Music – No Added Sugar

Performing Love.

Jozey Wade / June 2, 2014June 2, 2014 / Love, Music, performance, Reflection

So, we did it. ‘Three Words’ made it to the stage… and it’s honestly taken me almost an entire week to come down from the incredible high that evening gave me, and truly take in how it went.

As Gabby said in her blog, the response from the audience was truly astounding. I had spent so much time meticulously over analysing tiny flaws and mistakes in recent weeks, wanting the show to be the best it could be, that I think I had forgotten to truly take in and appreciate what we did have and how an audience might take it. However, as the show opened that night and the audience began laughing in the very first song, I finally started to realise – oh, we have something here. We have a very decent show. And performing it was really like no other experience I had had before.

Again, leading up until the performance I was thinking and worrying constantly about the musical side of my performance, especially playing instruments, as it’s not something I had a great deal of experience with before this show, and, as such, I wasn’t overly confident. However, being out there, I honestly was having so much fun, I almost completely let go of my nerves, for the first time in any performance I’ve done.

Being on the stage for 100% of the show was a huge part of what made this such a different experience for me, performance wise. Being fully immersed in the show throughout, there was no time to come off stage, come out of character and let the nerves take over again about the next scene. In my head, it all just flowed. And it really added to the feeling of team work and camaraderie between the company. We were all on stage, together, supporting each other, working together, throughout the show, and that really added to just how enjoyable and engaging performing it was. Of course, it being the debut performance, there were hitches; technical glitches and a few little performance mistakes. But nothing massive, and I do think we covered any mistakes from the audience well. Of course, those mistakes and glitches are also things we can learn from for any future performances… as quite a few people have mentioned in their blogs, we certainly don’t want this to be the end for No Added Sugar, or ‘Three Words’ itself, and it doesn’t look like it will be. Watch this space!

I always love the shows I am part of, but I have honestly never loved every minute of a performance as much as I loved being part of ‘Three Words’ that night. Furthermore, I am not exaggerating when I say that the process of creating this show has been the most inspiring, rewarding, professional and educational devising process I have ever taken part in. I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone, including performing as myself (something I have previously been reluctant about) as opposed to a character, trying out new performance disciplines (like different kinds of puppetry) and going from being able to play about three chords on guitar very slowly to playing a full song or two in front of an audience. I could not be more glad of every decision we made that pushed me. Even if, by some awfully unfortunate circumstances, No Added Sugar does have to end here, I am taking away so much from this process and from this performance; so many memories, connections with wise, talented people, lessons in performing, lessons in music, and lessons in life… and love.

The music of love.

Jozey Wade / May 24, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Music, performance, Reflection

For Filter Theatre, “combining music and drama was always the intention” (Dorrington 2014), and as you may have seen from previous, early blogs, this is also true for No Added Sugar. One of the things that made us want to work together was our mutual interest in live music and how it can really enhance a piece of theatre, or a story. Our chief musical director Gabby will be commenting on this in more detail in her next blog.

Of course, our plans and idea have changed throughout the course of our creative and rehearsal process. Our concept lends itself to the idea of love songs, so we originally suggested using snippets of songs (as said in a previous blog). What has changed is that, we have been a little more brave than I expected with how far we have gone with music. I am by no means a particularly skillful guitarist, in fact, I have only been teaching myself for less that a year. However, Gabby and I have worked closely together, each bringing our our bits of experience and skill to the table, and in doing so I have learnt a great deal. Gabby has, of course, been the true master and taken charge of the truly technical things like finding and transposing sheet music, working our what harmonies should be and more; but I have helped translate to the singers and work out guitar and ukulele parts.

Musically, our process hasn’t only been about utilising what skills we have, but about pushing ourselves and learning new things all together. In fact, while we said in the first place that we wouldn’t be capable of writing our own songs or music, our show does now in fact include one completely original song (lyrics written by Sam, and music put together by Gabby and I), a well known tune which I wrote new lyrics to and then quite a lot of back ground music/ transition music, which Gabby, Tom and I have composed ourselves. I certainly think that to keep moving forward and be successful and innovative with a theatre company, you should not just use what you have but learn and gain, and I have certainly gained a great deal and will be able to take away new skills from my experience creating ‘Three Words’, especially musically.

While part of our influence here was Filter, where we have differed from them is that we do use more singing. Most of the cast sing in some way during the show, and we also sing together, so there have been difficult harmonies to teach and work on. We have mostly worked on these outside of studio rehearsal time, having evening sessions in my bedroom. Of course, we never intended to make a musical and that isn’t what we have done. What we have created is a piece of theatre utilising a mixture of diciplines, including music, puppetry, acting, some stylised movement, and multi-media. Music is just one part of it, but an integral part.

Reference:

Dorrington, J (2014) ‘Review: Filter’s Twelfth Night’, The Boar, 28 February. Available at: http://theboar.org/2014/02/28/review-filters-twelfth-night/#.U4B9H_ldV-4 [Accessed 24 May 2014]

It was during an S Club 7 Song…

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / May 20, 2014June 2, 2014 / 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 / April 24, 2014June 2, 2014 / 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].

Song Writing: The reasons to love me and reasons to stay away.

Samantha Mckenzie / April 15, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Love, Music, performance

Towards the beginning of our rehearsal process, when we were collecting writing material, we set ourselves the challenge of writing a list each. The list was to be split into two sections, one being reasons why someone should love you and one being why someone should stay away. We shared these lists with each other in a rehearsal and all picked the lines and sections which we wanted to make into a script. After some deliberation, we then decided that the lists could be made into a song. As I have had some experience song writing before, I nominated myself to be the writer and I compiled the lists together and wrote a melody.

I was inspired by the kind of songs that feature in stand up comedy and I wanted to portray the same clever style. I looked particularly at the work of Tim Minchin.

Once the song was finished I worked with the musical directors Gabby and Jozey to put together the accompaniment and then it was decided that Jozey will play her ukulele in the performance and Lauren will sing the song the song with me. We have allocated the sections of the song in terms of which lines refer more to which singer.

The song:

Reasons to love me song

Work Cited:

Tim Minchin (2010) You grew on me [online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNpdG4F9mw [Accessed 10 April 2014].