you thought I was gone!

but I'm not. I just had to wait for my computer to be repaired, and then I got it back, and then I had to do lots of iDLEC things, and then the semester started, and now it's today and all of those things have happened. So I'm back for one final post.

I'm not entirely overjoyed at how things turned out with my project. I got really hung up on the fifth song, and I think it sort of made me question whether or not I really had gotten over my writer's block. Also, I might have felt a little better about it had I recorded it before the month ended (I couldn't really do this because my computer was in the shop).

That said, I do basically have it composed. And I don't love it, but I like it for the most part, and it does add up to five songs I wrote in a month, and that's not so bad. That's something I'm reasonably proud of. Granted, I mostly just like my third and fourth songs - I have a lot of mixed feelings about the first two - but this taught me a lot of things. It showed me a writing process; it reminded me how I'd go about working on a big project again; it got me past the insurmountable block that was starting a new project after TIAMAZ. I think that was probably the biggest thing it did - it got me past this enormous mental block that was coming back from TIAMAZ. I think I've already said this - TIAMAZ was a two-year ladder, and finishing it sent me all the way back to the bottom. And two years is a long time (when you're 19), so it was a VERY big ladder. And this did not get me nearly as high, but it reminded me that I could start climbing again. Maybe that's a cheesy analogy, but it was important.

bad

Finally going a little bit insane. It's been five days since I started trying to write the fifth song, and I still barely have anything. Actually, that's not true - I have ten pages of lyrics and notes I may or may not use, at least three chord progressions I've tried out and abandoned, lists of songs I want to emulate, and many, many fragments of melody. It's like this little graveyard of ideas for a song that I thought would be incredibly doable, and isn't.

Here are some theories about why this is proving to be so difficult:

• Musically, I'm trying to counterbalance all of the slow, boring songs with a poppy, upbeat one, and it's not working. Which says a lot about all of the slow, boring songs I write.
• I've sort of been married to one chord progression over the last four songs - one that pops up pretty prominently in each song - and I tried to not use it for variety's sake this time. Once again, it says a lot about my songwriting abilities that it's not getting anywhere.
• A song every three days was a nice idea at the beginning of the month, but January is almost over and I've seen basically the same 10 people all month and logged more hours in my room than I ever have and have forced myself to write more quickly than I ever have and have been essentially organizing all of my time for a month now, and I'm burning out. I need external structure, and I don't have it. Apparently, I need class time - and I don't have that, either. I thought living in Oberlin all month would drive me stir-crazy, and the first 2.5-3 weeks seemed to prove me wrong, but I guess I just hadn't waited long enough. It's here now, and I'm going a little bit insane.

some frustrations

So I just listened back through the four songs I've recorded so far, and I realized that I'm feeling sort of lukewarm about all of them. Lunch Hour is tedious, While You Can doesn't feel exciting enough, PIPT is long, and While You Can (Reprise) is a little bit uninteresting.

I know they're all first drafts, and I know, in many cases, where specifically I can improve them, but overall I'm just feeling sort of frustrated about it all right now. Lunch Hour most of all, I think, because it was my first and it's my weakest (as a result) and the first song of the show is supposed to be exciting but it's just sort of tedious. Tem suggests I change the bridge, to make it upbeat and exciting rather than also slow and tedious, and I'll likely do that. I also think it'll help when I have stronger singers (or, even, if I were to re-record it now - I hadn't really sung in at least a month when I recorded it, and I've definitely improved). But it's still not super fast-paced. Perhaps, if I do end up writing an a cappella version of the opening theme, it'll be okay, since that IS upbeat and interesting and will act as a nice substitute. We'll see.

the shower scene

is now a song. A day late, I finished and recorded it, and it's available below.



This one was pretty straightforward. I knew that I wanted to reprise While You Can, and have Marion get stabbed just as she reached her decision to return home (in the film, she decides this during her conversation with Norman). I knew I wanted, if possible, to incorporate the music from Bernard Hermann's score into the song, cutting off her song and transitioning into Norman's. I wanted Norman to say the word "blood" a lot - the line in the script is, "Mother! Oh God, what... blood, blood... mother...!" - and I wanted him to have a little bit of song in which he cleaned up Marion's body and apologized for his mother's behavior.

And those things all made it in! So I'm pretty pleased with this one. The transition feels a little awkward - mostly the eek eek eek strings simulation section - but I like Marion's bit and I like Norman's bit after all of the blood lines. Also, the piano that plays from "Mop, where's the mop?" to "the way things are" is based pretty closely on the Hermann score as well, and it's a piece of the score I like a lot, so I was glad to be able to put that in (p.s. - here are some photos).

halfway point

I'm a day behind, but it's finished. Private Island, Private Trap is now recorded (roughly) and up on the bandcamp (and available below).



This one existed a few ways before I finally got to where I am. First, whilst brushing my teeth, I thought of the phrase, "private island, private traps" as a way to reference both of their big ideas in the scene. Marion brings up the phrase private island - Sam had used it in the motel scene when fantasizing about his life with Marion (in the film, not my song) - and Norman abruptly brings up the idea of private traps.

After I came up with that phrase, it was pretty easy to write the rest of the chorus (as you can see in the photos below, I wrote it first). Marion would be talking about using her island as a safe space, and Norman would be talking about being forced to live inside his private trap. I was referencing two major points they make in the dialogue, but not quoting them directly (which was what I'd been worried about). Additionally, I got to sort of play with their internal monologues, which I think is the easiest way to write musical theatre - take what you think is happening on the inside and give characters a way to say it on the outside. I think I've said that before, but I think about it so often it feels important to reiterate. Still working on how to write dialogue in songs - so far, it just comes out feeling very forced and awkward (see below). I should probably start compiling a list of very specific dialogue songs.

trouble spots

So I finished While You Can today (I've pretty much settled on that as a title now), and I was going to get started on the next song...but I'm finally hitting real trouble. There are a couple of things I'm realizing: one, dialogue songs are much harder to write than internal monologue songs (even ones with multiple people), and two, dialogue songs based on scenes with really strong dialogue are very, very hard to write. I was sort of able to get around that with Lunch Hour by writing down some phrases/concepts I liked, but then disregarding most of the dialogue and just focusing on the sentiments expressed in the scene. This scene, however - the dinner scene between Norman and Marion - is quite possibly my favorite scene in the film, and I don't know how to translate it into music.

The entire scene is just so well-written. Their conversation is sufficiently awkward, but also sort of heartbreakingly honest - Norman is an awkward communicator, but he has moments where his feelings about his mother and his life sort of burst out of him into the middle of whatever he's saying. Throughout the conversation, he seems to oscillate between being sort of distant and formal and being very, very open. The "private traps" bit is especially good: "You know what I think? I think we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever climb out... I was born in mine. I don't mind it anymore... Oh, I do, but I say I don't." It's like each line of his (I've separated them with ellipses) is more honest than the last. And then Marion mentions putting his mother away "someplace," and we see the flash of her inside him - his sudden anger and aggression at the thought of putting her away. It's all so well done, and so well-acted, and I don't know how to do it justice musically.

I could, of course, skip it - and were I writing the script, too, I might do just that. But I feel like I need to include it, since all I'm doing is writing music, and ideally I'd write a song for every significant moment in the show. And even though I'm not quite doing that, this scene absolutely deserves a song.

This was mostly just me taking a break to rant about it a little bit before I keep trying. Emilie and Bridget were in for a bit (I paused writing when they arrived), and I showed them this scene so they could get a sense for what I was grappling with. It wasn't super constructive, but it was nice to be able to talk about it with someone (and also share this scene, since it's awesome). I guess we'll see how things go.

Bye for now.

actual post of the day

EDIT: Second song finished and available here:



I'm almost done with my second song! And by almost done I mean the lyrics are finished (unless I change them), the chord progression is pretty settled, and I kind of have the accompaniment composed. I'll finish that tomorrow and (if I have time) start on the next song.

I'm actually pretty pleased with the progress I made today, especially since I didn't get nearly as much as I wanted to done yesterday. I got two of three pages of lyrics written, but I probably could have done a lot more if I had wanted to, so that was frustrating. But today I finished the lyrics to this song, and I actually like it a lot. It's the one Marion sings as she's deliberating whether or not to steal the $40,000 and bring it to Sam. Even though there are a lot of parts of it that repeat, overall it's actually a lot less formulaic than most of my other songs. Whereas the formula I (kind of inadvertently) usually use goes something like verse/prech/chorus/verse/prech/chorus/bridge/chorus/finale, this one is more like A/B/C/A/B/C(1)/A(1)/C(2)/B (you can kind of see where I diagrammed that as I was working it out in my notebook).