Happy Birthday

Musical Hotspot celebrates its first birthday.

Musical Hotspot is 1 year old today! I'm quite pleased that Musical Hotspot has thrived and made it to its first birthday. I think it is much as I imagined it would be; a brain-dump of the stuff I've learned in my travels as an improv musician, stuff that is hopefully useful to other folks out there. It used to be that the challenge was cooking up relevant and interesting information. I think the challenge now is making sure it's out there in a way that the right people can find it.

My year

I've found the site was a catalyst for me to widen my circle of improvisational friends. One of the biggest developments for me was becoming part of Impro Mafia here in Brisbane. The ladies and gents of Impro Mafia are wonderful improvisers, keen to try new things and very focused on creating professional, entertaining productions. I'm having a tremendous time working with them on long-form shows that challenge me and push the boundaries of what I know. I very much appreciate that they've accepted me in to the fold.

My primary performing outlet is with the Impro Gladiators/Theatresports folks, and as a group I think we continue to put on great shows and deliver a high standard of impro in Brisbane. I've been working with some of these people for nearly 20 years, and they really know their craft. It's a pleasure to contribute to the short form shows that can take newbie audiences and train them to love improv in the space of 90 minutes.

Youth Theatresports was an adventure as always this year. It's slightly sad that I can waggle my finger at each and every youth performer and proclaim "Listen, I've been doing this since before you were born..." And yet there's always something to learn from the kids at these shows. I hope some of the kids from this year get addicted to impro and continue on with some of Brisbane's pro troupes.

I'm also pleased to have made friends with other improv musicians locally and around the world, musicians who have taken the time to drop me an email and have a chat about various aspects of improv.

Site analytics

It's interesting to look at the site analytics to see how people get to Musical Hotspot, and what they do once they're here.

Although I get a great many returning visitors from Australia (hey, what are friends for?), the biggest variety of visitors is easily from the USA, and a few from Europe too.

It looks like everyone uses Google when they want to search. Most people land here via google.com (63%), followed by google.com.au (14%), then lots of other country-specific googles. In the last month, the only non-google search engines were bing.com and ask.com; they made up fewer than 1% each of visits from search engines.

When it comes to non-search landings, I would have thought impro sites like musicalimprov.com and yesand.com would have been the most frequent referrers. I do get lots of traffic coming from those sites, but it turns out that my friend (and fellow Impro Mafia performer) Natalie's excellent blog GirlClumsy is the biggest non-search-engine referrer. (It's a great blog, worth your while.)

Easily the most popular page on the site isn't really related to improv theatre at all. Picking a good piano keyboard gets a lot of hits from folks using google to help them find a keyboard. Although I don't think anything there was rocket science, it appears to have been useful for people, and that's always good.

Alarmingly, it looks like people go to Google when they need medical help after getting soap in their eyes. And google sends them here. Glad to be of service.

Coming soon!

There are a bunch of things coming soon to Musical Hotspot that will hopefully make it a more useful resource for improvising musicians, and improvisers in general.

• Style Fakebook: One of the challenging aspects of improvised music is copying well-known styles of music, on the fly. One style at a time, the Style Fakebook is going to give you some pointers on how you can fake a wide variety of song styles. I'm enlisting the help of some very talented musicians around the world to put these together, and the results should help you whether you choose to improvise with a piano, a keyboard, or a guitar.
  
• Site organisation: There are a great many technique articles on Musical Hotspot, but it can be a bit difficult to navigate through them all to find what you want, especially for a first-time visitor. You'll see some changes soon that will help you find the articles you want, and discover related stuff of interest.
  
• Subscriptions: As well as just visiting the site or using your RSS feed, you'll be able to subscribe via email.
• More recordings: It will be great to get some more audio on the site. Relevant new articles (and some existing articles) will be augmented with recordings to make concepts a lot clearer.
  
• Vanity project: Ben's been trying to convince me to make this a site about what I personally am getting up to. I suspect most of you couldn't care less about that. ;) For those that could, in the near future I'll be starting up a sister site that is improv-related, with a lot less writing, and a lot more music. Stay tuned.

Thanks for coming, see you next time

If you're a regular reader, thanks very much for visiting. I hope you find content on here that is interesting and keeps you coming back for more. If there's stuff you'd like to see on the site, I'm all ears; just leave a comment or drop me an email.

Starting a Song in a Musical

Photos by n0nick

The 'rules' for starting a standalone song are a little different from leading in to a song in an otherwise spoken scene. In a standalone song, the scene starts from nothing, focus moves first on the element that starts, and then the other supporting elements come in. In something like a musical, the dynamic is very different - a story is taking place, and suddenly, there's music! How do you start a song there?

When to start

There are times when the performers can feel a song coming on. Perhaps one of the characters is approaching a crisis or decision point, or has learned something significant, or the relationship between characters is on the cusp of some new development. These are times like that where the emotion of the scene swells to become as significant as the narrative. These are the most obvious entry points to songs for me. (My iconic example is A Whole New World from Aladdin - where the two characters really open up and connect with one another.)

There are other times when a character might be obviously about to extend the detail of the story rather than advancing the story. "So, Doctor Crankypants, how did you become so evil?" "Well, Igor, it's like this..." Dr Cranky is about to sing a song that would stand alone, or could even be taken out of the performance without punching a hole in the story. (When we talk about extending the detail in song, one of my favourite examples is Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid. See a pattern? Love those Disney musicals.)

Musician starts

In musicals (or other long-form involving occasional singing), I'm quite used to playing mood music behind a scene, music that morphs and flows with the narrative and the emotion on stage. Sometimes this underscoring has a tempo and a structure, sometimes not; it just depends. As you approach that point where you think a song is about to appear, what do you do?

If I feel a song coming on, I'll often change the underscoring so it falls in to a pattern suitable for vamping. A nice repetitive pattern, with a sign on it for the players that says "Song goes here". I'm talking simple patterns like the beginning of Bette Midler's The Rose (ah, one of those songs I learned as a kid) or something with more interest like Five for Fighting's The Riddle, both soft piano ballads with fairly similar tempos and emotional states. There is a whole world of offers there for you to give based on different styles or themes - pick something appropriate to the moment. When the protagonist is set apon by the evil temptress, for example, I might choose something with a strong latin feel in a minor key.

If one of the players picks up on it and fires up a song, great - now you're moving along to wherever the song takes you. If something happens on stage and that offer isn't picked up before the action moves on, that's ok too, just morph back in to your underscoring.

It's a little easier if you feel a song coming on at a time when you happen to be not underscoring. It's way more obvious to the players that you're getting them ready to sing when you start vamping from silence.

A great way for the actors to signal that they're about to sing is for them to demand the focus in the scene by taking some kind of pose. Often this might be a distinct stepping-forward, facing the audience. It could be other things too, like taking one knee in front of their love interest. These strong physical cues almost pause the scene, putting a very clear focus on that actor in readiness for whatever comes next. If you've started vamping, this is a great way for one of the actors to indicate to the other that they're going to take the reins of the song.

Michael Pollock discusses many of these same concepts, and how actors can construct great verbal cues, on his site in his excellent post Tips for Accompanists: "Cueing a Song" in a Long-Form Musical.

Singer starts

A particularly brave actor might just launch in to song during the scene. There are a few different ways this might play out.

If you were underscoring the scene, it may be that the actor has picked up on the key or feel that you were playing - or perhaps the feel they had in their head, not the one you had in yours. You have to evaluate how you change your underscoring to become accompaniment to the song they can hear in their head, usually by fiddling with the tempo and rhythmic structure. I find this situation quite challenging - for some reason, I have a harder time putting together what I think is a musically coherent construction when we enter the song this way - it ends up being stream-of-consciousness singing/music without much of a structure. Without a strong structure, songs often fail to find a definitive ending, and the actors find they've just started speaking again instead of singing. Oh, the song's done. Right. This whole area is something I need to work on.

If, while you're underscoring, the player steps forward or provides some other strong physical clue that they'd like to sing now, that gives you the chance to quickly morph from your underscoring to an introductory vamp.

When a player bursts in to song when you weren't underscoring, you have the fun challenge of doing the chromatic shuffle to find the key they're in. Usually they can convey the tempo and feel they want through their physicalisation and the lyrics. Sometimes this can be quite challenging. If you find you struggle with this situation, you might ask your actors to help lead you in by accompaning themselves with subtle (or over the top) finger-snapping or toe-tapping.

Now what?

OK, you're in the song. It's started nicely. What do you do now?

Good question. That's for another post.

Foley

David Massingham, Mike Griffin, and
ultra-nerd yours truly.

In the golden age of radio, serials made use of great foley collections. Impro Mafia brought that tradition to the present for an improvised radio play - here's how they did it.

Tales from the Wireless

This year the Impro Mafia folks brought David Massingham's Tales from the Wireless to the Brisbane Arts Theatre for one night only. The first half was all short-form presented as a variety radio programme, with an olde-time narrator, and an appropriately-themed collection of radio programmes: A western, breaking news interviewing people off the street, an advice show where three experts address audience problems, a few commercials...

Instead of interrupting the show to get offers from the audience, specific gimmes were provided by the audience on slips of paper before the show: names, objects, occupations, and show sponsors. These were used as offers for the short-form games in the first half.

Luke Rimmelzwaan, Joel Gilmore, Tom Dunstan,
Amy Currie and Dan Beeston

Many of those offers were used as inspiration for the second act, a long-form radio play. Tales from the Wireless was presented as 1940s-versions of the actors, foley arists and musician themselves, on-stage recording a radio play for a live audience. The MC welcomed the audience to the broadcast, shushed them, then did a count-in to the "live broadcast". Normally when someone makes a hilarious gag during an impro scene, the actors (playing characters) have to try not to respond; in this show the actors could laugh at each other, threaten each other, panic and gesticulate wildly, so long as the audio being "recorded" was true to the story.

The star of the second half was without a doubt the foley arists and their tools. The foley guys (David Massingham and Mike Skillz Griffin, both hailing from The Sexy Detective sketch comedy show) had a big table covered in all manner of noisemaking devices, along with a microphone positioned centrally.

Foley

The guys put together a wonderful selection of strange stuff for the foley table, cooking up crazy sounds themselves, and sourcing ideas from the internet. Most of them required access to the microphone for sound reinforcement; cracking a carrot on stage is pretty quiet, but in front of the mic it makes a lovely clean snap sound.

Sometimes the foley items were used as themselves; tea cups for tea cups, a bell for a bell. Most of the time, though, the art was in making one thing sound like another. The classic example is a pair of coconut halves, clacked together to simulate the sound of a horse walking/cantering/running.

Photos by Anthony Massingham

For some things, the foley sounds were amazingly lifelike. A bag of corn starch (securely wrapped in duct tape to avoid nasty accidents), grasped with both hands and kneaded with thumbs, made a wonderful sneaking sound. A partially deflated fit-ball did a great heartbeat simulation. Other times the foley was way off the mark, when the actors would clearly indicate a particular sound was about to happen, and an entirely different sound came from the foley. That conflict was a big part of the humour of the show - having the foley guys do a strange sound and watching the actors respond, or vice versa, was an absolute treat. The actors and foley guys (as themselves) were free to react with honest glee or honest horror when surprises happened on stage.

The visual of the foley guys racing around and struggling to find the right sound was a lot of fun as well.

My personal favourite foley effect? Two of the characters in the story made a pact to work together. In a stroke of brilliance, the foley guys did a very sincere (and very silent) handshake behind the microphone.

Music

Music for the show was interesting. When we were workshopping the show, someone made the suggestion that the music should be more present in the quiet scenes than the exciting scenes. I didn't really understand it at the time; that seemed to be the exact opposite to how I'm used to structuring music for a show. As we went on, it started to make sense - the foley was the star, and subtle foley gets completely lost when there's music around. In the end the music was still a frequent part of the show, but fell away when the foley artists were poised to make some noise.

This was the sort of show where you never knew what kind of sounds or music you might need, so I came prepared. As well as packing the keyboard, I had access to a snare (with sticks and brushes), a few cymbals, windchimes, a gong, and some bongos. Every one of those got a workout during the show, too. (I had a harmonica on hand, but simply forgot to use it during a western. Sigh.) As well as that, we had a bucket of rattles, shakers, tambourines and so on, and the players made good use of those during one of the commercials.

The Foley Table

Here are some of the foley tools on the table that had successful use on the night.

Deflated fit-ball - heartbeat
Big umbrella - bat/eagle wings
Coconut halves - Horses, ticking timer
Bell
Carrots and celery - Snap for breaking things; chew for animal noises. Good eating too.
Ratchet - Mechanisms like lowering the hero into a shark-filled tank
Sheet of metal - Shake for thunder; strike for gunshots, general crashing
Plastic boxes full of rattling stuff - loading/unloading crates, dropping things
Rainstick - gentle rain
Cornstarch bag sealed tightly with duct tape - sneaking
Bucket of gravel - walking
Bucket of paper strips - rustling
Lettuce - Smash it with a hammer. It sounds like, well, nothing really, but it's a great visual
Wind chimes - fairies, flashbacks
Steaks - Face-slapping noises. Another great visual.
Teacups
Glasses
Swords - swordfight shing or clank noises
Rolling cylinder full of gravel - rain, storms
Inflated balloon - rub for stretching/straining sound
Party poppers - gunshots, fireworks
Styrofoam - Rub with a stick to make a writing sound
Gong - Spittoon, gong, general crashing about
Potato chip packet - static, fire
Bubble wrap - rustling, cracking knuckles
Hole punch - typewriter
Recorders and pipes - flute playing, train whistles
Pair of plaster molds - smack flat sides together for jail cell clank

More Wireless?

It seems like the more long-form we try, the more we learn and the better they turn out. This show was a lot of fun to do, and a lot of fun for the audience. Hopefully Tales from the Wireless will get another showing sometime soon.

Who starts?

Photo by Roy's World

One of the big decision points of an improvised song is deciding who is going to take the lead - is it going to be the musician, or the singer?

Most short-form impro shows have a variation on the game Song, where the MC provides some kind of offer, and the game is to improvise a short song. (This is in contrast to songs that live within other scenes, such as a Musical or a Musical Hotspot.) Songs are surprisingly complex, and that complexity kicks off right from the start.

Either a singer or the musician takes the reins to kick things off, and the other one follows.

Musician starts

I find that, most of the time, the musician is going to start the song. Often this is at the request of the singers or the MC. The control over the style, the key, the tempo, all comes from the muso. When you start a song this way, as the musician you have to set it up in a way that leads the players in to it.

You might choose to start with a repeating pattern, a vamp. Once the players have heard you repeat the pattern once or twice, they'll get the key and the vibe sorted out, and jump in when appropriate.

Some very simple examples include Nina Simone's My Baby Just Cares For Me, or The Bobs' The Gate. The patterns repeat nicely for these, and the singers can choose to come in whenever they like. (The sooner the better, usually.)

Sometimes you might start a song with a compositional introduction, which doesn't use a repeating pattern. For example, Styx's Come Sail Away, Ben Folds Five's Brick, and Journey's Faithfully, all of which use compositional introductions that cue the singer nicely.

For either of these, the singer can come in and decide to lead the start of the bar (the Journey example), or lag it (like Nina Simone, Ben Folds Five, and The Bobs do above), or hit it right on (the Styx example). They fit themselves in to the music, and not the other way around.

The compositional introduction usually provides a nice cue for the singer; the vamp lets the singer choose when to come in. When you're vamping, a less confident player might struggle to see where they should come in; giving them some kind of change or riff to lead them in, anticipating what could be the start of a new bar, can help.

Another mechanism is to start with a compositional introduction, but get to a point and hold it, waiting for the singer to come in. One example is They Might Be Giants' Kiss Me, Son Of God (the version from Miscellaneous T). I find these kinds of intros quite tricky; as the musician, you have to figure out where in the music the singer wants to be. Are they leading the bar? Lagging it? Hitting it dead on? In the Giants song, John holds the note on "I" for ages, then the bar starts on "built". You might want to rely on physical cues from the singer to know where they are.

Singer starts

My personal preference is for the players to start. They have the title, they may have a style of music, but they might launch in to something in a key, tempo and style of their choosing. As the muso, you have to play catch-up - locate their key, find a style that supports them, and transition from not-there to there effectively.

Why do I like it when the singers start? On those occasions when I'm starting, if I start with, say, a polka, it's probably going to be a variation on, er, my "standard polka". I'm a bit like one of those cheesy kids' keyboards where you push the "Polka" button and hope for the best. That's probably a weakness of mine more than anything else, that I might not put enough individuality or character in to something like that from the get-go. Conversely, when a player starts, I have to try and fit my music around what they're doing. Their stuff is the catalyst for the music, and it can't help but be different from what I might have done in the past.

I spent some time playing bass and/or keys in an originals band, and on occasion we'd do a cover. Often it would be a cover of a song I didn't know. Rather than listen to the original, I'd jam with the other folks in the band who knew the song well, and write a bassline as though I was writing for some new song they'd just written. Later after we'd rehearsed and performed the song a few times, and I listened to the original, I would be pleased with how related-but-different that new bassline was. I think that whole scenario is similar to doing an impro song and playing catch-up to the players; it forces me to go in a new direction, and ultimately I'm happier because I've stretched myself and composed something new. (This is closely related to the Danthem exercise.)

If you are blessed with perfect pitch, you might be able to pick the singer's key and jump in right away. Most of the time I can't pick it that easily, but it only takes me a few quiet tentative notes to find the key and go for it.

Works both ways

Just as I'm keen to have a singer start so I can avoid getting stuck in a musical rut, I've had the converse come back to me - where a player has been presented with an offer, and right away thought up several ways they could go, but they were keen to get a musical offer to put them off balance a little and make them go somewhere unnatural or unusual for them. I can appreciate that; a mind in panic is a wonderful thing. :)

The bit where you leave a comment

Singers! Musicians! Which do you prefer, singer starting or musician starting? Why? Has anything worked really well for you in the past? Has anything died miserably?