Step One: Get it rolling! (babbling on paper, initial brainstorming, strange squirming and squeaking noises, etc.)
You know the old adage, ‘It’s as easy as 1 – 2 – 3!’?
‘1 – 2 – 3′ is actually only easy, I have discovered, if you can actually get to 1, let alone define what 2 and 3 entail. Take this project, for example. Ok, so a(n utterly insane) person might define the steps of writing a musical as follows:
1. Write Script
2. Edit Script
3. Write Music
4. Edit Music
5. Put Music and Script together
6. Edit Appropriately
7. Become famous!
Someone with a few screws loose, but with a board still quasi-stabily bolted, might note the steps to be:
- Define Characters
- Define Overall Feel/Scene
- Define Intent & Timeline &…
- Write Script
- Re-read script, edit to make certain characters’ ‘voices’ are accurate to speech and mannerisms
- Re-edit script. Consider timing, costume changes, etc. Remove anything extraneous that does not service your intent(s).
- Define musical style(s)
- Well… you get the idea. Hopefully.
And, ok, that might actually work for someone who is real pro or a natural genius. Me? I’ve learned to tie my shoes AND I’ve got the inspiration! Doesn’t that count? What about motivation? REAL motivation? Experience? Knowledge?
Let’s address the easy stuff first.
Knowledge
I have a background in music. I’ll eventually post a bio that explains just what it all entails, and undoubtedly for some of you it’ll serve as a decent, insomnia remedy. (Patience, grasshoppers!) Outside of that, I’ve even been reading on the side, with my attention mostly focused on a strange, if fascinating trio of neuroscience, psychology and music. And? Paying attention to rather riveting, important musicals that currently strike me today, including: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog by Joss Whedon, SouthPark the Movie, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods. (Throw Weird Al into the mix, too; he may not be Broadway-sticky, but each song’s a little dribble of musical theatre genius in every spit glob.)
Experience
Shows: I was, amongst a few other applicable if currently irrelevant stereotypes, a drama geek back in high school. I performed, too, in a few university productions – musical and non-musical. Never said I was good, mind you, but at least I learned a few, essential whatnots and hoohahs. Not specific enough? Ok, so let’s say this: I know what upstaging someone means, how to block movements, what causes actors to begin spouting lines from the 3rd act instead of the 1st, and that sweating in a poorly-lit pit tightly packed at least partially with unwashed heathens below hovering chaos as your conductor attempts to manage two lines of sight at once still somehow manages to give the instrumental performers a super-charged feeling of exhilaration. (I also learned that actors – myself included – hate run-on sentences as much as grammar teachers do, even if it DOES serve a point.)
Writing: I have keenly honed my technical writing to be considered a highly-desired ‘asset’ on a professional level. (Corporations love making you into usable objects, haven’t you noticed? Neat and tidy that way.) Throughout college and into my professional career I proofed papers, letters, and thesiseseseses, moving on up to actual creation and release of official divisional and corporate communications, policies, procedures. Terribly boring. So I can write, right?
Well, sure. Technically… if one refuses to consider that creating a story is another beast entirely, that is. Storywriting? I got 2nd place in Jr. High for some silly Child’s Book competition. I was forced to muddle through and hand in sloppy wordslap for AP English in high school (the works of which were near-ritualistically burned after I returned from college.) And, ok. I’ve done some silly online gaming that required great descriptive writing. Woohoo. Let me just get my white-flag-waving technique down.
Musical Composition: And… well, yeah. Here’s another nut. I composed and arranged some pieces in college, and I created/arranged a piece for a violin-flute duet that we (she knows who she is) performed at church. Throughout this, my first true spark of inspiration hit – not just a ‘hey, yeah, good idea, zzzzzzzzz’ experience either. I finally knew something that I wanted to do before I kicked the bucket: I wanted to create a musical. I started working at a dentist office, instead.
Motivation vs. REAL Motivation: For me this was, quite seriously, a 4-year-long ordeal, which erupted unexpectedly into Finis on December 29th, 2008 as I splooged brain waves into the computer at 100 wpm. But back to the ordeal…
Inspiration and motivation? I used to think it went hand in hand. But then, I also felt (not thought, mind you, but felt) that motivation was talking about it, feeling it. SURPRISE! Yeah, I know… I’ve always been late on the uptake, and this was no exception. Quite literally I spent three years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days sporadically spinning a general idea with abnormal particulars through my noggin. (Yes, it began New Year’s Day 2004. Momentous moments shouldn’t happen in cliche fashion.) I even stylized it solidly after my horrible, prolonged, self-mutilating employment at The Dentist Office, or at least the setting. Believe you me the caricatures I could create with words and tunes! And so I stubbornly clung to the emotion, the vague idea, hoping some sort of plot, arching theme, ideas for antagonists and resolutions and… well, hoping it’d just *pop* into my head and whahlah! My musical is a masterpiece! (Some day I will invent a magic wand, and it will give me a puppy.)
December 29th totally burst into something altogether new. Something I am (they say freakishly) passionate about. Something which forces my family and friends and co-workers to arch brows and whisper when they think I’m distracted. The feeling, drive, and concepts were all the same. The context, however, shifted completely. It finally formed into something I could make, something that wouldn’t be cloddish, or formulaic, or expected – all of which I vehemently abhor in authored or composed works.
And I finally got it rolling.
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