I was reading about the theatres opening up again and it got me thinking about the theatre aspect of "The Gnomes of New Hope". The Libretto has been done for some time. It's fully re fined as a foundation for the show, with many technical notes included. Of course, the text includes dialogue, lyrics, blocking, and operational notes, but it also has design notes. The Score, however, needs to be completed. I have drafts of each song in various forms. There are Leadsheets for the melody lines on most songs. Only those that have not been arranged have not been printed out. Only a few songs have the full orchestral arrangement printed out. My effort was to secure Lead Sheets for the singers,with Piano adaptations, without worrying about the orchestrations.
When we wrote the music, our process was like this; I would write the lyrics, in the context of the storyline, then I would conceptualize a melody line for delivery of those lyrics, then I would present the lyrics and melody line during our worksessions. Shawn would then write that melody line down (using Digital Performer) while I conceptualized the delivery and the timing, in the context of what is taking place onstage. That includes anticipating the blocking, set changes, and technical transitions. An important aspect was the tempo required to maintain the overall beat of the show, but it is a fine line between keeping the pace up and making the lyrics deliverable. It's one thing to think it out and quite another to delivery the words descernably to the audience at the back wall.
I discovered a flaw in our method. When we first started working with Digital Performer, we had to learn the program while trying to write at the same time. Any of you familiar with DP will know what a monumental task that is. DP is unbelievable. It a complex program, especially for a neophite. Well anyway, we were excited to experiment with arranging, so we moved forward to arrange the first song. We spent an inordinate amount of time getting that right. I won't go into that, but it forged a modus operandi, that looking back, it think was a mistake. Now Shawn is a pianist. So his desire was not to use the piano, because he wanted to break out of that genera. I wasn't entirely onboard with that but I agreed. So all the music was crafted without the piano and there was no piano in the arrangements. I fought for piano arrangements, but it was a point of contention. In fact, the piano and scoring lead to us stopping working. I insisted I needed piano arrangements for both pitching the music and training the singers. He refused to engage in scoring until the entire show was arranged. But here's the problem; the arrangements were made based on the melody lines. Well that absolutely is the correct thing to be doing, except that while I was writing, Shawn was arranging. We did it together, working in the same space on two different computers. We collaborated on every note, but there was a big disagreement on one important issue. I asked that Shawn preserve the melody line that we created by duplicating that basic melody line in a separate track. He flat out refused and took pieces of the melody line and moved them to different instruments to create the arrangements. Effectively that hurried the melody line in the arrangements and assigned that melody to multiple instruments, making the melody, in some instances, nearly impossible to distinguish. That combined with the scoring issue caused us to argue enough that we ended up discontinuing our work. There are still fifteen or so songs that need to be arranged.
I shifted my work over to the Storybook, because publishing the entire story, both the current time line and the backstory, in a narrative format was an overwhelmingly huge task. It has taken me nearly fifteen years to get this story ready for publishing. But it is literally days, weeks at most away from being finished. Not done done mind you. But the publishing layout will be totally finished in terms of being "ready-for-press" sans the remaining illustrations, which need to be created and inserted.
So with the completion of this stage of the Storybook, knowing that it will be presentable as The Industry Review product, I anticipate getting back to the scoring. I need to recover the melody lines from the arrangements, create piano adaptations, and do the divisi, starting with the duets and working my way up to the choral numbers. I've spoken to Shawn about that and he is open to continuing the work. I have upgraded our workstation and need to get DP9 and Mach Five installed one operating. We used Reason for our voices and I want a tone generator that integrates better with DP, so I bought MachFive, but I have to learn it. Especially before I invite Shawn back into the studio.
That's all for now, more later. AG ðŸŽ
