I had to say it in a song

Every day we experience many emotions. During any day, our emotions may change hundreds of times from one moment to the next. These changes in our emotions may be triggered by the people who we meet during the day.

It may be that taxi that skip over a red traffic light and barely missed you. You feel many different emotions. Anger, disgust, hate? You may decide to not allow it to get the better of you and drive on.

You may see a homeless person begging at the next traffic light. You feel pity. You want to help, but your wallet is locked in the boot of the car. You feel sorry that you can not help. You feel helpless.

There are many ways you can react to these changes in your emotions.

• You can ignore the emotion.
• You can confront the person who caused the emotion head on.
• You can address the person who caused the change in emotion in an indirect way.
• You can ignore that person, and discuss your emotion with a friend.
• You can address you emotion with a complete stranger.
• Suppress your emotion and contemplate it later on

Or

 

You can write a song about it!

 

Here is the chorus from a song I wrote from such a moment:

 

"In the house of riches she was dressed so fine

Filled with shame for her mother's grime

Trampling on her dress

and she trampled on her heart"

(C) Eric Swardt

 

The concept album - selection of songs

Some people asked me "Why did you not put all the songs on the concept album, and how did you choose which ones to put on?"

Fair question.

My advice to anybody thinking about doing a concept album is to aim for recording all the songs from the musical for the concept album, and if I had to do it again, I will most likely do exactly that.

So, why did I not record all the songs for The exile concept album?

The most important reason to keep in mind is the cost. It cost money to record a song. There are a total of 27 songs in The exile. I included only 16 songs on the concept album. To do all 27 songs would have more than doubled the cost.

The next thing that I had to consider is that you can fit a maximum of 70 minutes of music on a CD. More realistically, it is wise to plan around 60 minutes of music. A whole musical usually takes about 90 to 120 minutes of music. To do them all would require a double CD. Once again, that about doubles the cost of printing the CDs.

Once I have decided to do only a partial recording, the next decision I had to make was - which songs to include or exclude from the concept album.

I listed all the songs, and then first decided which songs MUST be included. i had to choose which songs are the best songs. This is very subjective to choose the best songs. Everybody has their own favourites.

Next, I decided which songs I should leave out. This decision was based purely on cost. (After all, if a song had to be left out because I thought it was not good enough, I better had to rewrite the song to improve it!). The cost factor was related to the number of singers on a song. Each vocalist charged a session fee for a song. Does not matter if that vocalist do only a single line on the whole song, and some songs needed lots of singers, each doing only a single verse or single line. Those were the songs I left out. Those "company numbers", where a whole chorus of singers do a sing-along can get very expensive. Unfortunately, as musicals go, these company numbers are sometimes also the most important ones.

I know there would have been better ways to do this. Next time (if there is a next time) I can probably get more songs out of a singer withinin a single session with a bit of better planning.

Finally, I tried to select songs which, when listening through the album, would tell at least a complete story. I did not wanted to leave out any songs which would cause the story as a whole to be confusing.

 

The show is over!

It is Sunday 3 O'clock in the afternoon and the show is now over for u as we park the last trailer and head home.

For the cast and crew, actors, directors, sound man and most of the people, the show ended 10 O'clock last night. The cast had their after-party and as they slept off their head aches, we got out of the bed to strike the set down, clean the hall and move everything back to the warehouse.

While cast members talk about after-show blues I say, "thank goodness".

This show was a great experience for me. It gave me an appreciation for what goes into putting up a show. For me it was at the cost of one iPhone that I dropped into a water tub, one day at the hospital with a strained back and many tranquilizers and pain killers to keep my knees working.

For Protea it was at a huge expense, which we probably did not recover. The biggest cost of community theater is however the time of so many people who gave up so many hours of their time to bring you that 2 hours of joy. It was many hours of rehearsals, building sets, setting up the stage every night, packing stuff away after each show and striking it all down.

The average man or woman has no appreciation for all these hours by volunteers that it takes to put a show together.

Next time you watch a show, enjoy it, and then say a soft thank you to all those heroes who made it possible. And know, that those people appreciate it so much more if you enjoy the show. That is why we do it. For your enjoyment. That is what we get out of it. The knowing that somebody appreciated and enjoyed it.

Thank you to everybody who support their local theatre.

 

Mixing the album - planning the mix

I am surprised how few mix engineering handbooks and websites talk about planning the mix of an album in a wholistic way. Every book will tell you how to plan the mix for each individual song, but he overall planning of the album is often left for the beginner to figure out himself.

When I took on the task of mixing the concept album for The exile, I made a few mistakes, which caused me to start all over again, wasting many days in the process. In the interest of sanity, I therefore post this article of advice, hoping that at least one beginner will benefit.

During the mixing process of each track, you will add lots of effects and make many edits. As you tackle each track, you may get all exited and try many innovative ideas. After 20 days, you will proudly end up with 20 tracks, each sounding like top 20 hits. You may burn them all unto a CD, call over family and friends, pop the CD into your stereo and proudly press play. As you get to the third or fourth track you suddenly realize that the album sucks. Every track sounded great on its own, but as a whole, it is horrible. One track sounds like you are on the moon. The next sounds like it was recorded in a huge stadium and the next sounds like your bathroom. In horror and shame, you realize that you mixed 20 tracks, but never mixed an album.

This is especially important when mixing a musical, where you want all the tracks to sound like one cohesive whole in the end. Simply put, you want it to sound like all songs were recorded in the same place, and at the same time.

It is therefore important that you plan your album mix before you start. Here are some ideas of things you have to decide upon.

Reverbs:

Reverbs define the "space" of the final mix. With a musical album you want it to sound like all tracks were recorded in the same space. Decide on a reverb preset for the main vocals, backing vocals and for each group of instruments. Whatever you decide upon, stick to those presets for the whole album. Typically,you may decide to use a medium hall preset at about -20% mix for lead vocals and a large hall preset at about -15% mix for the chorus. Acoustic guitars may typically be relative dry, with a plate reverb, while the drums may need 2 or 3 different presets. Strings and brass may need a large hall convolution reverb. Play around with different options, and then use these presets on all the tracks.

Another common problem is the drums. Today's software systems allow us to get very creative, but getting too creative once again does not help to make the whole album sound like a single unit. You will have to decide what drum kit preset to use and, if you use a program like Jamstix, what drummer and drum style to use. You can use a little bit of creativity with the drums, but you do not want the one track to sound like a heavy metal track and the next like a country song.

Another aspect you should considder is the strings or orchestral libraries you wish to use. Not all libraries sound the same. If you ise EWQL on one track and Garritan on the next, the final songs will sound different and the liatener will notice.

Plan these few things before you start. It will save you many hours later on, but do not over think things. A little artistic creativity is OK, but then it must be because you chose to be creative, not because you were to lazy to pan.

 

Why do we see so few new musicals?

It seems pointless to some extend to ask such question, but maybe, that is why I am asking it. I have to do to find the answer to this question is to check out the list of musicals on the circuit at this time.

The problem is that the answer is not the one I was hoping for.

On Broadway, once you look past the revivals, there are not many original musicals. On the local circiut, the situation seems to be much worse. They are almost hundred percent revivals of ex Broadway shows. On Broadway, the few new musicals, are based on fairytales or on movies. There are a fair number of very successful ones based on classic books. The number of original ideas are very, very scarce.

On the local scene, I am getting a bit confused with the vast number of musicals with absolutely no originality in them. How many more versions of Beauty and the beast can we handle? The little creativity we have is limited to the fairy tales catagory. People are getting very creative with slightly rewriting the stories and adding new popular songs to old stories. Only once every two or three years do we get really new musicals.

I do not want to bash the creativity that people are putting into rewriting stories. It is just that I was hoping to see more. There are some people getting very creative with it and making easy money from it.

That is the problem here. There are more money to be made by rehashing old stories and using old songs.

The reason why a production company would choose Aladdin or Phantom for their next musical is simple. Those shows are low risk and sure to make money. You do not have to do much advertising for your show, as everybody knows the story. They know the songs. People will come back to hear your version of those songs. If you are trying to put up a show like The Wonkie brothers or The devil in Paris, nobody know what to expect. They do not know your story and they do not know your songs. People are much less likely to come watch your show if they do not know the show.

And this is where this whole post is leading towards.

In marketing you have have two tasks. Firstly informing people about the existance og your show, and secondly winning them over to come and watch it.

Putting up a show like The phantom is easy for your marketing department. You only have to tell people that you have the show and the people will come. If you have a new original you have to do so much more to draw your crowds. It is not good enough to tell people that you have a show going. You also have to convince them that the show is good enough for them to come and watch it.

In short putting up a new musical is a high risk business and requires much more effort.

But, all that extra effort is what makes it fun!

 

More on saving money on the concept album on a budget

I started off by scaring you with the astronomical baseline budget for the concept album. Then I had to scare you even more telling you about having to do some things yourself. It is a fact that you can save an amazing amount of money if you can do more things yourself. Unfortunately, not everybody has all the skills to do everything. Today I want to talk about another possibility.

With computer technology developing at an blinding pace, computers can now do many of the tasks previously done by expensive humans. I want to tell you a bit about those amazing programs out there. I have no affiliation with any of the companies I will mention, and get no kickbacks on any sales. I am just a normal user of these programs and wish to share my ideas with whoever wish to take note.

To replace that expensive guitar player, there is a nifty little program available, called, RealBand. It comes bundled with a program called Band in a Box.

If you are looking for just strumming guitars, this is perfect. On the fly, however you get much, much more. RealBand is capable of doing acoustic guitars, fingerpicking guitars, electric guitars, drums, bass, piano, and a whole stack of solo instruments, like saxophones. And it does all of this in hundreds of different styles.

The program comes in many flavors, but if you are planning to use it to record an album, you may want to go for the 'Audiophile' version. This version contains recordings in CD quality. The cheaper versions comes with the instruments recorded in windows compressed format. For many purposes this is just fine and most people would not know the difference. My preference is however the CD quality recordings that comes with the audiophile version.

If you are a first time buyer, the audiophile version would cost you $669, but it is totally worth it. This program will be able to replace many of your session musicians, which over an album of 20 songs, would save you far in excess of $30,000 compared to the cost of session musicians.

The program is not completely a save-all for everything and might be limited if compared to what you can do yourself, but it does give you so many possibilities and options that you will almost certainly be able to find a use for it.

RealBand comes with a reasonable good drum track as well, but for the purpose of recording a concept album, I used some alternatives. The drum track is pretty good, but the main problem with RealBand is that it gives you a simple stereo file for the drums. For a serious recording in CD quality however, you can not do much with a stereo file. Very soon you will find your drums either overbearing the vocals, or disappearing somewhere into the mix. Professional studios will almost always record drums on a number of separate tracks, i.e. kick drum on one track, snare on another, hi hats on a third, toms on one or more extra tracks and cymbals on a separate track. This way, you have much more freedom with how you mix the sound of the final song. The other problem with the RealBand drum tracks is that you are stuck with their drum kit. Even though it is a fairly good drum kit they use, not all music wants to have a standard small rock kit playing. Sometimes you need that monster snare sound, or the power kick of Nickelback. We will talk a lot more about producng drum tracks in another article.

Lastly, I just want to end this post with congratulations to Protea Stage Productions for filling the house last night with their excellent production of the farce, Botoms up.

 

The 15 things a theater composer should never do

Many books and blogs offers you long lists of dos and don'ts. As a songwriter for musical theater you may get confused about which lists makes sense and which ones can just be ignored. Each list is simply the personal opinion of whoever wrote the list. I used some of those list and changed it a bit to my own liking, reflecting my own experience and opinions.

1. Do not think that there is any one list of dos and don'ts that make the world go round. There is no such thing as THE magic formula. These lists are only opinions. Sometimes they are opinions of people with experience, so do not disregard them totally, but do not follow them religiously. You have to do what works best for you. Listen to all the advice you get, then follows what works best for you.

2. Don’t burn your bridges. Do not be rude or dishonest. You can never survive in the theater world without other people. The theater industry is just too small. You path will cross again with that person you have been rude to today. That person who brings your coffee today just might turn out to be the production manager on your next show. And yes, there are those who will treat you like snake poo today. Resist the urge to return the favor, knowing that one day the roles will change and that person will need you.

3. Do not get worried about debates about what come first, the music or the words, or what the ultimate chord progression is, or whether or not you should be allowed to edit a song as you go along, etc.. These are just ideas to get you started. They sometimes work for some people and sometimes they don't. Most often, those who preach these formulae don't even follow them all the time. Most song writers will do different things at different times. Try these ideas and do then what works best for you. Put all these ideas in your toolbox for use when they are needed. The most successful songwriters are those who know how to best use all the tools in their toolbox.

4. Do not imitate your idols. Be yourself. Learn from your idols, but if you want to be successful, you have to have your own style, your own approach. People will quickly notice if you try to pretend to be like anyone else. They already have a Stephen Sondheim and a Andrew Lloyd-Webber. They do not want another one. Take from these masters what makes them great and put your own spin on it.

5. Do not hate someone for the feedback they give you. Remember that everybody will not love everything. If you can not take criticism, you are in the wrong business. You would be better off sorting apples in Alaska. Most of the time when you pitch your work for criticism, that person is genuinely trying to help you. You do not have to agree with that opinion, nor do you have to follow every piece of advice, but gracefully accept the few nuggets of gold that comes your way. Be open to criticism. It will make you a better song writer.

6. Do not forget the basics. Good spelling, sound grammar, correct formatting, etc.. They are the foundations that makes the difference between the true professionals and the forever amateurs. Always remember, if a busy publisher has 20 submissions on her desk and very little time to go through them all, the first ones that will hit the dustbin are those that look like fish paste with spelling errors.

7. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Always be working on your next project or idea. Keep your creative side going while you are focusing on the business of selling your last work. Sometimes it helps to clear your mind when you get stuck on a project by focussing on something new.

8. Do not follow the latest and hottest trend in a hope to make a quick buck. A musical takes a lot of time to get from the basic idea to be the next hit on stage. By the time you have gone through the loops, the trend will likely have passed.

9. Do not get overly attached to your babies. We all have our babies. It might be a favorite character, a song, or a specific scene. A time may come when you just may have to loose that character. You may have to become ruthless for the sake of the story as a whole, by getting rid of a character or song that just does not work. Sometimes you may feel that your song is the next big hit on Broadway. If it does not enhance the story, you may have to get rid of it.

10. Don’t hate somebody else for being successful. If you are pitching a work for production against several other writers, remember that it is not a contest for prom queen. If you do not win, do not be spiteful about those who made it. Be happy for them and congratulate them. Next time, they just might support you to get the job. Even if you think that your show would have been so much better, keep your thoughts to yourself. By bitching and moaning about it, you will only come across as... well .... a moaning bitch.

11. Do not get lost in your cave. Go out and experience life every once in a while. Go to the theater and watch a musical. Go watch a show. Go watch as many shows as you possibly can. Get involved with the shows. Help out with the production on other shows. All the experience you can gather will come in very handy when you write your own show. If you hate watching musicals, well.... I have good news for you. Don't write them.

12. Don’t assume writing songs for musical theater is easy. Writing a song is hard work. Writing 25 song for a musical is not only 25 times harder. It is 100 times harder, as you have to make sure that all the songs work together. Do not think you can write a musicals with a collection of pretty songs thrown together. That will end up being a concert, not a musical. Well... not that there is anything wrong with making a concert to work!

13. Do not let the trolls get the better of you. Know that there are people out there who just troll for the sake of trolling. Learn to recognize them for what they are and ignore them. You will find them on blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Sometimes you'll even find them posing as critics in legitimate newspaper columns. It’s not personal. Learn to recognize and ignore those that are just a waste of you energy.

14. Do not think you know it all. How many books do you have on your shelf about songwriting? Do you you have the idiot's guide for songwriters? You mean you do not need it? Well, I have news for you. If you did not even read the idiots guide, then even the idiots know more than you about songwriting. How many books have you read about the business side of the music industry? Do you realize that being a songwriter is like having your own business? Did you follow the advice in that book to register all your songs with the royalty collection agency? Did you draw up that songwriting contract before you started writing songs for your friend's musical? You might be loosing out on a lot of money. You do not have to read absolutely every book on the market, but the more you read, the more you will know.

15. Don't ever give up. Sometimes it may feel like you are going nowhere. Sometimes you may feel that you are just not good enough. Sulk for a short while, and then get over it and get back to working. Keep on writing. That is what you want to do. Nobody had a hit with his first song, well.... at least most. Keep going at it. Once you have 20 unpublished musical manuscripts on your shelf, you may want to go back through them and one of them just might be the next show to celebrate a 20 years run on Broadway.

Everybody has their own lists of dos and don'ts, and I would love to hear from you what you think, so please add your ideas and opinions in the comments below. Here is my list of things which you should not do of you want to wrote songs and music for musical theater.