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how to get NO feedback from Elise

...by NMI Artistic Director ELISE DEWSBERRY

notes from Elise

In this monthly video blog, I am going to be addressing a lot of topics that come up over and over again when I am giving feedback on drafts of new musicals. I’d like to think that if you keep these basics in mind while you are writing, you might be able to write a musical that would result in NO critical feedback from me! Let’s see if I can put myself out of a job…

Want to get find out about the kind of feedback you can get from Elise?  Check out Submissions.

If you’re looking for classes, visit our Core Curriculum page: Core Curriculum.

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avoiding feedback: Vlog 47 – The Introductory Verse

Aug 1, 2021 | 0 Comments

Post #47. The ‘lost art’ of the introductory verse

Enjoy!

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Today I want to talk briefly about the nearly lost art of the introductory verse.

Back in the days of Tin Pan Alley songs - the songs that were in the hit shows on Broadway were also the ones that were the hits on the radio. And everybody would rush out to buy the sheet music, and go home and play it on their piano at home. And it was very common in those days, no matter what the structure of the song itself was (often it would be an AABA song structure but it might be a Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus song structure or an ABAB or any other kind of structure) - but often it was very popular to begin the song with what was called an Introductory Verse.

That Introductory Verse was often four lines or eight lines - could be shorter, could be longer - that did not usually repeat. Occasionally, if you had a really long song, you might have another instance of the introductory verse later that used the same music. But most often it would be just at the very beginning of the song, and that particular musical structure - the rhyme scheme and the melody - would not appear again.

It often tended to be a little more talky, a little bit more like opera’s recitative, than the tune itself. It would have a little bit less rhythmic groove under it. The purpose for it was twofold: It helped transition from dialogue into music, so it didn’t seem quite so abrupt that someone who was talking one moment was singing a song the next moment - it would act as a bit of a buffer. But it also was an opportunity to set up the lyric and contextualize it in a way that can be very interesting.

I don’t by any means think that it’s a requirement for a song to have an introductory verse, but I think it’s certainly worth looking at how an introductory verse can do those things for you, and to consider using it. Often with the popular songs of that day— we no longer remember the verses. For some of them you might remember verses - but generally speaking we remember the structure of the song, and that’s what we’re used to singing, what we’re used to hearing. And we don’t remember how the song was contextualized. And then you happen to hear one of those introductory verses along the way and you think “Huh, that makes me think about that song a little differently.”

That happened to me the other day when I was looking at a particular song and so I wanted to share this with you.

The song itself is an old-fashioned but pretty well-known song that goes like this:

MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE HEART THE HEART YOU SING TO

…and it goes on from there. So it’s a pretty well-known song, and it seems like a fairly simple idea: just make someone happy, make them laugh. And it goes on in that vein, and it’s sweet, and it’s what it is.

The Introductory Verse to that is:

THE SOUND OF APPLAUSE IS DELICIOUS
IT’S A THRILL TO HAVE THE WORLD AT YOUR FEET
THE PRAISE OF THE CROWD, IT’S EXCITING
BUT I’VE LEARNED THAT’S NOT WHAT MAKES A LIFE COMPLETE

THERE’S ONE THING YOU CAN DO FOR THE REST OF YOUR DAYS
THAT’S WORTH MORE THAN APPLAUSE
THE SCREAMING CROWD, THE BOUQUETS….

MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE SOMEONE HAPPY
MAKE JUST ONE HEART THE HEART YOU SING TO

And etc.

What I found really interesting about that is that the song itself feels a bit pat, a bit saccharine, a bit like “oh isn’t it sweet”. But contextualized that way, as if it’s someone who’s a theater person who’s used to applause but has realized that’s not enough, you want more out of life. You want to bring happiness to one individual and make that one person smile, rather than walking out on the stage and getting grand applause from everyone out there.

For me, that suddenly contextualized the lyric of the song tremendously. It made me think about the lyric of the song very differently. And if, for instance, I were going to choose to sing that song in a cabaret act as a standalone piece, I would absolutely sing that verse because I think it would very much change how i interpreted the lyric.

That’s just one example – there are tons and tons of examples - but you get the idea. And so I would encourage you - when you’re sitting down to write a song - to think about the value of writing four, or eight, or however many you think you need, lines in a very different musical style. They tend to be very rubato (follow the voice) - with just some simple chords underneath, and not a lot of rhythm. Your song hasn’t kicked in yet. But you can accomplish a great deal to transition us from dialogue into music, and to contextualize the lyric, so that once we get to it, we are coming at it with a frame of mind, a frame of reference. So that we understand so much more the theme that we are about to get through the lyric.

avoiding feedback: Vlog 44 – TELLING A SHORT STORY

May 1, 2021 | 0 Comments

Post #44. A short discussion on telling a SHORT STORY in musical form.

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What I’d like to do today is chat just a little bit about the short form musical.

At New Musicals Inc, where I work, the people who come into our Core Curriculum (that’s our first year program for writers who are new to us), finish off the year with an assignment to write a 15-minute musical. And there are various other places where there are 10 minute musical contests, and there are other opportunities that would give you a reason to want to write a short musical: 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes. And so I wanted to talk just for a moment about the short form, and how it affects your storytelling.

The biggest issue that I see when people sit down to write a five-minute musical, as opposed to a five-minute play, is that they have a tendency immediately to think about sketch comedy. If you watch a Saturday Night Live sketch, or some other art form like that – you tend to have a little short scene that’s comic and ends with a silly punch line of some kind— so that the whole thing is sort of a joke, which is fun. I think we all love that sort of storytelling sketch comedy, and certainly the short form musical lends itself to comedy.

You don’t only have to go for comedy, but it certainly does lend itself to comedy because it’s tricky to tell a really detailed, robust story in such a short amount of time - although not impossible. So if you know that comedy does sort of reach out to you - and you’re writing a short musical - why not try a comedy? But I would urge you to try to remember that it is NOT sketch comedy. And let me talk to you for a moment about why I think that.

Sketch comedy has a tendency to end with a punch line that is meant to be a joke, and that works great for sketch comedy. The reason I think that doesn’t work well for a musical is because, generally speaking, at the end of a musical you’re going to have some kind of a musical moment. It might be a recap or a reprise of a song that you’ve done earlier in the piece; it might just be a couple of lines; it might be a whole new song; but likely, because it’s a musical, you’re probably going to end with a song.

And I don’t think that you can translate the punch line of sketch comedy into a song or a musical moment. Because by definition a punchline is short, and snappy, and funny, and you get it out of the way and everybody laughs.

A song doesn’t work that way. A song can certainly have laughs in it and can be very funny, and can have a lot going on. It’s even possible you could fashion a song where the very last line of the song is, in essence, a punchline. That would not be impossible. I personally think that would be pretty difficult to do, because the purpose of a song is to tell some kind of a truth, even if it’s a funny truth - to sum up the theme of your show - the journey of your characters. It’s fine if it’s doing it in a very comic way and totally intended to get laughs, but usually a punchline is something sort of unexpected, something that jumps in at the end and changes all of your expectations. And that’s why you laugh at it, because it’s not at all what you expected. And that’s great for sketch comedy – but tricky for musical theater because it’s hard for a song to do that.

Go ahead and prove me wrong! Go ahead and write a song that has a punch line at the end, and where that punch line ties up the story, and makes us feel like we’ve gone on a journey with the characters. I’m sure it’s not impossible, but I would urge you to consider - when you’re writing a short form musical that is intended to be a comedy - to try to get away from the idea of ending it with a punchline, and think about ending it with the culmination of your lead character’s story in a song, which can be funny without a doubt and can even be somewhat unexpected, but my guess is it’s not going to translate directly to a punchline.

Now to add on to that, I do want to encourage you to believe that you can tell a serious story - an extremely serious, heartwarming, important story. Something that really has something important to say. You can do it in 5, 10, or 15 minutes. You have to work a lot harder, I think, to make sure that you get enough depth out of your characters to be able to tell that in the short form, but you can. So there’s no reason to shy away from writing a serious short musical.

But if you’re writing a comic short musical, I beg of you: try to understand the difference between a short musical and a piece of sketch comedy with a punchline.