Songs on Rails

Songs may have set forms, even in an improvised show.

I find creating a new improvised piece of music to be wonderfully fun. It is dangerous and error-prone. Sometimes it can fail spectacularly - and sometimes you can create some amazing music, all the more amazing because you created it on the spot.

Do musical games in an impro show have to be completely unrehearsed? Nope!

There is a particular style of game where the musical structure is set beforehand; you take a set piece with a particular structure and melody, and put new words to it. One of the best-known examples of this is Hoedown from Whose Line. The actors all know the music and the rhythm, and can structure their lyric to match. In Hoedown's case it's basically taking a Poem, and putting particular timing and structure around it.

These songs remind me of those rides at amusement parks where you sit in a car, you have pedals and a steering wheel... but the car is on rails, so you basically go where the rails take you.

Another Whose Line game with the same sort of handle is the Irish Drinking Song. I did my first one of these ever tonight, working with the clever folks from EDGE Improv here in Brisbane. The song has a great formula, and it is pretty much guaranteed to work. Tonight's song probably wasn't a textbook execution (Geez Kris, you have one song to learn. One song!! Sheesh.) but when the folks on stage decided they were about to fail, they did it with full-on commitment, and that worked a treat. You know you've won the audience over when you see people who have drifted in to check out the show start singing along with the "Hidey-didey-didey" bit.

We perform Do Do Ron Ron quite a bit here in Brisbane. Same deal - set music, set rhythm, players know the format backwards and forwards, and pour their energy and thought in to the lyrics.

For me, personally, games with set music styles are fun, but not as appealing as a fully improvised song. It's not that they're bad; they have great entertainment value. It's more that they're... less risky. Risk vs reward, baby. If a game like this goes well, at the end I feel like... actually, it should have gone well, it was set up for success. Success isn't a bad thing (especially when you're trying to film impro for TV). I just find creating a successful song to be much more satisfying when you are working without a net.

I know of some groups that use more complex songs, with pre-recorded full instrumentation. I've heard bootlegs where groups do this and pull it off very well; they have rehearsed harmonies, and they set up choruses or areas of interest that you just couldn't do in a purely improvised song.

We seem to spend a great deal of energy thinking about whether or not the performance looked improvised. In many ways it's a great compliment to hear "That was great! But you rehearsed that song, right? Gawwwn, you can tell me!" One thing I like about the pre-recorded backing track is that there's no pretense that the music is improvised. The audience knows where the magic is happening - in the clever lyrics. The first few times I saw Whose Line do set songs, I was impressed; the integration of music and lyrics was flawless, and the musician wasn't breaking a sweat. Once I got to know the games better, and I realised the music was set, I felt a bit ripped off that they weren't completely improvised.

What if you have no choice? I find quite often if I'm working with a group that doesn't usually have a musician, they may have rehearsed a song to nail its style and structure. This happens a lot with youth players. I tend to get right out of the way for them - they know where they're going, and musical offers you make are likely to be ignored.

One downside to these games is that, if you really hammer them, they get old really quickly. Do Do Ron Ron falls in to this category for us. As a show-opener, it's absolutely fantastic. It introduces the players, it's fun, it introduces the idea that failure will happen and it's ok, it involves the audience, the tension grows to a natural climax... it's really hard to find something that is as rock-solid of an opener as Do Do Ron Ron. That means you play it a lot.

If you are tossing up about whether to include set songs in your lineup, try this: Do one, and see if the audience goes crazy. I'll bet they will.

Levitation Hum

Photo by Dae*

To me, it's important in a music workshop to relax the participants. Levitation Hum is a great exercise to get folks relaxed and ready for a bit of singing.

I like to start a workshop by asking everyone to find their own space in the room, then have a little lie down on the ground, eyes closed. I get them to take some deep breaths, relax their muscles, shake it out.

I often lead them through a visualisation exercise - get them to imagine themselves immersed in a completely different environment for a few minutes, basically to empty their minds of all the stuff they've done that day. Then when I've brought them back from that, eyes still closed, deep breaths continuing, ... then comes the fun bit. :)

I have the participants start humming a note to themselves, so quietly that they can't even hear it, they can just feel it in their chest. Then I ask them to gradually get louder until they can hear it... then gradually louder still, and start listening to see when they can hear other people around them.

A little louder still, and I'll ask them to start varying the pitch of the note they're humming, moving it around to match or complement someone near them. At that point, more often than not, the hairs on the back of my neck start standing up because the sound they're making is just unreal. Sometimes a collective of 20 workshoppers will sit in a beautiful single pure note, sometimes a clean harmony, sometimes a shiny discordant set of notes... Pretty much every time, I think to myself that if they were to all start levitating off the ground I wouldn't be surprised.

After a little bit, I'll get them to make different vowel sounds, vary the pitch up, vary it down again, just move the sound around.

Towards the end, I'll ask them to gradually quieten down again, to the point where they can just barely hear themselves, then to where they can just barely feel the sound, then nothing.

After some deep breathing, I'll count to 10 (slowly) and get them to gradually make their way to a standing position... and they're good to go for the class. Hopefully all the stuff they were carrying around in their head has been cleansed, and they're all refreshed and ready to go for the workshop.

Skullcrusher Mountain

Photo by brylyn

Dan and Kris do a Danthem for a beautiful Jonathan Coulton song about love and monsters.

Jonathan Coulton is a wonderful songwriter and musician; his music somehow manages to be comical and heartfelt at the same time. For some reason, his music seems to appeal to improvisers. Peter C Hayward suggested on The Dan Exercise post that we apply it to a Jonathan Coulton song, and voila - here you go, Peter.

A quick recap on the "rules" of Danthem. Singer takes a real song that the musician has never heard before, and sings it once through. Musician provides accompaniment, improvising music to match the melody and feel. No rehearsal, no pre-listen. The singer should generally try and remain faithful to the original melody and structure, and not use those impro skills to match the accompaniment.

The Danthem

This was the very first time we tried recording a Danthem, in a session for the Impro Mafia podcast And Time. I think it went rather well.

Listen to Skullcrusher Mountain (or download it)

Dan kicks it off (as you do) with unaccompanied vocals, and I join in after a few seconds once I think I've found it. I really get lost at the start, rhythmically, finding and losing the beat, until a little light goes off right about when Dan gets to the word "crazy". The recovery isn't really complete until the end of the first chorus.

The second verse worked pretty well; we didn't have much of a set chord progression from the first verse to build on, so it was a little unstructured. At least that let us play with the progression to match the lyric. Right at the end of the first verse, the build around "making a gift for you" is lovely; Dan's singing became more intense, and the accompaniment matched it.

Start of second chorus, oops, why did I go there? Quick recovery. Phew.

It sounds like I thought the song was over after that second chorus, but suddenly a bridge appeared. As always, the bridge's job is to lift out of the song for a little while, using a different progression or feel.

The final verse was pretty straightforward again, right up until the end with a little variation leading in to the last chorus. That variation got a bit excited and took over the chorus for a little bit. Aside from that little hiccup, the third and final chorus went very well indeed; the melody had finally cemented itself in my head, so the accompaniment was more confident and established harmonies and shadowing.

Right at the end of the chorus, a repeated last sentence leads the music, so the chorus finishes pretty smoothly.

What did I learn?

Much like Pinch Me, one of the things that made this song a good candidate was the lyric leading the beat quite often. That can confuse the timing if you don't see what's going on, but once you're locked in to the rhythm, the melody can lead you around quite nicely.

One of the things that confused me in the Danthem (but is crystal clear in the original) is that the last line of each of the verses is twice the length of the others. So just when you think you've got the rhythm sorted, surprise, that variation kicks in. Dan uses that technique well in proper improvised songs, so I should have been ready for it.

Again it's good to see that a singer can push a musician around using light and shade in their voice. I was playing facing away from Dan, so I lost any chance of watching him to get cued in on changes; next time we'll do that differently.

Want to hear the original? Go to Jonathan Coulton's site; you can preview his music, and spend some money to download DRM-free tracks from his collection. I love every one I've listened to, but I'm holding back from listening to more so we can give them the Danthem treatment in the future. (I need to spend some money there, both for my own enjoyment, and to apologise for butchering his song...)

The Return of the Paddington Bears

The Paddington Bears (Ross, Adam and Kris)
Photo by Elton Scott (2007)

It's satisfying to take something already good, and tune it to make it excellent. We made a few changes to how our 3-piece approached the music for a recent show, and it made all the difference.

The Paddington Bears

Usually our Impro Gladiators shows have one musician, or maybe two on a special night. Every few years we have a show with three musicians - myself on piano/keyboards (and sometimes bass), Adam Couper on guitar, and Ross Smith on drums. All of us are play-by-ear folks (or maybe play-by-the-seat-of-our-pants is a better term). We took care to tweak a few things after our last show.

(Impro Gladiators is performed at the Paddington Tavern, thus "The Paddington Bears". I expect a cease-and-desist any second now.)

What we learned

Having three musicians gives such a great energy to a show, the audience loves it, and the actors get to work some new and challenging music. After the last show, we talked about some of the things that we could do better.

We made several changes to how we approached the show. Some of these were based on notes from our last show. Some were inspired by notes from Robbie Ellis about The Improvisors' Secondary School Musical and how they approached their 3-piece-band duties.

• Play less: You're there, you're set up, you want to jump in and contribute... so why not? I'll tell you why not - a scene needs what it needs, no more, no less. Just because you have a 3-piece band set up and ready to go, it doesn't mean you should all be there all the time. We took care to let the actors act and not force them in to music. This is less relevant for short musical games (like Gibberish Song), but terribly important for longer games like a musical or an opera.
  
  
• Don't crowd: Sometimes the song on stage just needs guitar, or just piano. Or even just drums. If that's all it needs, go light. A few times, when one of us knew what the scene needed, they'd let the others know they were going to do a solo spot, and off they went.
  
  
• Light and shade: One of our sins in our previous show was to do a quick count-in, and go hell-for-leather until the song was done. We tried hard to put some light and shade in to the music this time - this is one of the things Robbie and his group did very well in Secondary School Musical. Starting with one musician doing free-form stuff, then having the others join in, gives a nice build to a song. You can slowly dismantle a song the same way, pulling parts out until you're left with the original solo instrument.
  
  This is closely related to that momentum comment again - with more than one musician, it's easy to get momentum going, resulting in songs that refuse to end and refuse to change. We had that a few times in our previous outing, and took care to do it differently this time.
  
  
• Face time: We did a much better job of arranging ourselves this time as well, with Adam and myself close enough that we could see each other well and talk when we needed to. This is far more critical for the tonal elements of the band (piano, guitar), and less important for the drummer. He gets the short end of the, er, stick. Because the drummer doesn't have to follow chords and keychanges, they can end up slotting in to the rhythm appropriately. You still communicate visually with them, but you can get away with hand motions or shakes of the head to get your point across.
  
  
• All musical games!: We did pretty much all musical games for the show, and again it was primarily short form with a few medium-length games in the second half. It's great when you can pull together a cast where everyone is a strong singer, and I think we certainly had that on the night.
  
  My instinct was that having so much music would overload the show, but in practice it worked quite well. A musical game isn't necessarily an all-singing game, so working in games like Soundtrack and Cuthbert worked well to give a little variety. I'll post the games we performed in a future article.
  

Learning to Play by Ear

Photo by Gibsonclaire

Is playing by ear a talent you're born with, or a skill you can learn? Can anyone do it?

I have a sad lack of musical training; I play pretty much everything by ear. Although I think some people will have an easier time with it than others, I think anyone with a good grasp of tone can do this.

I suspect playing by ear and being able to do freestyle improv music are quite related. When I'm freestyling, often I can hear what I should be playing next ahead of playing it; then it's a case of translating the phrase in my head in to fingering on the keyboard. That's roughly the same skill as being able to reproduce a song after having heard it. The key is to be able to hear that melody or chord progression in your head, take it apart, convert it to fingering, and drop it on the keyboard.

Now and again I have the opportunity to try and teach someone the basics of playing by ear. Usually it goes pretty well, to my surprise and delight. There are a few exercises I use, and I'm going to describe some of them here. (These are all very skewed to using a piano or keyboard, my natural music habitat. I'm sure one could adapt them to other instruments. I'm a rotten guitar player so I wouldn't want to try).

Tone hands

The first thing I ask people to do when they're trying this is to stick one hand out in front of them, hand open, palm down, elbows bent. Now take a melody, hum or 'la' or sing it, and move your hand up or down as the melody moves up or down. I'll sing or hum, and do hand movements too, so there might be a bit of mirroring going on.

At first, I'm only concerned with making sure people are moving their hand in the right direction. If the next note in a melody moves up, the hand should move up. Doesn't matter how far, just as long as its in the right direction. Usually this isn't too much of a struggle. (If it is - the rest of it is going to really be a struggle.)

Next we focus on showing how far the note moves through the melody. For example, in Mary Had A Little Lamb, your hand movements would go:

start, down, down, up, up, stay, stay
down, stay, stay
up, up more, stay
down more, down, down, up, up, stay stay stay
down, stay, up, down, down

There aren't any really massive movements in this one. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star has a few changes that are bigger, so they're good for testing out big jumps vs little jumps.

First playing

The next step is to actually get playing. I try to keep it pretty simple at first.

Mary Had A Little Lamb is good for another reason - someone relatively new to playing the piano can just plop their right hand on the keyboard, thumb on C, one finger per white key, and not shift for the duration.

I tend to think in C. It's certainly easier for someone new to the piano to use C, and play songs in purely major keys. Let's leave B minor for a little while. (I used to hate playing in B. I love it now. Something about the way your right hand curves around a B-major. I dunno.)

Now, instead of doing the hand movements, you get them to play keys while they are humming/'la'ing/singing. If the note moves down a little bit, just go one finger down. If it moves more than that, go 2 fingers. That's as complex as Mary Had A Little Lamb gets.

I don't know why, but at this point when people make a mistake (which is inevitable), they say "Wait" before halting and trying again. Why that word? Why not "Hang on" or "Oops" or something else? I don't know. I'm nearly positive I said "wait" as a kid in the same situation. (Is this related to the rampant overuse of "But Waaaait!" in an Opera? Hmm.)

I think it's very important to have someone sing/hum/la while they're doing this. Perhaps it's so they can keep the melody at the front of their brain and not get confused with their fingers. Or perhaps somewhere in their mind they are already doing muscular control of their throat and other singy-bits, so they're already doing that hand-height exercise, just in a different way.

Don't watch!

The next part is important to me. I can't say why exactly, it just seems like an element that helps to make you at home on the keyboard. I ask the person to play that song, but hold eye contact with me and not look at the keyboard. If it's Mary Had a Little Lamb, they don't need to move their hand anyway. They just need to fire off the right fingers at the right time. This sounds awfully hard, but in practice most people can do this pretty well.

Complications

These exercises are each pretty simple. They're all about melody, and not at all about the left hand or chords or harmonies. For the most part I've done this with kids, and there's a point where I don't quite have the words to explain what chords are, or how you coordinate two hands together. If I figure out the next lesson on that, I'll let you know.