Travis Conrad

A couple days ago I had a meeting with Canadian Playwright Dave Carley, he’s also the writer in residence for the London Public Library. He answered a great deal of questions I had concerning the process of getting Dysfunction put up at a theatre. As a result of his encouraging and thoroughly helpful advice, I have renewed vigor with finishing up these last couple songs. I feel like I could fucking climb Olympus. Drunk with inspiration. It’s awesome.

I’m currently waist deep in the closest thing Dysfunction has to love song, called So Much. I’m very happy with the direction this song is taking. The opening/transition from Charlotte’s Inner Monologue is going to take some work, but the rest of it is coming along beautifully. I’m pulled to the edge of tears as I’m working on it, though I must be careful; it’s all too easy to let the music over-power the lyrics, and that’s an amateur mistake that as an amateur I’m likely to make. BUT as a self-aware amateur I think I’ve nipped it in the bud.

So since I don’t have anything of my own to readily put on display, I’m making a post about my favourite Sondheim songs, categorized by musical.

A Little Night Music

Favourite song: The Glamorous Life

The lyrics are absolutely brilliant. Flawless and creative rhymes. The music is a thing of beauty, and the song has a deep sub-textual element. If you listen you’ll pick up on her jealousy of the children with ordinary mothers. It’s a nearly perfect piece.

Second favourite song: Now/Soon/Later

Now is definitely my favourite song out of the three here, it has some intense rhymes that are boggling in complexity (the song starts 2:30 into the video). I’m not overly fond of Soon, but Later is right up there again in awesomeness. It was a close call between this song and Weekend in the Country, but I just couldn’t not put this song up here.

Sweeney Todd

Favourite song: God That’s Good

It’s catchy as hell and I love the rhyme scheme used (eat pies/meat pies/treat pies, also one for the gentleman/none for the gentleman/run for the gentleman). I also love the chorus of customers, you just don’t get stuff like this very often, so when you do you should cherish it and grip it so hard they have to pry it out of your cold dead hands. Lastly, THROW THE OLD WOMAN OUT!
(Also, mmmm Neil Patrick Harris)

Second favourite song: Kiss Me

This song make good use of counterpoint. I hope to be able to write like this someday. For those who don’t know, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm, and interdependent in harmony (Johanna’s frantic worried melody, and Anthony’s calmer melody). Also, Johanna’s lyric “I’m a silly little ninnydoodle.” and Anthony’s lyric “It’s not a gate, there’s no gate, you don’t have a gate!” are amazing in every sense of the word.

Into the Woods

Favourite song: Children Will Listen

This is my second favourite finale out of any show I’ve ever seen. Frankly, most finales aren’t very good. A show has to leave a good final impression, if it leaves audiences feeling robbed of proper closure, they’re not going to spread a good word. What I like about Children Will Listen is that it covers the lessons learned throughout the show, it has a warm opening, a hasty middle and an excited ending. The staging is a little messy but admittedly it’s a difficult song to stage.

Second favourite song: Ever After

Ever After has an undescribeable quality to it. It has great lyrics, a swift melody, but it’s so much more. I couldn’t find a good version of just it on youtube, so the link is the preview from the 2002 Tony Awards. Ever After is the song 1:50 in.

Company

Favourite song: Being Alive

Ugh. Perrrrrrrfeection. Sweet perfection. Ugh. This is by far the most brilliant closing to any show I’ve ever seen. This song has it all. And when sung by someone as powerful as Raul Esparza it’s simply uncompareable in it’s brilliance.

Second favourite song: (Not) Getting Married Today

The song starts of dry for the first couple lines, but once Amy opens her mouth it’s pure gold. Finally when she loses it and goes on her big long rant, it’s awesome. So awesome. Company is just awesome. Are you starting to see why I like Sondheim so much?

Sunday in the Park with George

Favourite song: Colour and Light

Sunday in the Park with George is so often over-looked. Sure it’s not the most conventional of musicals, but that’s why we love Sondheim. Colour and Light (well, Color and Light I guess technically, but that just looks so wrong), won my heart instantly. The catchy background refrain that seems never ending simulating George’s painting process, it’s perfect, especially if you’ve ever actually done pointillism. The other part of this song that really speaks to me (sings to me?) is George’s dedication to his art, it’s something I admire and wish I could emulate.

Second favourite song: Putting it Together

For starters, Mandy Patinkin is one crazy mofo. I admire his quirkiness as an actor. He really outdid himself in this role and really does this song justice. Sondheim’s longer rhymes in this one (configuration, foundation) roll off the tongue crisply. It made a nice theme for the song to have those fuller rhymes.

-Travis Conrad

I was fooling around with, wait that sounds kinda dirty, let me rephrase that taking pictures with my camera the other day and snapped up a good picture of my desk, thought I would share my workspace with you. I thought it looked lovely anyway.

You can see my monitor and laptop set up. The laptop is closed here, precious little Acer One, innit so damn cute! Also in this picture; my beloved Santa hat and some painting, for lack of a better word, stuff.

As I’ve said, I’m doing a set of paintings for people for Christmas, and for the biggest one I’m using a technique very similar to pointillism. With traditional pointillism, only basic colours are used, and the eye is meant to blend them which is suppose to make a more brilliant secondary colour. For this painting however, I’m using a wide selection of shades and colours. The main reason is this is my first attempt at using dots instead of strokes, and I had some doubt about whether or not I could successfully pull off the effect. It’s turning out great so far, I’m really happy with it. I’ll upload a picture of it once I’m finished (don’t want to ruin the Christmas surprise).

I’ve taken a couple photos of one very small section of the picture after each layer of colour was added, just so you can get an idea about how the technique is pulled off. Actually apparently the server doesn’t want to upload the pictures right now, so that will have to wait. HRMPH!

Lastly I heard this amazing song at a Sondheim Cabaret that the UWO Music department put on a couple weeks ago. It’s called The Glamorous Life and it’s from A Little Night Music. The girl singing it is the daughter of a famous actress, it’s really rich and a brilliant example of how Sondheim gets into the heads of the characters he writes for. Here’s a clip of Audra McDonald singing it. Breath-taking. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Ordinary mothers lead ordinary lives,
mop the floors and chop the parsley,
mend the clothes and tend the children.
Ordinary mothers, like ordinary wives,
make the beds and bake the pies and wither on the vine.
Not mine!

Dying by inches, every night, what a glamorous life!
Pulled on by winches, to recite, what a glamorous life!
Ordinary mothers never get the flowers, and
Ordinary mothers never know the joys,
But ordinary mothers couldn’t cough for hours
maintaining their poise.

Sandwiches only, but she eats what she wants when she wants
Sometimes it’s lonely but she meets many handsome gallants
Ordinary mothers don’t live out of cases,
but ordinary mothers don’t go different places,
which ordinary mothers can’t do, being mothers all day.
Mine’s away in a play, and she’s realer than they.

What if her broach is only glass, and her costumes unravel?
What if her coach is second class, she at least gets to travel.
And sometime this summer, meaning soon, she’ll come traveling to me!
Sometime this summer, maybe June, I’m the new place she’ll see!

Ordinary daughters may think life is better
with ordinary mothers near them when they choose,
But ordinary daughters seldom get a letter
enclosing reviews.

Gay and resilient, with applause, what a glamorous life!
Speeches are brilliant, if they’re Shauss, what a glamorous life!

Ordinary mothers needn’t meet committees,
but ordinary mothers don’t get keys to cities
Ordinary mothers merely see their children all year,
which is lovely, I hear,
But it does interfere with the glamorous . . .

I am the princess guarded by dragons,
snorting and grumbling and rumbling in wagons.
She’s in her kingdom wearing disguises,
living a life that’s full of surprises.
And sometime this summer, she’ll come galloping over the green.
Sometime this summer, to my rescue, my mother the queen!

Ordinary mothers thrive on being private,
but ordinary mothers somehow, can survive it.
And ordinary mothers never know they’re just standing still,
with the kettles to fill,
While they’re missing the thrill
of the glamorous life.

I fucking loves his rhymes. They roll off the tongue like Sondheim lyrics off the tongue. Wait a minute…………..

Aaaaaaaand anyway it’s 1:11 AM. Great. I have 5 paintings to finish in the next 48 hours (2 are almost done, 1 is about fifty percent and 2 have yet to be started). Why do I do these things to myself? OH RIGHT! Because I’m crazy.

Hope your holiday season is going smoothly!

-Travis Conrad

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!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-Travis Conrad