So much to do in so little time

For somebody who is doing this while holding a pretty busy daytime job, I have far too many projects in progress.

First there is The exile. This is my main project which we are now in the process of pitching to producers.

Next there is Ghost town, a rock concert musical in development.

Then I have Wake not the dead, the horror musical. This is a musical propper, and if all goes well, I will record the songs by sometimes middel of this year.

Last on the list of musicals is A story of a nightingale. Many of the songs are written.

For all of these musicals, at least one, and sometimes many, demo songs are recorded.

Next in progress, on the production side is the farce, Bottoms up, by the Protea Stage Productions. My involvement here is more on the hand-of-all-trades and whatever-I-can-find-to-do-to-look-like-I-am-helping nature. The show will go on stage in May 2013. Later this year, around October, we will put a musical up, so watch this space. I will be much more involved in that production.

On the songwriting side, I am pitching songs for 2 projects. One I am especially keen for. This will probably turn into a 50's /Jim Steinman style rock show. The other project is pure adapting of some of my songs for a singer who plan to record an album this year.

So, if all these projects just keep moving forward and if my work gets accepted, then this year will be a very busy year. Keep watching this space.

 

Will you forever sleep

Last year (2012) James Fraser (on vocals) and I recorded a song from one of my musicals-in-progress for halloween.

You can isten to this recording on soundcloud.

This song is from the opening scene for the musical, Wake not the dead (a working title). It is a horror musical, based on the work with the same title by Johann Ludwig Tieck.

The first scene in act 1 starts with Walter bemoaning the death of his childhood lover. Brunhilda has been dead for about ten years. After her death, Walter married Swanhilda, with whom he has two wonderful little kiddies, but Walter is not happily married. Every night, he is crying and moaning next to the grave of Brunhilda.

We will not yet give the whole story away. For a teaser, you can find the original story by using google. What I can tell you now, is that this stage play will scare the wits out of most. For our musical, many small changes will be made to the plot to keep it more interesting.

The idea of horror musicals is nothing new. Probably the most famous one is Richard O'Brien's Rocky horror picture show, which became much more than just a cult classic. More recently, Stephen Sondheim had a huge success with Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Both these musicals have really, really great scores to carry them. While Rocky Horror is a hit for its bizare and amusing, Sweeney Todd is mixed with a fair amount of humor, as illustrated in the great performance of Angela Lansbury and George Hearn in the clip below.

 

Off course, Phantom of the opera can also be regarded as a horror, but most fans will rather put it in the drame / romance bin. I am sure you will be able to name many, many more, like e.g. Dracula that made it to the Broadway stages, and probably a few thousand more lurking in theaters all over. Then there are some more direct-to-movie horrors, like Hard rock zombies. Some would put Mama Mia also in this group, but now we are just confusing horror musicals with horrible musicals.

 

Strength to carry on

Today's song is a love song. Tyler, a young man who grew up in a poor family, has never travelled outside the borders of his own town. Suddenly, he was taken out of his world and had to travel into the wide world in search of his father.

All the time Melissa encouraged him and stood by him. She was the one who took him to Neil and then Manual to search for leads. Without her support, he would not have found his father. Now that they found him, Tyler thanks Melissa for all the support.

Statistics have shown that more than 50% of all popular songs are love songs (Don't ask, 50% of all statistics are made up on the spot). This however does not mean that a love song will be an automatic winner. There are many pitfalls to watch out for when writing a love song.

This song follows a standard popular song format of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, with repeat of altered chorus (ABCABCC).

On the subject of love songs (or songwriting in general), there is few who can teach us more than Sheila Davis. In her book, Songwriters idea book, she warns us not to confuse the subjects of sex and love. For a love song to work, the songwriter has to choose which one to write about and stick to it. In this case, I have chosen to stick to the emotional variation.

With millions of love songs in the world, it is difficult to find something new to say on the topic. When one choose love as the plot, the plot should therefore have some added ingredient to carry the plot and make the song interesting. Without any added plot item, a love song will be just boring and cheesy. In this song, I have choosen Melissa's support to Tyler as the main plot ingredient.

Pamela Phillips Orland is one of my favourite writers on the topic of songwriting. She teaches us in her excellent book, The art of writing love songs, when writing a love song, one must choose a single plot item and stick to that. A song that tries to deal with every possible aspect of love will be doomed to failure.

Track: Strength to carry on

Album: The Exile, concept album recording

Artist: Eric Swardt

 

(1a)

This all would be nothing without you

and your strength to help me carry on

I would be lost without you by my side

At times when there was no hope for victory

and I need a friend, then you were the one

who gave me strength to carry on

 

(2b)

Take my hand and make all my troubles disappear

Stay with me and I'll never loose when you are near

Don't you know I love you so

 

(3c)

When it is dark and it looks like raining

you will bring back the sun

I know you are my angel

You give me wings to carry on

You will be there when the sun stops shining

and when all hope is gone

Every time I feel I'm falling

you give me wings to carry on

 

(4a)

You came to me when I needed someone

to show me the way how to make a change

You stood by me when no one else would be

Every day I have to face a world of strangers

then I need someone, then you are the one

who give me strength to carry on

 

(5b)

Won't you stay with me for the rest of my days

Take my hand and together we'll fly away

My darling I love you so

 

(6c)

When it is dark and it looks like raining

you will bring back the sun

I know you are my angel

You give me wings to carry on

You will be there when the sun stops shining

and when all hope is gone

Every time I feel I'm falling

you give me wings to carry on

 

(7c')

Oh, please stand by me when the sun stop shining

Please give me strength when all hope is gone

Every time when you see me falling

please give me wings to carry on

You give me strength to carry on

You are my wings to carry on.

 

 

I have never

The first thing that can be said about this song is that it is a blues song. Now, that is not very difficult to figure out when you listen to it - yup, it is a blues song. What makes this one special is the wonderful performance by Gabriel, who is playing the role of Cathy on this album.

It is a standard 12 bar blues with the standard 12 bar blues chord progression, and as a standard, somebody feeling sad and blue. And like most blues songs, it is a standard AAAA song form.

There is a saying in the musical writing world that goes round, that you must never make your character sound sorry for herself, but if you absolutely have to, make it a blues song.

This song can be classified as a love song. Cathy is singing about her love for Hugo. She is however not talking to Hugo. She is talking to Melissa. Woman to woman, she is talking about her deepest feelings.

Track: I have never

(Click song name to listen on soundcloud)

Album: The Exile, concept album recording

Artist: Eric Swardt

(1)

I have never loved another man

so much that my soul trembles with pain

I have never loved another man

with all of my bones, body and soul

and never has any other man

made me loose so much control

(2)

For many long years he was alone

with no woman, family or home

For all these long years years I gave him a home

and for all those long years he belonged to me alone

but all that time I dreaded this day

when he would turn back home again

(3)

I found this man afraid and alone

when he came to take on the world

I found him when he was just alone

I loved him without complaint

and all that time I hoped

that he would love me in return

(4)

I was just an innocent girl

looking for love from a man

I was just a young and innocent girl

when I stumbled upon this lovely man

I was looking a friend I could trust

in this cruel and foreign world

(5)

I have never loved another man

so much that my soul trembles with pain

I have never loved another man

with all of my bones, body and soul

and never has any other man

made me loose so much control

 

 

A prisoner of your spell

While Tyler and his father catch up on years lost, Melissa and Cathy is talking in another room. Cathy is not somebody who gives anybody much time to explain anything. If Melissa sounds like she is getting tired of repeating herself, it is for good reason.

Melissa pleads with Cathy to let Hugo return to South Africa. Cathy does not give in that easilly, but eventually concedes that it is Hugo's choice, and if he wants to go, she will not stand in his way.

In Talk about democracy we discussed the conflict and dialogue song format. Here we have yet another example of a dialogue song. Is essence, the dialogue song is a form of a duet. This simply means 2 persons are singing in the song. Duets can come in many forms, most comonly, where one person sing one part and another person sings a different part, but not at the same time, i.e. taking turns.

Musicals have many examples of different forms of duets, e.g. where the persons sing different lines, but at the same time. That is a technique liberally employed by Schonberg in the musical Les Miserable. A third and much more common form of duet is where the two persons sing at the same time, but they sing basically the same words, but different notes. This is simply refered to as harmonizing.

 

Track: A prisoner of your spell

(Click song name to listen on soundloud)

Album: The Exile, concept album recording

Artist: Eric Swardt

 

Melissa

(1a)

You ask me why I am here today

I will tell you once and once more again

Why do you think I'd come all the way

if I had nothing of import to say

 

(2a)

I can't bear to see the suffering man

denied the freedom of his land

Freedom for which he dedicated is life

and for which he abandoned a wife

 

(3b)

You know he is suffering the cruelest pain

while you're keeping him in this living hell

He is confined by an unbreakable chain

He's a prisoner of your spell

 

Cathy

(4a)

You ought to be sorry and ashamed

It is out of jealousy that you blamed

A woman who take a fancy to another man

and live with him as she can

 

Melissa

(5c)

It is not fair

that he shall die here

Far from his home, far from his child

Please release him from your spell

 

Cathy

(6a)

And now you put me to blame

because I love him unashamed

I cared for him and his tears I dried

when there was no one by his side

 

Melissa

(7b)

Please relieve his suffering of cruelest pain

Why are you keeping him in this living hell

I ask of you to release this unbreakable chain

release this prisoner from your spell

 

Cathy

(8c)

It is not fair

I can not fight my fate

If he insist he wants to go

I'll release him from my spell

Check out Peter Gabriel's Don't give up, which is one of my favorite conversation songs employing this same song format.

 

 

When no service is better than poor service

We all have been there. When you get poor service, you do not feel happy. You do not walk away with a positive image of a company. It makes you wonder then why organizations then bother.

We can safely assume that organizations do not give poor service with the predetermined objective of pissing off customers. Then, why do they do it. The sad thing is that they honestly were trying to do good, but they just screw it up.

The age old business teaching goes that "vision is nothing without execution".

 

Let's look at one specific example. I am sure you can come up with thousands of examples similar to this one.

I like listening to internet radio. My favorite internet radio service is Live365. There is probably hundred similar services around. It does not matter. That is not the point. Generally they give a great service. You search for a radio station or genre. I like searching for "showtunes" and they will come up with long lists of stations to choose from. That is great. Then I listen until I hear a tune that sounds good and if I want to buy the mp3 or album, I click on the email button and patiently wait for more information about the tune to arrive in my inbox.

Well, fact is I was listening to the Mostly Harmless station with a tune of Daughtry, It's not over, at the time, when I heard something in the tune that interested me. It was the way the song uses dynamics of the guitars to control the dynamics and flow of mood in the song. Now, Daughtry is not unique in this and not inventing anything new, but credit must be given for doing it effectively. I just wanted an email in my inbox to remind me so I can go back later, buy the mp3 and listen to the song again, and maybe analyze the song structure when I have time.

To get to the moral of the story. The email that arrived in my inbox was a standard advertisement of songs and albums that most likely paid for advertising. It had absolutely no information about the tune that was playing at the time (see screenshot above).

For starter. They ruined the moment. They lost my trust. I trusted that I would get the information requested and there should have been no need for me to whip out any notebook and make notes. Now I feel a little foolish for having trusted in them and not kept my own notes. Lesson to be learned: Do not break the trust of your customers. Never make your customer feel like a fool. Next time you try to sell that customer something, that customer will think twice about spending his money.

The second lesson to be learned here lies a little deeper. I am not sure where the process has gone wrong, but I wonder if anybody at Live365 actually test their services. Has anybody up there tried that email button themselves and actually realized that it does not deliver on a promise? The lesson here is: never try to sell your customer something that you will not buy yourself. And going with this, test, test and test your service yourself. Check that those buttons actually does what your customer expect it to do.

The third and last lesson here is: never address your customer as member_157644whatever. It sound stupid, silly and just plain lazy. It takes just a few seconds of programming time to actually retrieve the first name of your customer from the database.

I'm pretty sure these lessons apply to producers of shows, just as much as it applies to online radio stations.

 

Sons and fathers

We are left with many questions after the previous scene where Hugo met Tyler. Why did Hugo leave his country? Why was he not aware of the existence of his child? Why did he not return to his country after democratic elections?

Even though we have heard many talk about him in scenes like Talk about democracy, I recall and Into exile, we do not really know very much about him.

In the scene that follows, we finally hear the story from Hugo's viewpoint. Here Hugo give us answers to those questions.

 

Track: Sons and fathers

(Click on song name to listen on soundcloud)

Album: The Exile, concept album recording

Artist: Eric Swardt

(1ta)

I was just a teenage boy

not much younger than you are now

when I fell in love with her,

a love doomed from the start

In those days when I was still at school

our love was against the law

my parents would not accept

for a white boy to date a maid

 

(2ta)

When I told her about the plan

She did not want to join

She told me that she expect a child

and she said the child belonged to another man

I guess I was furious and confused

I did not know what to do

so I did what I thought best

I took off and made my escaped

 

(3tb)

That place was heading for disaster

where the government told you who to love

Apartheid was an evil

and those who were against it

would be locked away

I don't know how could they not see the light

with sanctions from all around

I knew it was time to unite

I joined the fight against them

I made it my only goal

to get the world to join the fight

 

In the first verse, Hugo fills us in about his love affair with Pamela. They were from difference worlds. She was a poor worker and he was a richman's son. However, that is not the reason why he left. He makes a revelation. He had some plans to stand up against the regime at the time, but Pamela did not want to join. According to Hugo, Pamela told him that she was pregnant, but she told him that it was not his child.

 

Now we understand his actions a little bit better, but this raises many new questions about Pamela's motives. Why did she tell Tyler a completely different version of events? With all these questions in their minds, Tyler and Melissa will have to confront Pamela again when they return.

 

In the third verse, Hugo tells us about his fight for freedom. The country was n a bad shape as everybody was turning against the government. Hugo felt personally hurt by the class differences that was forced down upon him. He wanted to join the fight.

 

You hear a familiar melody in the third verse. As Hugo tells us about his fight against the regime, we use the same theme as when Pamela told us about Hugo's flight in into exile.

 

Don't forget, you can follow the whole musical scene by scene, in chronological order, from this page (see menu bar at top)

 

Finally, some comments about the song form. As you may have noticed by now, I do not like everything to be the same. I do not stick to a single song form. Yes, I do follow the trends and rules, but only to some extend. In musicals, my objective is not to write pop songs which has top 40 hit potential only. I do not mind getting to the top of any charts, but only if that suits my purpose of advancing my story. A sing-a-long chorus would have been totally put of context for this song. Verse 1 and verse 2 shares the same harmonic structure, with verse 3 introducing the familiar melody from another song. This makes it a AAB song form, composed in two parts, i.e. the A part, reapeating again, but with some variation in lyrics and melody, and then the B part that repeat some themes within itself. This is a form not very commonly heard on hit parades, but not completely unknown.

 

Take a listen to the beautifull instrumental song, Europa by Carlos Santana, which employs a very similar song structure.