Extraordinary Day

A lot happens between our last song, Something's Gonna Change, and today's song Extraordinary Day.

After Messy and Nappy meet, they have their first date at the roller derby rink, where Messy is pitted against Nappy's older sister Salad Fork, who also happens to be the reigning roller derby champion. When the gangs hear Nappy cheering Messy on and realise they are together, a rumble ensues, resulting in the accidental death of Papa Chocolate - apparently at Nappy's hands. Upset, Messy quits her gang; Nappy's gang kick him out for being disloyal.

Later, a mournful Messy is kneeling by Papa Chocolate's grave. The clip starts as Nappy arrives.

Now that you're all caught up, time to listen to Extraordinary Day.

The scene

I love this scene, and the way the dynamic between the characters changes. You'll forgive me for including such a long bit of non-music before the song; I think the journey the characters take, from cold anger through forgiveness to hope and optimism, is wonderful. The song seems to naturally cap off that transition; they couldn't get any more hopeful and optimistic using spoken words alone, but a song bursts through to a whole new level.

There's a mark of a successful poignant scene in here. There are moments where the 80-strong audience is deathly silent, and nothing is rushing to fill the awkward gaps in the dialogue or relieve that tension. Sometimes a quiet audience is a disengaged audience, but not this time - the audience is genuinely happy when Messy decides to trust Nappy, and they go absolutely crazy when she kisses him. If you recall back to the opening song, the audience was anything but warm at the start of the show, so to get them this warm is a great hint that the actors were nailing it.

The song

The song took me by surprise a little bit; in contrast with the very obvious signs in the earlier song, this one just sort of started. You can hear me fumble around a little bit as I figure out where I want to go. Eventually I remember that first-inversion structure from the old song - along with Kiesten and Luke's clever reuse of those 'Something's Gonna Change' and 'Extraordinary Day' phrases, we're reprising both lyrical and musical elements.

One of my favourite bits is the running joke about Nappy wanting a big family; his lyric in the song to keep the joke running was just excellent.

I really liked how Kiesten and Luke traded lines as the song progressed; Kiesten would set up a rhyme, and Luke would finish it (much like he did in Best Friend/First Mate).

I specifically recall as the song went on that I kept misjudging the end. There were a few times when I set up chord progressions that would naturally lead in to an ending, but as the next line developed it obviously wasn't going to be the end after all. After a few of those, Kiesten gave a very definite wrap-up signal with her "Because today" line, which then gave me permission to go to town and set up a nice musical ending.

Something's Gonna Change

The story

Our story so far... Luke's character Napkin Ring has been established as the young enthusiastic pup of the Hoity Toitys. Kiesten's character Messy is the new recruit in Fingers' gang. They know each other by reputation, but have never met. The scene started with Messy joining up at Papa Chocolate's roller derby rink ("chocolate" and "roller derby" being two of the audience offers for the show). After a few minutes talking to Papa Chocolate, Napkin Ring arrives at the rink. Have a listen to the scene featuring Something's Gonna Change, and then we'll discuss it.

The scene

Rather than give you just the song, you can hear the scene preceding the song where Napkin Ring (who introduces himself as "Nappy") and Messy (calling herself "Melissa") meet each other. We really tried to take inspiration from West Side Story; when the couple met and instantly changed, irrevocably falling in love at first sight. Nappy and Messy experience much the same thing.

It wasn't hard to pick the point to start vamping in to a song. Once Kiesten's character said "I don't feel like I'm ever going to be the same again - from this day on", a song was inevitable :)

The song

Kiesten starts the vocal, following the very simple piano line. For the first verse, you can hear her very specifically lagging the bar to hear where the music is going to go, so she can follow along with the melody line. Once the form was established, she took over and started leading the bar. The biggest gamble was going for "In a way", hitting that note strongly and hoping the music would meet her there.

The chorus was really simple again. Just a single simple phrase, which Kiesten took from Luke's earlier song:

I know today
Something's gonna change
In the most extraordinary way.

Sounds a little awkward if you just say it; Kiesten set it really nicely in to that chorus.

Luke's reply verse didn't exactly match the form of the first verse, which is just fine in my book. What is important is the recall of the chorus, once it came around again.

Musically, everything was pretty simple, other than a few embellishments in the vocal gaps. I think the crux for me was that first chord in the chorus, a B on Eb. That first-inversion on B sort of gave a sense of building momentum, promise and potential - a good match for the theme of the song.

I recall freaking out at the beginning of Luke's verse. Right around 2:20, I realised I was about to rip off Bryan Adams' Everything I Do. Best not to go there.

I can also remember being really keen for the last strike of the song to feel a bit unfinished, I guess again reflecting that this was just the start of something big. The closure on the music did come eventually, as the scene played itself out.

Remember My Name

Last week, we explored some of the ways you might use backing vocals in an improvised song. This week we have an example, where the supporting cast do a great job of providing backing vocals for a solo song.

Have a listen to the scene featuring Remember My Name, then we'll discuss it.

In the scene, Luke Allan explores Napkin Ring, his character from ImproMafia's musical Worst Side Story. This scene immediately followed The Hoity Toitys - Napkin Ring's new gang member buddies have just left the stage, and he has some time on his own.

The previous scene more broadly set the tone for the gang. This one does a great job of setting up Napkin Ring as a wide-eyed enthustiastic dreamer. It is more personal than the previous scene; Luke really opens his character up to the audience.

This song is where one of the themes of the show (one of the tropes from West Side Story) shines through - that everything can change in a single day. Luke sets up a series of reprises with one small bit of song:

Something's gonna change today
In a most extraordinary way

The idea of one extraordinary day came back over and over throughout the musical.

I thought Luke showed a lot of trust in the music here; having just wrapped the previous scene with a song, I wasn't expecting another one to come along so soon. At a certain point in this scene, Luke paused and gave the sense that he might be ready to burst in to song. I opened with a very sparse backing that didn't really strongly suggest a tempo or style, and Luke deftly inserted the opening line.

Backing vocals

There were a few folks backstage providing backing vocals during the song, but you can clearly hear Tom Dunstan setting the tone and driving them. You can hear a few different types of background vocals as the song progresses.

As Luke sings "The future's ahead of me", you can hear the folks backstage doing shapeless backing, primarily aahs. There's a sense of more than one voice back there, and it's even hard to pick their pitch, but they certainly add more weight to the song, helping it as it builds.

Once Luke gets to the chorus, Tom and co weave around the main vocal with their "Hoity Toity" line. The timing and melody of the backing is so cheesily perfect that they get a laugh from the audience. They manage to lag the bar so they can react to the music, wherever it may go.

Right at the end, when Luke sings "Remember my name", I remember thinking I was going to leave that last chord unfinished, just hanging there. Tom and the backing singers came in with a perfect "Remember his name" line, to slowly and decisively close the song.

The Hoity Toitys

Sometimes a song can inject information in to the audience's minds and hearts far more efficiently than a spoken scene. I'm not sure why that is... Perhaps something about delivering those words with the cadence and emotional weight of music.

Tamzin McCauley, Brisbane improv actor/teacher/MC/legend-about-town, often provides the following mnemonic for high school kids about to jump on stage for Youth Theatresports: CROWS. To set a scene, you should be hitting Character, Relationship, Objective, Where, and Status. (CROW seems a common improv teaching tool. I do like the addition of Status though. Status seems like that important extra bit of oil to grease a scene.)

I highly doubt experienced improvisers are on stage whispering "Crows! CROOOWS!" to themselves... Doing this stuff should be second nature for someone with a lot of improv stage time.

I thought it would be interesting to take a "setting the scene" song from Worst Side Story, and see how it stacks up.

The Hoity Toitys

After the opening introduction song Table Manners, the gangs dispersed. First, Fingers' gang had a scene to better introduce that gang; immediately following that was this scene introducing The Hoity Toitys.

Listen to The Hoity Toitys first, then we'll discuss it.

Character: The scene clearly establishes Salad Fork (Amy Currie) as the tough-as-nails gang leader. About the only softness she shows is towards her kid brother Napkin Ring (Luke Allan); he comes across as goofy, naive and enthusiastic. Tea Cup (Alex Reichart) is the tough of the gang, unabashedly roughing up anyone in his way.

Relationship: Napkin Ring is clearly established as Salad Fork's kid brother. Tea Cup appears to be a very strong #2 to Salad Fork's gang leader role. The relationship between Tea Cup and Napkin Ring is vague at this time; it comes out later in the story.

Objective: Each of them has a slightly different gang-related personal objective. Salad Fork uses the gang to elevate herself above the less cultured members of society. Tea Cup is similar, but appears quite keen on intimidation and beating people up. And Nappy seems to have achieved his objective: Joining the gang.

Where: The show was already pretty well established as being in a bustling city, by virtue of playing off of the West Side Story tropes. This song adds a strong sense that there are (unseen) inhabitants of the city other than the gang members.

Status: Salad Fork and Tea Cup both take high-status roles, towering over the low-status Napkin Ring. Later in the story we discover that Tea Cup opposed Napkin Ring's entry to the gang. I wonder if a gang composed of just Salad Fork and Tea Cup, both high-status characters, would have been as fun to watch.

I think the guys pretty effectively painted the picture of their gang - they built a strong platform for the rest of the story. That spoken line to finish off the song, about nothing coming before the gang, is vital to the conflict that we knew would come later in the show.

My favourite bits of the scene:

• Amy stepping in to the vamp to start the song. She's awfully good at that.
• I really liked rhyming 'scum' with 'drum'. Rhyming words buried in the middle of subsequent lines? Brilliant!
• Alex's line about helping the old ladies. Alex makes me laugh and laugh; he surprises me, and I'm a pretty old and jaded improviser now ;)
• The interplay about clicking. Finger-snapping was an important trope for the genre. I didn't realise that it would be so exhausting!
• Stepping out of the song at the end; the guys took the music-slowing cue and ran with it.

Perhaps the character that had the least development in this scene was Napkin Ring. At the end of this scene, Luke set himself up nicely for a solo scene, and I think a lot more of Nappy's character came out in that scene. You'll get that next week :)

Table Manners

We've previously discussed Introduction Songs, and given one example. We finish the series this week with another example. Worst Side Story's introduction song follows a similar format, with a few twists.

The story was based around two gangs with a mutual dislike of each other’s table manners – an excellent basis for a blood feud if ever there was one. The introduction song had to set up and name the characters, set the scene, and establish the gangs. The scene opens with the two gang leaders having a quick face-off before heading off to gather their gangs for a rumble.

Like Our Town, each character gets a verse to sing. In this song however, they are generally not singing about themselves; they are singing about their counterpart in the other gang. The emotion underpinning the show was conflict, and it makes good sense for the real scene-setting song to highlight that conflict, in tone and lyric. Singing about the other gang is perfect! We decided in rehearsals it would be fun to have each of the gangs endow the other with names. (One of the characters is never again referred to by name during the show – I guess we forgot it!)

Have a listen to Table Manners, and we'll deconstruct it.

• Fingers (Tom Dunstan) is the leader of one gang. He introduces Salad Fork, and starts to set up that she has excellent table manners. He also germinates what will be the chorus.
• Salad Fork (Amy Currie) introduces Fingers, explaining his horrible table etiquette. She refines the chorus a bit.
• Drive-In (Joel Gilmore) comes on stage to join Fingers. He sets himself up as having lower status, then names another gang member from the other side.
• Tea Cup (Alex Reichart) keeps the theme going, expanding on the gangs' differences, and introduces Drive-In.
• Another chorus with a sneaky key change. Both gangs are growing now, so the vocals are becoming quite strong. I really like that we established a good simple chorus, it made it easier to remember and recall later.
• Messy (Kiesten McCauley) tells her gang about a new guy she’s heard about from the other gang, Napkin Ring. She's never met him, but she knows he's no good.
• Napkin Ring (Luke Allan) speculates about the other new opposing gang member Messy. Again, they haven’t met.
• Final chorus. It’s well established now, and all six go for it.

The ending was pretty smooth; after that long held note, Tom asserts a nice clean finish.

At this point in the story, the gangs are ready to come together for a fight, but of course the cops show up just in time, and the gangs disperse.

There was a conscious choice that all of the gang members had a personal, established animosity with the other gang, except Messy and Napkin Ring. Those characters were the romantic leads, and although they'd heard about their counterparts on the other gang, they'd never seen them. This helps us set up their meeting, followed later by the realisation they were on other gangs.

The song again immediately followed an overture. The overture itself wasn't particularly minor, but the opening song certainly was – the story was based on conflict, and the song reflected that conflict. Still used slight changes in the feel and tempo, and a fair few key changes, to keep the song moving along.

You know, listening to this song and last week's song, I realise that I always endow Joel Gilmore's characters with goofy. It doesn't matter how the introduction song starts... when Joel steps out on stage, suddenly the music goes all oompa-oompa-oompa-oompa, turning vaguely bumbling and low-status. It seems I'm very mean to you, Joel. (As this post goes up, Joel is in Peru, so I should be safe from retribution for a little while yet.) Joel is a wonderful actor and singer, and I've certainly had powerful songs with him before... But in a musical I introduce him as low-status. Sorry Joel.

There was quite a difference in the warmness of the audience for this one. It took us a little longer than it should have for us to get out on stage, consequently the audience had a few minutes of patient waiting, and that probably cooled them down a bit. In the intro from One Bride, as each cast member stepped on stage, the audience went wild; we had to work harder for their love in Worst Side. By the end of the song they were in to it, and seemed pretty warm for the rest of the show. We probably took the audience through more extremes in Worst Side; there were some particularly dark scenes, and some particularly sad scenes that moved at least a few people to tears. (How awesome is that?)

Hopefully these examples illustrate the sorts of things we try and hit in an introduction song.

Photo by Al Caeiro

Our Town

Last week we discussed Introduction Songs. This week we have our first example.

One Bride For Seven Brothers was set in the town of Rileysberg, and the story revolved around the Riley family. With their parents long since passed, the family of six brothers are the sole inhabitants of the town. The brothers have a problem – they are going broke, and their parents’ will has gone missing, so without a means to pay off their creditors they will lose their beloved town.

As the song Our Town progresses and each of the characters comes on, you’ll hear them acknowledge the problem they have (the missing inheritance), and provide a bit of a clue about their character. This is the chance for the actors to start endowing themselves with personality and motivation. The characters that came out on the night were for the most part quite different to the characters we saw as we went through rehearsals for the show.

The introduction song goes through each of the brothers, one by one.

• Archie (Luke Rimmelzwaan), the oldest brother, introduces the name of the town, their money worries, and implies that he’s maybe not so smart.
• Cain (Alex Reichart) further reinforces the situation, and shows that he is frustrated with their lack of funds. Later in the story he acts on that frustration in a sneaky, but ultimately redeemable, way.
• Brett (Luke Allan) has a similar verse, but is optimistic (and slightly mathematically challenged). This matches his character (later found out to be a matchmaker). Key change when Brett comes on, to freshen the song a bit.
• Eric (Joel Gilmore) is a dreamer, sad to be poor, and comes across as a bit goofy. The music changed for this verse, and was a little more playful, which was a match for the character. I don’t think I gave Joel much time to react to a change of key and tempo, but he handled it pretty well anyway!
• Dudley (Dan Beeston) won’t take their status lying down – he comes across as aggressive and motivated. The music switched up again, and went to a minor key as well. Dudley ended up being the “bad” character in the story, and I think this came very naturally out of this first verse.
• Fudge (Tom Dunstan) had pretty evil sounding scoring, and alluded to family secrets. Later in the story he came across as a bit sneaky and manipulative.
• Golly (Tristan Ham), the youngest brother, doesn’t care at all that the family is poor, he’s happy, and his music reflects his happy-go-lucky attitude. (How many key changes did I go through just before Golly’s verse? If that isn’t setting it up for a big ending, what is?)

It's subtle, but I really like that the song ended as it began, with "This is our town". We didn't have a chorus as we worked through the song, and I think that's ok; it still had a good identity. The ending was a little untidy for this one… probably something we needed to work more on at that point. Tristan steps forward and drives the cast (and me) for the ending. His tag at the end is lovely.

As the song progresses, the key moves up slowly but surely, and the tempo picks up. Hopefully this stops the song from being very samey. I have to say I’m always impressed that the guys on stage follow key changes so well. I’m pretty merciless, and they never disappoint.

It was obvious that the audience was warm and receptive from the first moments of the show. Considering a group of 30-40 school kids made up a portion of the audience, that’s a pretty good outcome.

Next week – another example introduction song, this time from Worst Side Story.

There's A Melody In My Heart

This week's example comes from Prognosis: Death. In season three, Ludwig LeStrange (Dan Beeston>) broke Melody Carmichael's (Amy Currie's) heart - see Seduction in Song for the backstory. After time passed and Melody hardened her heart, LeStrange realised the mistake he'd made, and went to Melody's tiny apartment to beg her forgiveness.

Have a listen to There's A Melody In My Heart, then we'll deconstruct it.

The entry to the song was interesting; you can just hear the director Greg whisper-shouting "Sing!" from offstage. Keen-eared Prog Death fans will hear me just starting to go into LeStrange's leitmotif, pulling out just as I realise it is a song.

The lyric in the first phrase (up to "charming") drove the music, as Melody recalled her feelings for LeStrange. Amy starts the second phrase ("But she was my very best friend") by leading the bar. That line, and the way it was delivered, is the big clue that the tone is about to change, and the music dives down to reflect her anger - fading, but still hurting. Right at the end of Melody's section, the "what have you to say" encourages the music to go neutral, and set up a chord that clearly anticipates an answer to her question.

Dan slightly leads the bar as he starts his section. I think you have to know the character to appreciate what a contrast this scene had to his other scenes; LeStrange comes across as cold, unfeeling, and logical. Hearing him sing and open up to someone was quite special. I chose to play a tinkly high part to complement Dan's (or, I should say, LeStrange's) relatively deep voice. Dan drives the music with the lyrics, creating a sort of bittersweet tune resonating of love and loss.

Near the end of his verse, the music leads with a chord progression that evokes a finale, taking a stand for something, and metamorphosis. Dan takes the cue, having LeStrange sing about a potential future with Melody. The end of the song is lovely and a little more freeform, with Dan dancing around the music.

The whole way through the song, Amy and Dan move around from driving the music to reacting to the music, and it works beautifully. As a musician I thrive on this sort of stuff; left to my own devices I'm sure I'd create a pretty vanilla tune, but with these ever-changing catalysts we manage to create something much more interesting.

I know the song resonated with the audience; anything that gets such a massive "Awwwh!" from the audience scores big points from me :)

I thought the rhyming (and sometimes lack of rhyming) was really nice in this song. It was simple, not overly telegraphed, and every word fit the narrative like a glove. We'll come back to this song in a future post about rhyming.

At this point, Melody and LeStrange have finally arrived at a place of mutual understanding and reciprocated feelings... I'd tell you what happened next in the story, but, gentle reader, it would break your heart.