Don't Stop Believin'

Photo by Jeffery Sims Photography

Now and again I like to drop an in-joke in to the music. It's fun to provide music that sounds like just normal background music, but has a little gift for one or two people in the know. Even if the only one in the know is me :)

Last year during the Youth Theatresports festival, there was a team called The Journey. I like to find appropriate theme music for teams, so secret agent teams get secret agent music, teams that used a rap for their intro get rap, and so on. We had a team last year called "The One", and they got the Matrix music. Whenever a team comes on stage ready for their next game, it's great when you can the background music is themed appropriately. So with this team The Journey, I thought I'd rip off some music by Journey.

It's funny how the music scene is different around the world. I've lived in the US and Australia, so I've learned music from both places, but there are plenty of singers or groups that are popular in one place, but not the other. Journey is a bit like that; living in the US in the very early 80's you couldn't escape them, but they were never really big here in Australia.

So I decided to give this team a Journey song as their theme music, Don't Stop Believin'. That song is from 1981; it is massive in the US, and according to Wikipedia it is "the most downloaded song from the 20th century in the iTunes Music Store." Still, not really popular here. (A straw poll at work found one person who knew it. And he's American. The poll did rely on my singing voice so perhaps it wasn't set up for success.)

The song opens with a really catchy rock piano riff, so it was fun for me to play. Because Journey wasn't huge here in Australia, there's no chance of anyone getting it so I had my own little in-joke. Tee hee.

Then, during one of the intros, 5 teenage boys in the front row start singing along with it! Freak me out.

After the show, I went over to ask how a bunch of 15-year-old teenagers from Australia in 2008 knew a 17-year-old American power-ballad-rock song like that. The kids explained that they had a skateboarding DVD with the song, and they loved the song so much they hunted around for more Journey music and became fans. Go figure.

Song Structure

Improv songs often mimic the structure of a "normal" song. What sort of building blocks do you use when constructing a song?

The most basic thing about an improv song is that it generally follows the structure of a normal popular "song" - it is composed of verses and choruses, and perhaps a bridge. I'd say most of the time, the song will start with one or two rounds of a verse, followed by a chorus, another verse, and a chorus. Sometimes that's it; other times you might break in to a bridge or another verse... Ending on a chorus is nice, it usually ties up the song pretty well.

Do you have to follow this structure? Of course not! This structure closely resembles the sorts of songs most people listen to, a structure they already understand. As an audience member it should be pretty easy to grasp this structure, and be receptive to it.

Verse

The verses' job is to provide the narrative of the story you're singing. Sometimes they won't seem like they are directly related to the offer. To me, the chorus's job is often to satisfy the offer, and the first verse's job is to anticipate that first chorus.

Musically, finding a straightforward chord progression and melody that you can repeat (and vary) is important, especially for new improv musicians. Keep it simple at first. Once you've found your feet and you know your actors, you can break the formula.

Chorus

I often tell new improvisers in workshops to aim for simple choruses. It's nice to have something that is memorable enough that the singers and musician can recall it next time it comes around, and keep each instance of the chorus similar. When the audience spontaneously joins in, that's a sign that you hit a simple, catchy chorus.

Like any other "rule", it's ok to do your own thing. You don't need a chorus at all - you might just have a short, common refrain at the end of each verse. Or nothing at all.

I like it when the chorus is thing that ties offer in to the song.

Bridge

When might a bridge appear? If the song is telling a story, and you anticipate a twist, or there's some change of emotion, a bridge is a great vehicle for introducing that change. Perhaps the singers lead in to the bridge ahead of time, cueing the muso that a bridge is coming. Other times the music can lead in to a bridge.

I really like to construct bridges that depart musically from the patterns you've set up for your verse and chorus. You take a break from the rest of the song, narratively and musically, so when you return it is fresh again.

Ending

Most of the time, a song will finish on a chorus. Some nice techniques include repeating the chorus twice, repeating the last line of the chorus twice, and repeating the last line of the chorus twice but stretching it out to twice the length.

I think once we (without planning) did a fade out at the end, which felt weird because the audience didn't quite know if it the song was finished or not. I'd like to try that again sometime though.

If the audience is right in to it, if your chorus is simple, and you want a massive ending, repeat the chorus at the end but get some audience sing-a-long going on with an "Everybody!" or an "All together now!".

Special to impro?

Are these building blocks only relevant to impro songs? Of course not! We use them because they're familiar. There are a great many resources out there on song construction that apply to improvised and non-improvised songs.

In the Gig Bag

Photo by Matsuyuki

As long as you're carting equipment to a venue, the stash of stuff is every bit as important as your keyboard. No power? No audio? No music.

There's plenty that can go wrong when you're trying to plug yourself in to a system, be it friendly or foreign. My gig bag is full of spares, strange adaptors, tape, and other weird stuff. Here's what's in it, and why.

Backups!

My keyboard uses a 12 volt power adapter, one of those bricks that plugs in to the wall. To me, aside from losing the whole keyboard, the power adapter is the one thing that can go wrong that no one will be able to help you with. I always keep a spare. And I've had to use it, too! I've seen helpful crew at a theatre drop it and smash it; I've seen the little polarity-adjusting tip fall off and disappear in to darkness. Good thing I had a spare.

Generally audio leads take a bit of a beating, and it's good to have redundancies there too. Now and again you'll set up for a show, plug in, and get a good dose of hum or static. Worse, the bad stuff might start during the show. When that happens, I'm a fan of quickly laying a replacement cable, and swapping over. Leave the "so where did it fail exactly?" detective work until after the show. If I have a lead that I suspect is a dud, I'll put a very loose knot in one end to mark it as suspect, so I know which one to investigate later.

Adapters and leads

I always have a variety of leads for setting up. My keyboard like most has a 1/4-inch jack output. My amp (when I use it) has a 1/4-inch jack input. When I'm in unfamiliar territory and using a strange PA, you never know what strange kind of setup you'll have.

Here's what I have available to me.

• Jack - jack: Good for a desk that is close by and takes 1/4" jacks. I pack a few of these.
• Jack - Female XLR: The poor-man's DI box. Combine with one or more normal mic leads and you can run it a fair distance.
• Mic lead (Male XLR - Female XLR): Useful for a bunch of situations.
• Female jack - Male RCA: Yep, RCA, like on your home stereo. On occasion, setting up at schools or other unusual venues, that's all they had to work with.
• Male 1/8-inch stereo to twin Male RCA; twin female RCA to male jack. Now and again the ipod comes in handy for pre/post show music, and it's nice if you can actually plug it in.
• Male XLR - Male XLR: If all your leads die, and you're at a venue where they have some normal mic leads, and some that terminate in a jack, one of these adapters will come in quite handy.
• Extension cords - You never know how far away from power you'll be. I pack a few different sized cords, including the Longest Single Power Cable Known To Man.
• Power board - You may have more than one piece of equipment, or you may find the only power outlet you can use is already taken.
• Adaptors a plenty - I have a host of little adaptors, to convert between 1/8-inch stereo, 1/4-inch jack, XLR, RCA, males and females... You just never know.
• DI Box - Not an absolute necessity for a keyboard setup, but very handy when you have ground loop issues and need to lift your earth.

The stuff I use all the time (Jack-jack, Jack-Female XLR) lives in the gig bag 24/7; the other stuff stays in the car unless I need it.

Coiling technique

A long time ago, I was taught the over-under technique for coiling cables. It's a technique that means your cables won't get twisted, or acquire permanent bumps or lumps. It also minimises trauma to the innards of your cables. It's a pretty strange technique at first, but becomes automatic when you get used to it. Rather than a clumsy explanation by me, there are plenty of online resources showing you how to do this.

Gaff

If you don't travel with a roll of gaffer tape, you're crazy. Gaffer tape (or Gaff for short) is the black cloth tape every respectable musician uses travels with for... well, for everything really.

Primarily I use gaff to tape leads down at venues where I have no choice but to run leads where people can step and potentially trip. Please, if you are running cables where the public might be walking, you must make yourself aware of what the Workplace Health and Safety regulations are in your part of the world. You don't want to be personally responsible for injury taking place in the course of your work.

If you swear by your roll of silver duct tape, you should try some gaff. Gaff tape is easier to tear than duct tape, and the adhesive removes much more cleanly. And gaff makes a much better Charlie Chaplin moustache in a costume emergency.

Clean power

When you're set up, you may hear a low hum, at 50 Hz or 60 Hz depending on where you live. That can be an indication that you're taking your power from an unclean source (perhaps you are sharing power with a lighting rig), or that there are ground loop problems. Ask the venue for power that isn't shared, or you can try and EQ that hum out. My keyboard power adaptor is of the unearthed variety, so usually I don't get any hum like this; I know of people with earthed keyboards who have fashioned devices to lift the earth, which seems to help, but sounds dangerous to me. Use at your own risk. I'd much rather just use a DI to achieve the same effect.

The bit where I get your comments

What in your gig bag do you find indispensable?

Ballet

Photo by Pat McDonald

Ballet is an old-school Theatresports game, one that doesn't really fit in to any of the usual game categories. As a musician, how do you approach a Ballet?

The premise of a ballet is quite simple - one player narrates a story, and the others tell the story through dance. Piece of cake! The dancers are (typically) silent throughout the scene; the narrator and the musician provide all of the sound.

I usually get a nice orchestra patch ready to go for a Ballet, and have others within easy reach. That fits what the audience expects to hear when they hear the word "ballet". For me this game comes up most often with Youth Theatresports players, who also expect a traditional ballet. I would say the more experienced players I work with would approach this game as though it were called "interpretive dance" - perhaps not a traditional ballet.

The narrator opens the scene and usually gives a good indication of the type of ballet you're going to have. If you're being welcomed to the Royal Ballet Company's production of blah blah, you're probably safe with an orchestra patch. If the narrator welcomes you to the Ipswich Train Yards for a production of Raw Metal's "Bite Me", they may be looking for something more original from you.

A ballet is often divided in to specific scenes, introducing characters, furthering the story, approaching a climax. To me it is important to segment the music in to movements to match those scenes, with specific transition points from one to the next. Narrators often signal those individual movements with introductions like "And this is Pieter, dancing the dance of 'Joy Joy I Love The Dentist'". Make sure you allow yourself room for light and shade as you transition from one of these movements to the next.

Introducing leitmotifs for characters can be pretty effective here too, but you only have a few minutes to take advantage of them. If you are going to try character themes in a short game like this, keep it simple.

Although often classed as a musical game, the music is anything but the focus; the music provides an emotional platform for the players to dance on. Don't forget to watch the characters, listen to the story, and be changed accordingly.

Danthem - Pinch Me

Photo by Lone Primate

What happens when a musician is improvising accompaniment to a song where the singer is sticking to a known song with a set melody? Dan and Kris cover BNL's Pinch Me.

Back in The Dan Exercise, we talked about an activity that might be useful for honing your improv skills, and might also be kind of fun. Dan and I got together to do a couple of them, and the results are interesting. Not polished by any means, but interesting. I learned a lot about how I think about songs by just listening back to the recordings.

Dan is a great improviser, which normally means readily accepting offers and being changed. In this exercise he had to fight against his normal improv sensibilities, to try and stick to the timing and melody of the original song, and not take offers from the music.

Pinch Me

I am a Barenaked Ladies fan, but I don't have a complete collection of their stuff, so I was pleased for Dan to pick one I didn't know for a Danthem. Pinch Me was the lead single from their Maroon album. I'm not sure how I didn't know the song; it was one of BNL's bigger hits. (Maroon is sadly missing from my collection.)

The original song structure goes Verse-Chorus Verse-Chorus Bridge Verse-Chorus Bridge, with the rapid-fire BNL-signature lyrics in the chorus, and the "Pinch Me" bits in the verse. Not knowing the song, I didn't have any preconceptions about the structure, and it turned out a little differently than BNL intended.

The Danthem

Listen to Pinch Me (or download it)

As usual for me, it takes me a little while to find the key and pick the timing. Sort of a mental chromatic shuffle going on there. In the verse, the lyric lags the start of each bar, so the music leads that lyric. That makes it a little harder to guess what might be coming next.

When the first rapid-fire bit hits ("It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone...", the chorus from the original song), it sounded like the music expected some kind of change, so the feel changed a little bit. I think since it started on the same chord as the verse, to me it became an extension of the verse.

You can hear some pretty poor chord choices in there, where the music clashes with the melody. Some of those bad choices were corrected early on, some lasted until right towards the end.

After that first rapid-fire bit, it sounded like I expected a chorus, but it felt like another verse, so back in to it again I guess!

When we got to the bridge of the original song ("Pinch me"), the melody timing changes dramatically, with the words leading the beginning of the bar. For the purposes of an exercise like this, that made a huge difference to hearing where the music wanted to go. It didn't take long to catch on to a decent chord progression (one that is quite different to the original).

Entering the final verse ("On an evening such as this"), Dan's singing became very gentle, and the music followed suit. That made for some nice light and shade.

You can tell I was getting pretty comfortable with the "chorus" (the old bridge) right at the end. Until it suddenly stopped, which freaked me out a little. Wish I'd played out some more, could have been lovely.

Dan displayed the ability to insulate himself from the music, and not follow music cues (well against his "training" and his nature). You can hear him pause to let me find the right entry point near the start of the song.

What did I learn?

Listening back to something like this, and comparing it to the original, I learned a lot about the way I listen and the way I structure songs for impro.

One of the key attributes of a component of a song is how the melody/words sit in relation to the start of the bar. When they lag the start, the music is really in charge, and the singer is going to key off of the music. When the words lead the bar, they melody drives the music, and the musician needs to respond accordingly.

As the musician, when you expect a change like a transition from verse to chorus, signal that change with the music. You might play anticipatory stuff, and you might decide to change the chord structure or feel of that new section.

I didn't realise until listening back to this song that I have a tendency to set a chord progression in a verse, and vary it right towards the end of the verse. Now that I'm paying attention, I've heard that in a lot of stuff I've done. I think it freshens the verse, and acts a signal that the chorus is coming.

True patriot love in all thy sons command

I'd scheduled this post a while ago, but I didn't realise until just now what an appropriate choice it is for today - Canadian musician, covering a fantastic Canadian band. Happy Canada day, eh!