Travis Conrad

MUSIC UPDATED: July 20th, ‘09

So I’m working ever diligently on the Dysfunction Septet and I’m extremely satisfied with how it’s coming along. Looking back at my past work I concluded that I do better work when I write for multiple instruments rather than just piano, so with that in mind I’m writing the Dysfunction Septet for piano and violin so far, possibly adding more as I feel the need. I’m thinking I might throw in a double bass or cello, but we’ll see. We shall see.

In general though, this song is so much fun to write. Tonnes of emotion upwelling with every line, characters are pissed, nerves are raw, it’s awesome. The song was inspired by the Tonight Quintet in Westside Story (the name is a major nod to it). The way that the Quintet elevated tension and brought all the different plot lines up to speed in WSS worked so well that I thought a similar format would be perfect for the scene in Dysfunction. The Septet is going to contain a handful of melodies that weave in and out of depending on the characters on stage, but all of them sing the Septet melody at some point. It’s going to be legendary.

The song opens with Cam, Peter and Ryan at their office, with Cam debating what to do about Charlotte, and he’s singing a very flat and monotone version of the Voicemail refrain. The ending of that grows dramatically and then Pete and Ryan get on his case about being stupid for giving up. It’s here that we hear the Septet melody for the first time. The melody is sung over this awesome chord (which you’ll hear in the clip below) composed of D#, E and G#. It’s an inverted major 7th chord without the fifth. Very jarring and dissonant. After that (which is where the clip ends) the scene switches to a brief solo with Cam, then over to Kim, Natalie and Justin for a brief spell, followed by an intense duet with Kim and Cam, that quickly grows more complicated and dysfunctional. And then, well, then we have the 7th person in our Septet. And it’s fracking awesome.

Just the music for the first little bit. Let me know what you think.

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Off to Mom’s to introduce her to the amazing show that is Brothers and Sisters.

-Travis Conrad

So, it’s about that time again…

That’s right, I have another new workout routine. Let’s see how long this one lasts. The previous one survived, what, three months? Probably less. ANYWAY!

Here’s the skinny. Follow along closely children.
1. I set three alarms on my phone. Each alarm should be a good 4-6 hours apart depending on your daily routine. I chose 9:30 AM, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM.

2. When each alarm goes off, my phone says “20 push-ups”. And so (obviously) I do 20 push-ups. I can adjust the alarm to tell me to do less or more depending on how it goes.

3. The alarms go off every-day. Naturally there will be times when I can’t do it (like if I’m working) but for the most part if my phone tells me to do something I do it.

4. Depending on how the muscle groups react, I might switch one of the alarms to tell me to do something else (like bicycle crunches).

I think this idea is brilliant (naturally) for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s low impact but not LOW impact. There’s constant use everyday so it’s more of a gradual break-down rather than a huge wearing out at the gym. I chose push-ups because they work a wide variety of muscles (pecs, bi-ceps, tri-ceps, abs). Secondly, it can be easily adjusted if it ends up being too strenuous or not strenuous enough. And thirdly it’s all automated. I don’t have to worry about forgetting or slacking.

So, wish me luck! We’ll see how this goes. I’ll keep you posted if it ends up working.

In other news, I’ve been tweaking my rendition of O Canada for string quartet over the past couple days and accordingly updating the mp3 file in the previous post every time. I added a short 4 bar intro which I feel really adds a lot. Also, my good double-bass playing friend Dan Wheeler who’s in music at Western gave me some constructive criticism on the piece which made sense to me, so accordingly I broke up the constant motion of 8th notes by throwing in some 16th notes which help keep it exciting and less droning. I really appreciate good criticism, as long as it is constructive and not just someone trying to be a douche. If you don’t like something, say why. And if it’s just because you don’t like the style, then say that, but even if you don’t like it, you can still comment on the quality and form. That’s why I’m so lucky I have the friends I do, cause they get that.

I finished A Voicemail, Charlotte’s big solo number after her second run in with Kim. I’m about 97% satisfied with it. 1% is for the intro which needs more work and the 2% is for part of the verse music which I want to fiddle around with just a little bit. I really hope one of my leads on a female singer comes through soon to help me record it, so if you know anyone in London that might be interested, tell them to give me a shout.

-Travis Conrad

The eleventh song of the musical is now finished! And what an emotional ride it’s been (musical speaking anyway). The song’s called Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan, and it involves Kim, Justin and Natalie plotting a way to break up Cam and his new girl, as well as them just ranting about guys in general. It’s a very busy song, and it has to be since it’s so far into the musical.

The songs that make up the middle chunk of the musical (After Dinner with Kim, After Dinner with Cam, Charlotte’s Monologue and So Much) are mostly slower songs, especially So Much, and while slow songs are important, too many of them can make a musical seem to drag on. Now that we’re in the second half of the musical, shit is hitting the fan and the audience needs to get stimulated with punchy melodies and exciting tempos.

The pattern in the first bar below (Quarter note/Eighth note/Quarter note/Eighth note/Quarter note) is repeated throughout the song, and if you can pick it out, you’ll see how it has an exciting effect to it. Also, if you notice the bass notes in the third bar, they follow the same pattern (Quarter/Eighth/Quarter/Eighth/Quarter). The punchiness of it is just freakin’ awesome and I’m thrilled with how I wove it in throughout the song.

Tempo and Melody example. Note the staccato used for extra punchiness

Another thing I should note about this song is the segment about three quarters in. I switched the playback instrument to a celesta to help me visualize (figuratively, of course) the sound better. I wanted that part to have a sinister yet haunting feel to it, something I couldn’t manage quite right with just a piano. Kim is pissed to the high hells and she’s not fooling around here, and I imagined her as like a witch in the forest. She’s planning revenge on the obstacles in her path, the key word here being planning. That’s one of Kim’s defining features, her ability to plan and problem solve, and this part of the song is meant to show how serious she takes the whole thing. Sure sometimes her foresight is utter shit, but her planning skills are always top notch. She knows what she wants and she plans a way to get it, that’s what Kim does, that’s who she is, and that’s why the celesta part works so well, because it’s so serious and dark that you know she’s not messing around.

I’m pretty pleased with the lyrics here. There’s one line I still need to rephrase, but other than that  I think most lines are bang on. The great thing about collaborating with someone is you get a second opinion, and you know it’s going to be earnest. Sean (the playwright) wants this to succeed as much as I do, and so I know he’s not going to sugar-coat his constructive criticisms like friends would, just like I in turn did with the script. He pointed out the line that I’m going to rephrase because he said it was confusing/unclear, and after a strenuous amount of effort on both our parts I came to understand what he meant. The outcome: a better song.

11. Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan

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Kim:

I’ve tried lying. And persuasion. I even tried TRUTH on a desperate occasion.
I’m not just gonna sit here and daunt.
I’m Kimberly Young and I get what I want!

Justin and Natalie:

What’s the plan Kim? What’s the plan?
How are you gonna get back your man?

Kim:

She doesn’t know who she’s messin’ with so I’ll have to teach her a lesson.
And keep her guessin’.
She doesn’t know the one thing you can count on men to do.

Send me your feedback if you love me! Gotta go! Desperate Housewives is on.

-Travis Conrad

Guess who just finished a song for a musical called Dysfunction? Wow. That was lame. I’m far too lazy and tired right now to delete it though and think of something wittier to write. Moving on….

I finished the song entitled Kim tonight, after several weeks of tweaking and hammering and fiddling with chords and rhymes and designers name. I’m pretty happy with the final product. The song started out as a 3/4 waltz, then spent some time as a 6/8 waltz, experimented briefly in 5/4 time (that was messy) and finally settled down in 4/4 common time BUT with a mean tango-esque rhythm. This is the first song where I’ve actually written the music independent from the vocals. Everything else I’ve done has been mostly derived from the vocals, something I’ve been wanting to get away from, and this time it just worked out really well. I can imagine this arranged for some heavy strings with a piano playing the upbeat sections, maybe even with a little snare drum too. Oh yes, a snare drum would be exquisite.

This song features Kim (Cameron’s ex-girlfriend) and her two best friends Justin and Natalie. This is where Justin really gets a chance to shine, granted that the actor playing him can act AND sing at the same time. If he can’t, well, then it’s just going to feel dark and out of place. Halfway through Kim takes over, and at the end she has a little reflection moment alone. The melody shifts notes but the beat stays the same and I think the effect turned out sharp, although I’m still finding sometimes I’ll write some music and it turns out different from what I envision but still awesome. There’s also the first couple lyrics included below. Let me know what you think!

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J: First we’ll get you out of the dumps.

K: I’m not in the dumps!

N: It looks like you are.

J: We’ll get you back in your Gucci pumps.

K: Okay, fine, I’m in.

N: You’ll look like a star!

J: Rather than looking like Courtney Love, you’ll be our Kim who’s worthy of the dresses and purses from Guess and Lacoste that you’d die if you lost!

Hehehehehe, yes, the whole song is like that. I tried my best here to emulate the banter and one-liners Sean’s written for the characters in the script. And I like it cause they’re not HAHA one-liners, but rather aha or hoho.

No word back on the job interview yet, but here’s hoping. Tomorrow I start on Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan. Yes I’m aware most song names don’t have colons in them but I’M THE GOD-DAMNED COMPOSER, I’LL NAME MY SONG Albatross ^_^: 81[The Final Seabird] IF I WANT TO…. ok that looks a little bad, convention and I are really getting along at the moment. Gotta go make pasta k bye!

-Travis Conrad the Maladjusted? lol. Malnourished maybe.

Aha, February is upon us. FINALLY. The last of month of what I consider Canadian winter is also (thank god) the shortest, and so before we know it March will be here and we’ll be living in a world of slush. Wait, what’s so good about that….. Anyway, I realized most of you probably feel neglected so I made myself a delicious citrusy cup of Coronation Street Green tea and decided to write a new blog post.

A couple days ago I wrapped up what is more or less Dysfunction’s love song, mind you the song isn’t about love at all. Budding romance would be a more fitting term I suppose. It’s called So Much, and it comes immediately after Charlotte’s Monologue. It’s a song about fresh romance and possibility, “So much to see, and so much to do”.

I’m really happy with the music for it, it’s easily my favourite song so far (which is saying a lot). After this my favourite is probably Charlotte My Dear Love (forget it) Confident you know what, I don’t think I can choose. This means Dysfunction is ALL-MOST-DONE. Be excited. There’s not much left at all (hence the title of this post).

So here it is, just with piano. Instead of the normal synth voices I used synth strings to do the vocal notes, I think it sounds better in the this case.

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- Travis Conrad

Before tossing up the latest Dysfunction song to your collective, judging, unworthy ears, it’s important to understand the scenario surrounding the song.

1. It’s sung by a girl, Charlotte. Relatively quiet, passive, scholarly Charlotte.
2. She’s just been asked on out a real date from a guy, Cameron, whom she’s met twice now: once in his office, once at a business meeting over dinner.
3. She doesn’t have a wide account of experience in the world of dating. And nearly not as much as, say, Kim (in fact I doubt there are many people alive that have as much experience as Kim, porn stars omitted).
4. This is song takes place in her head. It’s an internal debate.

Below the song I’ve posted the first couple lines so you can read along with the synth vocal notes if you like (also will help give you an idea of the rhyme scheme). The lyrics are broken up into syl-ab-les to aid in following the vocals correctly if’n you so choose. I’d include all the lyrics but I really don’t want to give it all away like your girlfriend on the first date OH BURN!

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Damn-it Came-ron why would you,
ask me that,
for-cing me to pick an an-swer, when there are few op-tions on de-mand.

Things were go-ing pret-ty well.
Now this chat
has gone to hell. It’s a can-cer when you can’t dwell on the stakes at hand.

Peo-ple can’t leave things a-lone,
when they’re fine.
If I had known this was com-ing, I’d have post-poned walk-ing home with him.

But it’s too late to go back,
so de-cline,
or stay on track with this hum-ming train down tar-mac. Both op-tions seem dim.

On the one hand we have yes.
Rush-ing in’s
not bad I guess if you’re cau-tious and you a-ssess the sit-u-a-tion.

On the o-ther we have no.
It be-gins,
when I say so, and this nau-seous feel-ing is grow- ing. I want to run.

</lyrics>
<continue reading without lyrics for the remaining 55 seconds of the song :] >

I know what you’re about to say. “But Travis, that last chord sounds all wrong. What kind of second rate Vaudeville composer are you?” Fear not! There is reason. That chord was Charlotte’s clarity. She’s made her decision, her thoughts are clear. That final chord is meant to up-lift and remove the gloom and disorder that’s been building up over the course of the song. It ushers the way into the song following immediately after. hu-ZAH!

Next up I am pleased to announce a new, much more realistic rendering of the Festal Waltz that I posted just over a month ago. I convert it from midi to mp3 using a site called HamieNET. It gets the job done but it’s certainly nothing near commercial quality. Using a friend’s copy of Garageband, I converted my sheet music to mp3 once again. The results are unparalleled. UN-FREAKING-PARALELLED. It’s fantastic, I’m so pleased. I can’t wait to acquire my own mac so I’ll have this incredibly tool at my disposal 24/7/365/152 (I think 152 more years is pretty reasonable when you take into consideration the advances that are going on with stem cell research).

Feast upon the new and improved rendition. I cannot wait til I’m in a position to hear it being played for realsies.

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*note: the celesta’s been replaced by a glockenspiel as was the original intention. I apologize for any sleep you might lose/any grief this decision has caused you.

*also note: just a reminder that all mp3 files and images are on this website are Copyright © 2008-2009 Travis Conrad Reichstein

-Travis Conrad PEACIN’ OUT!

So I’m working on a musical called Dysfunction with my good friend Sean Kelly. He’s written the book (script) and I’m finishing up the songs. It’s a great story we envisioned about a break-up, and how each person deals with it. The show opens with guy (Cameron) and girl (Kimberly) after a year of dating, which is briefly summarized in a song (Friendship). The song also reveals the bonds between Kim and Cam and their best friends, Natalie and Jusin, and Peter and Ryan respectively. We learn that while Cam is still tits deep in love, Kim is getting bored. Needless to say, the break-up. Cam grieves, Kim parties, both try to move, yadda yadda yadda we introduce Charlotte, who hires Cam’s advertising firm for a project she’s working on. Things happen, events occur, scenarios transpire. It’s an awesome story that gives an adult view on what happens post-love.

Well we came up with the idea in November (I think) 2007, so shortly over a year ago, but at the time I knew next to nothing about writing music. Cart before the horse right? So I took a couple months to learn the craft of song writing. I read through several books on musical theatre, Sondheim’s biography, and a very useful book who’s name eludes me at the moment about orchestrating. I also did a good deal of studying songs themselves, just sitting down and listening. That was probably the most useful thing I could have done. Simply from studying songs I learned to identify the different instruments and percussion in a song, discern the time signature, pick out repeating parts. I learned more just from that than I did from any book. I was ready to rock and roll (and by rock and roll I mean maturely compose subtextful lyrics and professional music).

So we had our story fleshed out, picked out where songs should go and Sean had just finished the script. From about April til June I worked on the lyrics and structure of each song. Lyrics to me are the easy part. Conversation has a natural rhythm and I find sentences flow nicely into song. From there I can build and tweak, but I always need the lyrics done first. There were 14 songs, 10 speaking parts, and a whole new frontier just waiting for me.

Music, it turns out, is slightly more difficult than lyrics. There I sat, with a stack of blueprints, baffled. I’d attempt to start transcribing the vocals in my head into notes on paper. H-A-R-D. Clearly I was more unprepared then I thought, this wasn’t nearly as easy as writing the lyrics. But I kept at it like a dog humping a leg; some days I was the dog, some days I was the leg. I’d scrap half a weeks worth of work and start fresh if I wasn’t happy with it. I kept re-writing parts until they were perfect. Once I had the vocal notes, the music kinda came naturally. From my studying I knew simply having the music accompany the notes was a major faux pas; music had to accent and comment on the lyrics, not echo them. For some reason though, I couldn’t envision the first song just on piano. I tried but it always sounded dull and boring. Everything I read involved songwriters writing for piano first, and then having it orchestrated second, but that wasn’t working for me. So I added in some more instruments (violin, cello, double bass and a glockenspiel) and gave it another try. Success! Like magic the music began writing itself, and every artist will tell you that if a project starts writing itself then you’re on the right track.

Well, that’s the story about the first song I wrote for Dysfunction, called Charlotte My dear. The song is humourous in nature, and is sung by Kim, to Charlotte, in a public bathroom. Dispite me calling it humourous, it’s meant to be sung seriously and the music reflects that. For me, the humour arises in the context of what’s going on, not out of punch lines and jokes and funny rhymes. It has a brief opening where Kim and Charlotte are talking, so I mostly used pizzicato strings to build up some tension. I really do love the sound of pizzicato, always have. I’m still working on recording a version with the lyrics being sung, so unfortunately all you’re getting here is the synth generated song with a synthetic vocal track singing the notes. But that just means you can focus more on the music itself if you’re an optimistic loser such as myself.

I think that should be enough introduction. If you actually read all that, KUDOS TO YOU. 10 points for Hufflepuff!

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-Travis Conrad

Now that a couple a good chunk of the songs are finished, I decided to start working on the opening music for the show. What some people might refer to as the overture. Big words, big words, yes I know.

There’s a little over a minute so far, mostly I’m just trying to sketch out placement of motifs and development of the number. I’ve always found overtures to command a high level of attention from me. They are the introduction of everything that’s to come. They can foreshadow emotional movements in the plot, plant seeds that will linger throughout the piece and give your audience a little taste of the buffet you intend to serve them later on.

I opened with the backbone music from Love on piano accompanied by light pizzicato strings, and from there it grows. The Love theme is a major reoccurring element in Dysfunction, each time offering up new lyrics to show the developments going on inside the characters’ heads.

Let me know what you think, feedback’s always appreciated.

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-Travis Conrad