignment, I realized that I should embrace metre changes, as it often means my music is taking a step in a different direction.

This project was really exciting for me, as I think I learned more about myself as a writer. I learned which areas I tend to fall into habits: chord progressions, arpeggios, and chord types. When trying to mimic Leonard Bernstein, I found myself playing notes that I thought were strange. They felt foreign, but also exciting, as it sounded different but it still felt like me. I will definitely continue doing this kind of exercise in the future with other artists I admire, as it will broadly expand my composition style as well as my knowledge of genres.

Takeaways

Since September, I have had a plethora of opportunities to expand my skillsets. Group projects, assignments, and passion projects all were received gently with gratitude and constructive criticism. Each project I explained above I am very proud of, but I would also do completely differently if I were to go back, but I think that is the same with every writer. Every piece of creative work has something that could have been done differently, but that doesn’t always mean better. I have a world of things to learn about the world of musical theatre, music, writing, and myself as an artist, but what I know for a fact is that I am a writer, I am a composer, I am a creator, and I intend to take every opportunity I can to expand my skills.