There is not one way to practice. This is simply one method by which to get better at singing. It’s a method that works. Make sure you understand the principles and apply them in your own way.
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Happy Thanksgiving
Enjoy a new Thanksgiving Carol from Double Click Drama!
Use Pencil, Kids
Every writer has a process that is different. Each has a method that best nourishes a creative environment. Each has a process that works toward refined art. None is right, none is wrong – just different.
My process involves printing out the script single sided and taking time to write notes and other ideas throughout the page. I also enjoy writing full lyrics and musical ideas on the blank sides of the pages. I’m sure I am not the only one who likes the physical act of writing and crossing out and changing. You become comfortable with a document in it’s messiness and flawed organization. Typing a draft (as Meg Bell taught me) is far too final. It already looks polished and ready for print beaming at me from my computer screen when, in fact, I need to cross half of it out and rewrite.
I have been working on a new project and, as you can see in the photo, I took a step back recently. In a strange turn of events whose length of time to explain far outweighs it’s humor, someone else spilled coffee all over my script. Over the past weeks I had just been grabbing whatever pen or pencil I could get my hands on. Unfortunately the red pen didn’t make it.
The loss was tough but, as someone once said, if you can’t remember the lyrics they weren’t very good. So let this then be a lesson to you all: Use pencil. It will not be easily dissolved by the random coffee that is spilled on your script.
Stephen Sondheim – Theatre Lyrics
In 1971 Stephen Sondheim gave a lecture concerning the writing of lyrics. Originally, Sondheim thought it was going to be a Q&A, but when he realized this wasn’t the case he quickly cobbled together his thoughts and what came out has become one of the most poignant discourses on musical theater lyrics. As soon as I learned of it’s existence, I sought out to find a copy for study.
The talk was quickly written down and published in The Dramatists Guild Quarterly in autumn 1973. Finding a copy was difficult for me. Local libraries don’t stock back issues of the journal, and, not being a member, I wasn’t privy to the online content. It was, however, re-published in a 1974 book compiled and edited by Otis L. Guernsey: Playwrights Lyricists Composers On Theater. The local library didn’t have a copy but amazon was able to sell and ship me a used copy for $4 even.
The piece by Sondheim is amazing. I feel like I have learned as much as I would in a semester long class at Pace University. What’s crazy is that his prowess with the lyric is already so apparent even before the output of Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park and Into the Woods.
If you are interested in hearing an abridged recording (not even a third of the content, but still very good) it can be found on the Dramatists Guild Website.
There are many nuggets of joy and simple takeaways in the essay, but I was especially struck by a tidbit that Oscar Hammerstein shared with a young Sondheim many years ago: “Say what you feel, not what other song writers feel”
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