Author: Gabrielle Ruth Evans

No Added Sugar… Are we ready to take the next step?

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / performance, Reflection

 

Three Words has been performed. The audience laughed, cried and the overwhelming response from them was astounding, something we had only dreamed of.  The performance created a buzz not only on the 27th May but for the weeks leading up to and the days after. It has been the best pleasure working within the company. We tried to be as professional as we could be and I think we pretty much did just that. On the night as the audience filtered through, and pre-set began. I could not help but think of how the company have bonded and created a piece full of amazement. It lead me to think, what’s next? Where can we go from here? Like in any relationship, it’s the point of which you have put your all into something; it would be a shame if we broke up. Therefore is it time to take the next step and develop our company and performance more. There is much more we can do and add to develop the performance. It is by a long shot not end.

Over the weeks, I have seen each one of us grow support each other and perform to our strengths and work on our weaknesses. On a personal level, although I have found it tough sometimes to take control, by the end I feel I have accomplished my own goals and I am proud of every single one of us. Although on the night some of the harmonies went a little out of tune and some of the piano music went a little off, that is just the pressure of live performance and I do not think it let anyone down it merely added something to the piece.

On a small note, from the beginning on of our aims was for someone to completely learn a new instrument, and Becky did just that. But not only did Becky learn the Glockenspiel, she earned the title of Master of the Glock! Yay!

After this exciting and learning process,  I don’t think I am ready to let go of No Added Sugar… therefore all I am going to say is… see you soon!

Photo taken by Linford Butler
Photo by Linford Butler

It was during an S Club 7 Song…

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / Development, Love, Music, performance

All the musical elements for Three Words are coming together. The number of Music rehearsals has been doubled and the harmonies are being nailed. Like in my previous blog, some of the performers were finding it difficult to get and keep the correct harmonies. Therefore we have had to change a harmony in All you need is Love into two parts, however over the past couple of days, one of our performers Sam was able to pick up a newly revised third harmony which was what the piece was missing. I was able to leave Sam to sing the harmony, as she is one of our most confident singers. She has been a great help in helping the group pitch some of the most difficult harmonies. In adding the third harmony back in, I think it has given the song a stronger texture. The only thing worrying me now is the tone. It is coming after a difficult section, but will in theory and hopefulness lift up the audience’s mood and helps them believe love is all you need. In keeping with the song, our group had a moment of pure genius while rehearsing in Jozey’s bedroom. It was difficult to try to come up with a way to end the piece. At this point the lengthy music rehearsal was getting to everyone and we were going to give it a rest for the day. But then something magical happened. I am describing it as magical because it gave me Goosebumps and as it began to unravel glockenspiel master Becky’s face lit up with excitement. All the hard work the singers put in that day had paid off with a great ending of what can only be described as a love line mash-up. Here is an example:

Of course after the magic, became the practicality of directing at which point will the build up start, who will start it, how long will it go on for and how will it end? But I felt as musical director; after the hours spent it really is true that in a moment of pure spontaneity something amazing can be created. Jozey and Phoebe will lead the group to start and through the direction of myself and Jozey voices will gradually be added into the mix until it reaches a point. Then the guitar playing will cut out and voices will begin to fade out to leave phoebes last line… love is all you need. I think this will be a lovely way to end such a chaotic and unique piece and in a way is a symmetrical to the beginning.

From this point on all ‘Three Words’ needs is its finishing touches to the performance. Some of the parts required some enhancement. In particular during First Kisses one of the performers, Abbi’s line is ‘It was during an S Club 7 song’ at which point anyone around her bursts into a dance to Reach. Instead of using a soundtrack it would be nice if the motif was played on piano. Another thing we added late on into the performance was the Imperial March. This replaced the wedding march in the wedding scene as we thought it would add another aspect to the ever changing hilarity of the performance. These little moments of music come within in some light and funny pieces.

As well as adding little bits into the performance in order to fill the silence between the little scenes and to make the piece more flowing, it was decided that the transitions will be a mixture of guitar, piano, verbatim and in some cases spontaneous song but together by myself, Jozey and Tom. The piano parts in particular, some were created using simple chords and others were parts of songs featured in the piece. This I hope will help to tie all of the little sections together and polish up any scene changes.

At this point, I am feeling confident that the all the elements especially the music shall be good. With only a week to go, the big numbers just need polishing and the individual music needs practising but I am confident in saying  as a company we have put our heart and soul into the performance, challenged ourselves and from my point of view with help from the fabulous Jozey the music is where at the standard if not above what I am hoped from the beginning of the process. I just hope in this next week we can build it up more and give the audience something amazing to watch and listen too!

7 days left… No Added sugar … Three Words… LET’S DO THIS!

Let’s do that love song, from that film.

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / Development, Music

Everything we learn, everywhere we turn, every love film we watch, each love song we listen to, in some way has influenced what we think about love and relationships. Some of our main musical influences for Three Words have come from the famous love films and songs we as a group have watched over the years. From Richard Curtis’ 2003 film Love Actually to Davis Lean’s 1945 Brief Encounter each film has influenced the way we view love. As a company, we want to put our own spin on he musical numbers we do also from my perspective the real challenge has come from translating famous songs and putting them into the piece. Some of which I have found difficult to learn I have decided to change a little.

Brief Encounter

The famous film, that comes with famous music. At the beginning of this process I did not think to myself at all, that I would be attempting to play Rachmaninov’s famous Piano Concerto No 2. However, I am. His concerto is the soundtrack to Brief Encounter. So when it was decided that we were going to reproduce the film live on stage, this only accounted for one thing in my mind, we would have to have live music in there too. Not going to lie I had a little panic to myself as my piano ability is not to the standard of Rachmaninov’s writing let alone, but I saw it out as a challenge.

The first encounter I had with the music was trying to find the correct piano music. Every other music score for this performance has been easy to get hold of, apart from this one. It took me many attempts to source the right one, I even had a go at producing the score myself, to which I got only 8 bars in and realised it was in a totally different key. Lucky though, I found the piano solo music in a book called Classical Heartbreakers (2011). Even then, it was difficult; the score originally written for two pianos and strings was all collated into one piano piece. At this point, I took it upon my self to simplify the left hand to simple notes. I did this by looking at the cord and taking the primary note as the main leading notes. To this, I then inputted it into Sibelius , a music writing software to make sure it sounded correct. From then, I had only taken a snippet of the music from him, I interjected two more songs into the scene. The first one is taken from Love Actually, called The Glasgow Love Theme. Composed by Craig Armstrong the music is subtle, soft and sounds so full of hope. The last song I combined with these two I found difficult to find. It was stated in the Work-In- Progress that I should try and find a contemporary pop song. I tried everything from Kylie Minogue to Robbie Williams, finally settling down with Adele’s Someone Like You. Which is a powerful yet beautiful song about heartbreak. Something similar to the heartbreak Laura faces when Alec leaves and she has to return to her husband.

I took apart the music and framed it around the dialogue. I wanted to mix it up , from classical, film, and contemporise pop songs. I just hope it works well within the piece.

All you need is Love

There are many different portrayals of this song from the original Beatles to the famous wedding scene in Love Actually :

Through discussion, ideas and possibilities, we wanted to do something spectacular to end the piece, so I got in contact with the university orchestra and the cathedral choir to see if they would like to join us in our performance, unfortunately they were unavailable at the time of our performance. Therefore, we had to think of something else to do with the song. There has been so many covers of the song, it is hard to find something new to do with it, but we decided to go back to basics. Back to the same way we started the show, and simply make it about us.

We have changed the structure of the piece around, so that are starts with a solo verse and then enters the song. This will give it a nice pick up from the last scene. Instruments wise, we also wanted to use all of the instruments so we have Becky playing the famous opening line, and then the guitar and piano riffs coming in and out of the song. From the pianos perspective I didn’t want to over power the song, therefore I am going to keep to just playing chords and riffs in the chorus.

The end song is not like what you see in the movies, it is something more hopeful, it is simply 9 very different people singing about one universal topic of love.

Works Cited:

Classical Heartbreakers for Solo Piano (2006) London: Wise Publications.

TheBeatlesVEVOHQ (2011) All You Need Is Love-HQ [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-pFAFsTFTI [Accessed 23 April 2014].

Tengizpoteri (2008) All you need is Love [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9siyJtoWRAU [Accessed 24 April 2014].

 

 

Harmonies

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / Development, Music

It’s just over a month until our performance and my main concern is the harmonies in the first and last songs. We have made progress, just some of the harmonies are difficult to get. Individually each member of the cast has an amazing voice it is just find the correct balance and group tone. I think the group are just doubting themselves and their own abilities. The trick is to listen. Listening to each other helps so much as it allows you to find the correct pitch and to synchronise with the backing music. But we have found a solution, any singer will agree that harmonies are difficult to learn and when put with all of the elements and put on a stage it is difficult to concentrate and pitch. Therefore, as a company we have set up a No Added Sugar Sound Cloud profile, where we can upload sound clips for people to access at home. By doing this each singer will be able to listen to their own parts and practice at home ready to come into the music rehearsals ready to go.

Here is a link to some of the harmonies on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/no-added-sugar-tc/sets/harmonies

 

Love Love Love

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / / Initial Ideas, Music

As a company the exploration of live music in performance has always been part of the agenda to explore. In the theatre industry, companies such as Filter and The Little Bulb Theatre Company have explored the idea of incorporating live music into performance and have used it to their advantage to produce some amazing shows. It is a unique element to use if available, therefore when we discovered that not only myself but most of the cast can either sing, or play an instrument or was willing to learn, from this point I think we all knew that if we did not explore and develop music for our performance it would be a great loss.Also, with the topic of love in mind, music is known as the universal language of love, so it would be rude not too. Music has the ability to create a connection with the audience in the same way as any play or text. Particular songs over the years can become reminiscing of all the good and bad encounters you can have with love. Such as, a first Kiss, a couple’s first dance at their wedding or even a first meeting.

Within the company we discussed various love songs that are both personal to us and some well-known classics. As musical director with help from assistant musical director Jozey as well as collaborating with director Tom and the singers, we shall be able to pick out the correct few love songs, as discussed in Jozey’s earlier post ‘thoughts about music’. We went away from rehearsal with a few of the musical choices to explore the possibility of playing it on either piano, guitar or ukelele.

Within the piece, we want to include some old time classics such as ‘I’d do anything for love’ by Meatloaf and ‘All you need is love’ by the Beatles. , spiced up with some original composition. That will, I hope add some depth and texture to some of the written and to be written text and with hope that it will help the audience along with their journey.

In relation to all of this, the instruments we have decided to use the most in our performance are the guitar, piano and Ukulele. But through discussion we also thought it would be nice to get some alternative instruments into our company which will take the shape a glockenspiel and a tambourine. Yay! Becky our producer is going to buy them for our next rehearsals and although at this moment I don’t know where they are going to be used, I am sure we will find a valuable place for them.

As Musical Director, I am looking forward to the next few weeks. Exploring things I have not done before from taking charge of music to even developing my own musical abilities. I am also hoping to help the company learn a little more about musical techniques and to produce some music with, dare I say it, maybe a hint of sugar.