Fools' Duets

Luke delves in to structures and tips for fun patter songs.

In this article we will be exploring what we have called the fools' duets. This is not to mean that these songs are only done by foolish characters or are only the comedic relief, but that they tend to lighter tone and content.

Whereas lovers' duets tend to focus on emotional content and highlight the journey of the lovers, fools' duets tend to be about a specific event or person. They focus more on wordplay and rhyming and tend to be very structured in their format.

Patter

One of the more common techniques used in this style of duet is patter. Patter puts a premium on rhyming and verbal dexterity and less importance on the quality of the singing. While these can often be solo songs, such as The Major Generals Song from HMS Pinafore, they do work well in duets also.

The patter duet often will focus on one-upmanship, and this is often done at a meta level, with characters setting up rhymes for one another. A brilliant example of this is the Act 1 closer from Sweeney Todd, Try a Little Priest. In this song, Mrs Lovett and Sweeney have decided that the best way to get rid of Sweeney's murder victims is to turn them into pies. During the duet they challenge each other to name the taste of pies made from people of various professions.

In Try a Little Priest, you will notice that they also talk in between verses and choruses, and do little jokes and business, but they always come right back to the structure that was established at the start of the song. This is a valuable technique to use in a patter song, realising that you can use dialogue in between singing, but to always go back to the structure.

Did You Hear The News?

We used this dialogue-during-the-song technique in the song Did You Hear The News? from One Bride. In the song, Joel Gilmore sets up the format for the song and as other join him (Alex Reichart and Tom Dunstan) more characters are added there is some dialogue before it goes back to its base structure. The song is then topped off by a lovely tag by Luke Allan.

A good format for this sort of song was set up by Dan Beeston, with a structure that focuses on the setting up of rhymes for the other person.

Character 1 - A
Character 2 - A
Character 2 - B
Character 1 - B
Character 1 - C
Character 2 - C

You can also insert a chorus in this format using similar rules, allowing the actors to set up rhymes and jokes for each other and creating escalating stakes.

Something to try

An exercise you can try to focus your skills on patter with someone else is to choose a nursery rhyme or simple song that you both know. Using the structure of the existing song will allow you to focus more on the words you are singing. The first singer will sing the first line of the song and you can trade lines back and forth as long as you can rhyme. If one of can't think of a rhyme, just insert a new word and try to go as long as you can on that word.

If you continue to do this for a while, it will give you practice in thinking of rhymes faster, and you will start to think of more about what you are saying rather than focusing on singing the song.

More examples

Other fools' duets and solo songs that are worth checking out to give you more ideas on how you can approach this style include Agony from Into the Woods and Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book, and Bring Me My Bride and Everybody Ought to Have a Maid from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Photo by Al Caeiro

Reprise

The 3 Rs - Reprise, Reuse, Recycle.

In an improvised scene or show, I love it when the actors bring back a previously shelved idea. It seems to be one of those things that gives the illusion of planning and structure where there isn't any. The same concept applies to music in improvised shows.

In musical theatre, a reprise is when a song from earlier in the production makes a return appearance. Although they will often have different lyrical content, or a different tempo, or a different feel, they are recognisable as being related to the previous song.

In many ways, this is similar to a character leitmotif that appears with variations during the story. Because it is recognisably related to something the audience has heard before, it evokes some of that previous feeling or memory.

As the musician, you can encourage a reprise to a song by playing the previous song again. This is tricky; that song from earlier must be memorable enough that the audience knows what you're doing - and memorable enough that you can actually recall what you played! Hopefully the actors are cued in to the music, and make the same connection you are hoping the audience will make, so they can bring out the previous lyrics. A simple chorus really helps here.

The actors can very easily force a reprise by jumping in to the song again. As long as you're on the ball, you'll follow them. It doesn't even matter if you can recall the chord progression you used the first time round; the actors have done the hard work to make the audience recall that previous piece, and you can pretty much play what you like. Personally, I prefer this sort of reprise. The actors know when to bring back a song, and which song to bring back, based on how the lyrical content of that song could apply to the scene at the moment.

In a short-form scene, I find reprises work well when a main character (perhaps the hero) has changed as the story progressed, and they finish the scene with a reprise of the song with which they began the scene. For example, a scene about a janitor might have opened with a simple song about making the room shine; perhaps the janitor's fortunes improve during the story until he owns his own company, and he might finish with a song about how he shines.

A long-form musical really lends itself to reprises - you should have a great many opportunities to find songs that can come back. Of course, we have an example for this, coming again from One Bride.

What A Beautiful Day For A Walk

This week's recording What A Beautiful Day For A Walk is a full scene that includes a song in two parts. In the story, Nancy is just getting organised to dig up the gold she believes is buried in the playground, then leave the town a rich woman. Golly doesn't know of her plans, and thinks she is back in town to get to know his family better. Nancy is developing feelings for Golly, but her feelings are tempered by her knowledge that she is going to leave; Golly is falling headlong in love with her.

The first part of What A Beautiful Day For A Walk is a quick, happy little ditty. You can hear the point where I think a song should start; the underscoring suddenly comes in to focus as accompaniment, and Tristan and Amy dive right in.

I really enjoy some of the interplay that happens in between the songs. The bit about Nancy's parents in particular makes me smile.

The second part is a bit of a freeform ballad, where Golly exposes his feelings, and Nancy replies. You can hear the disappointment in Golly's voice towards the end. Then Tristan, in a flash of brilliance, brings back the chorus from the first song again, and Amy follows him, jumping in with both feet. The music is noticably changed from the first time around; it has gone from optimism and energy to something bittersweet.

There is one moment in particular I desperately love in the second song. When Tristan sings "filled with smiles", the music has moved to a somewhat risky chord. It would have been easy for Tristan to have gone to a note that didn't fit, but it happens that he landed on something that suited it perfectly.

I had one member of the audience, a fellow improviser, tell me after the show how impressed he was with that reprise. I agree :)

Photo by Al Caeiro

Evolving Leitmotifs

Character themes can evolve along with their characters.

Leitmotifs

We've talked about character leitmotifs before. If you can create a snippet of a theme for a character, and recall and use it during a show, you can colour the character and the audience's bonding with that character immensely. Although you can pull this off in a short-form game to a limited extent, this really comes in to its own for long-form shows, where characters can establish themselves and really evolve as the show progresses.

A terribly nice thing to do is take a theme you've established, and fiddle with it to reflect the underlying emotion of the character or the scene. You want to put something together that listeners will cue in to, but that you can vary as the scene requires... or better, to develop further as the character matures.

The gold standard in my opinion is John Williams' soundtrack to the Star Wars movies. When you watch the movies, without meaning to, you latch on to those musical elements, starting to form associations with characters or environmental elements. Once you're hooked, that music can come back and layer particular emotions on to a scene, reaching in to affect you every bit as much as the acting and dialogue.

Prognosis: Death

Back in June, we presented a set of character themes for characters from Impro Mafia's series of long form science fiction supernatural medical drama soap opera, Prognosis: Death!. Because of the nature of the show, themes for characters developed as the opening season progressed, something you generally can't get away with in a one-scene or one-night story. In mid-2009, we ran our second season of the show, Prognosis: Death! Relapse, where I shared music duties with the incredibly talented Nathan Howard. In Relapse, many of the characters evolved, either through changes in their story, or as aspects of their characters were revealed.

I have a problem when it comes to long-form impro and stories. I totally buy them. I totally get in to the characters, I believe their stories. I love to see them develop. Really, I take the whole thing a bit too seriously. This show in particular seems to work very well; the characters have such good chemistry, the dynamic is great, and the actors are all highly skilled and very good at what they do. So I end up really bonding with the characters. (I'm not the only one. One of the fans of the show will be away for the first two episodes of our upcoming season. She's asked us to film the shows - because she needs to know what happens. Does she know we're making it up? Yes! Does that diminish her need to savour every minute? No!)

A few folks encouraged me to write a Prognosis: Death! Relapseseason 2 medley (thanks Ben!), and I resisted for a while... But knowing how the characters had evolved, it seemed pretty natural to evolve their themes to reflect how they changed during Relapse.

Evolution

The themes from season 1 were pretty straightforward, setting up a musical phrase or two for each of the characters. Season 2 themes usually demonstrated a dynamic in the character that came out during the show. In most cases, they show an example of taking a set leitmotif and bending it around a different emotion or experience, hopefully sounding familiar enough to the listener while evoking something new. Here's an explanation of the themes, and what I was trying to achieve with each of them.

You know what? These make more sense if you watch this recap of season 2, set to the season 2 medley.

Nurse Lotte Buble: Buble's core theme is meant to be stoic; when she suffers a setback, she soldiers on. At the beginning of Relapse, Doctor Burton Mangold stood her up at the altar, which left her terribly sad. The opening bars are supposed to evoke a feeling of numbness, of running on autopilot and not really being all there, at least for a while.

Doctor Burton Mangold: After disappearing from the town for several months, he skulked around the hospital in disguise, until the moment when he was needed. His theme begins with a sad snippet of his old theme, before launching in to hero-mode again (this time with an added sprinkling of hero-mode trills).

Reverend Jeremy Thistlewaite: As is his custom, Thistlewaite died a lot this season, being replaced by an endless variety of Thistlewaites from other backgrounds and religions, sent by some central church. His theme starts with his positive facade, degenerating into a death march. In a weird case of life imitating art, Wade Robinson (who plays Thistlewaite) was struck down by the flu (a garden-variety kind) and was unable to perform in one of the shows. His spot in the usual cast was replaced with...

Reverend Casanova Lovechild: Lovechild was sent from St Love's "Latin Quarter" to help the hospital out in their hour of need. He is a terribly attractive, magnetic, somewhat sleazy man who makes all the staff (male and female) nervously giddy. This is Lovechild's first appearance on the show.

Medical Superintendent Harold Dean: Dean was a revelation in Relapse. I'd completely misread his character in Season 1. I'd taken him to be the scowling, stomping, penny-pinching, bureaucratic bad guy in the hospital, Mangold's nemesis. In Season 2 we realised that he was just an idiot, someone who bumbles along and doesn't really understand how to relate to other people. His music stumped me for a while, but it became a Prince Nez-version of his old theme. You can hear his old theme in there, hopefully reduced to ineffectual bumbling.

Doctor Ludwig LeStrange: LeStrange's music was a little more flowy this time, not as mechanical. He broke out with more emotion this season, even growing a backbone and turning in to a superhero in one of the shows. But he always seems to return to his introverted "normal" self, hiding away in the mortuary.

Doctor Melody Carmichael: Melody's music retains her original themes of youth and positivity. This season she rose to the role of Best Damn Doctor while Mangold was away, and later found love (one-sided as it was) with LeStrange. She went through a lot this season, experiencing love and loss. Her music evolved, hopefully showing a little more maturity and a few more scars.

Mayor Rik Cocksteady: Cocksteady appeared for one episode in season one as the only doctor better than Burton Mangold. In season two, he returned in the last show of the season as the new Mayor of St Love. He was later revealed to be behind an evil operation to take over the town and knock down the hospital to get to the secret Mayan gold buried beneath it. He is smart, manipulative, and greedy.

End theme: Right in the closing seconds of the last show of the season, just as Mangold and Buble are about to be married, a stranger bursts in to interrupt the wedding. A stranger? Or is it... The season ended with a sudden cliffhanger.

Prognosis: Death! Pandemic

Prognosis: Death! returns for a third season at the Brisbane Arts Theatre in 2010 on January 21, 22, 23 and 28, 29, 30. For all the details, visit ImproMafia, or book online.

Hopefully in season 3, the music will continue to evolve. I can't wait to see where the characters go.

Prognosis Death (or Prog Death as we like to call it) is a wonderful show, and I hope to see you there.

Photo by Wanda Anderson. That's right, my wife. She's awesome.

Video photography by Al Caeiro, Anthony Massingham, Wanda Anderson and Kris Anderson.

Prognosis: Death! poster by Dan Beeston.

Staying On The Rails No Matter What

In a long-form musical, it can be useful to assist the players to jump on and off singing as they see fit.

There are a few different schools of thought about how to underscore a long-form show. One option is to keep the music minimalist, providing segues and underscoring for very dramatic scenes, letting the dialogue carry the emotion and tension most of the time. I tend to go the opposite way in a long-form show, providing constant underscoring (with occasional silence) for the whole show. This wasn't something I did intentionally; when I got back in to long-form a year or so ago, I'd intended to do the segue/dramatic underscoring only. Somewhere along the line, I started constant underscoring, and now I find that to be quite natural and effective.

In a long-form musical, those schools of thought play out a little differently. For the minimalist school, as well as segue/dramatic underscoring action, you'll want to provide very clear musical offers to say "Hey, it's time for a song!" That works well, and is quite close to how traditional non-improvised musicals work.

When you're in constant-underscoring mode, the dynamic between speaking-parts and singing-parts changes quite a bit. Sometimes you might provide a clear musical offer to start a song, but other times you might be sitting in a pattern, then find that the actors decide to slip in to that pattern and begin a song. (That pattern you were in was effectively a vamp, you just didn't realise it.)

For some reason, this reminds me of one of those sushi trains. The music goes around and around, offering up different things, until the actor decides to grab some of it and take it. Then when they're finished, they can wait and jump on the next thing that interests them on that sushi train. (What a clumsy metaphor. I might have done better had I actually ever eaten at one of those places...)

Even more interesting is when one of the actors jumps on your music to sing, then jumps off again going back to dialogue... but you know, you just know, that they weren't done with their song. Keep that song going behind the action. You might play with the key to freshen it up, or change the feel as the emotion of the scene changes, but hang on to the core of that tune that you were working with. The actors might just jump on again to finish their song - or perhaps they'll get on and off a few times, moving from dialogue to singing and back again.

Make A Deal With Me

Dudley Riley (Dan Beeston) negotiates with
Nancy Buttons (Amy Currie)

The example this week is again from One Bride. Rather than being a single song, this is the second half of a fairly long scene. In the scene, Nancy (Amy Currie) has returned to the playground where, as a child, she found buried treasure; she's returned to town to dig it up. Dudley (Dan Beeston) reveals his plan to take his recently-inherited playground with its pony-on-a-spring and spinning-egg, and develop it in to a high-rise hotel. He refuses to share his wealth with his now-homeless brothers (including Nancy's love Golly). Nancy is tricked in to admitting she knows of buried treasure in the sandpit; she is torn between getting her hands on the treasure, and ensuring Dudley's brother Golly is taken care of. She strikes a deal.


In Make A Deal With Me, Dan and Amy step effortlessly from speaking to singing and back again. The tempo and the key change here and there, but somehow they keep one ear on that while still creating good dialogue and telling their story, and jump back in on the fly whenever they like. There's not really a chorus (although the "Make a Deal With Me" line feels like the chorus to me) or a repeating verse structure. It's a lot more like a sing-speak opera - usually I don't care for those, but I really enjoyed this scene. The timing and melodies they chose combined nicely with the music to progress the story.

The underscoring floated around for a while before settling on a vamp that seemed like it would make for a nice song. You can pick the point where I think the scene needs a song; at about 42 seconds, when Nancy pleads with Dudley that there must be some way he can help the brothers, the vamp gets more insistent - just asking for a song.

Sushi Train photo by acb. One Bride for Seven Brothers photo by Al Caeiro.