How to Write a Musical or alternatively, How to Let a Musical Write You.

May 8

May 8 How to Write a Musical or alternatively, How to Let a Musical Write You.

Last April, I did the impossible. I wrote, scored, and directed a two hour long musical about the Homestuck ancestors, titled Time’s Apprentice. It follows the Handmaid, who has been renamed Mara (a play on Damara, as well as the hebrew word for ‘bitter’), as she jumps through the timeline, affecting the lives of the other ancestors at the will of the God of Time (Doc Scratch). As the show progresses, she becomes entwined in the lives of the people she is manipulating, and becomes aware of her own abuse at the hands of the Time God along the way. In short, it’s a show about revolution, oppression, and time travel.

The full show took about two and a half years to write and produce, and the majority of that time was spent writing down lyrics in my phone’s notepad while travelling or in the margins of my homework when I was supposed to be paying attention in class. Most of the dialogue and lyrics were actually written while walking through the streets of Vienna during my semester abroad. Mindless transit is an excellent way to spark ideas for any project and banter out scenes in your head before writing anything down.

I could talk for hours about any one of the Time’s Apprentice tracks, but I’d like to narrow in on one number, “Where I stand.” This short song is performed by Redglare (renamed Theresa, a play on Terezi) right before she goes off to apprehend Mindfang. The idea for this song came to me when I was walking home one night, thinking about Redglare as one does, and the line “I’m not gonna stop until they tear me down where I stand” popped into my head.

Now at this point I hadn’t written anything for Theresa’s character. She was actually one of the hardest to pin down, and her first song “Work” was the last song in the show to get lyrics. This line, however, ended up shaping her entire musical arc. The only problem was that the melisma on “Stand” made it feel like it belonged in a reprise. So that’s what it became, a reprise to “Work.”

I often say when I talk about my compositions that once I have lyrics, the piece writes itself, and that was definitely the case here. For me, at least, there’s a very clear progression from lyrics to chords to full orchestration, and once I have lyrics that inspire me, the little music machine in my head takes over and the piece basically writes itself. The hardest part, for some songs at least, was figuring out how to best get my ideas onto the sheet music in a performable, replicable way

After a couple days of bouncing different lyrics around and asking my friends what they thought best rhymed with “down,” I settled on this:

Although justice can be hard to be found

I’m not gonna stop until they tear me down

Where I stand

So we’ll just work night and day

To help pave the way

For freedom

For justice

We know that we can tear her to the ground

“Look out captain, you’re going down!”

Some of those lines were inspired by the skeleton of ideas I had for “Work” at the time, but the majority grew out of the phrase I thought of spontaneously. Now when I write lyrics, I’m not just writing words. There is almost always a tune that comes along with it, and if not an exact tune, then a rhythm and a loose melodic contour at the very least. With this, I’m ready to move on to the next step: a lead sheet.

Every tonal melody out there has implied harmony built in. If you’re given a tune and have a basic knowledge of chord function, there’s a good chance you can guess what chords are supposed to go with it. However, there is always some room for experimentation, and that’s what step two consists of. The majority of the Time’s Apprentice numbers, this one included, were written in the practice rooms at Ithaca College while I was avoiding practicing for piano lessons. Nothing drives me to write a song more than sitting at a piano when I really don’t want to practice. The piano is right there, might as well have some fun with it. After some fiddling with the chords, I came up with this:

The problem with a lead sheet like this is that they don’t always convey the final emotion of the number. This one isn’t too bad, it’s a simple enough song that just piano and voice is enough to tell the story I’m trying to tell, but other numbers didn’t sound too good at this stage. A few months before I started rehearsals for Time’s Apprentice, I had a workshop where some actors read through the script and I presented what I had when it came to the score. One note I got at the end that was super surprising was that some of the actors didn’t like the song “Open Seas,” one of the funniest and most energetic songs in the show. That energy was completely gone without the horn section, driving bassline, and full chorus to back up the melodic line though, which brings us to the third step: orchestration.

When I started working on Time’s Apprentice, I knew the specific palate of instruments I wanted to use for the final orchestration. My initial idea, which sort of made it to the end, was that each character would have a different musical style that would carry throughout, and the pit I chose would be able to carry all of those styles. The horn section and upright bass would carry the jazz stylings of the Time God, while the violin and piano could cover Rosa’s more classical voice. Theresa was not one of the characters with a super specified style beyond “contemporary musical theater,” so I could really use that spread of instruments to do whatever I wanted in “Where I Stand.”

I’m a saxophone player, so one of my first thoughts when I need to write something with energy and drive to it is to add a horn section. Beginning “Where I Stand” with brass hits and loud piano block chords just felt natural. The orchestration stage is where I can really flesh out the full depth of the sound, as well as figure out rhythms, countermelodies, and instrumental sections like vamps. This gives me a chance to sneak in motifs from other songs in the show, whether they be familiar instrumental motifs, or something from a vocal line that I repurpose into an instrumental line. This is what I do with the background music during the dialogue break. The two vocal lines sung by the ensemble during “Work” are repurposed into the piano and trumpet lines respectively.

Once the physical score-writing is done, I move on to the polished demo. This number doesn’t have too many starkly varied voices, since it’s primarily Theresa with a couple of generic ensemble voices at the end, but on songs such as “Open Seas” or “Save Her”, I take extra care to differ each of the characters’ vocal styles. Theresa’s voice is bright and straightforward, which exemplifies her optimism and makes her high belted melisma easier to reach. This makes her voice stand out in comparison to Mara, who I give a deeper tone with more swallowed vowels and harsher consonants. Even ensemble voices get different vocal styles, to make sure large ensemble numbers really sound like a crowd of more than just me (their vocal styles are dictated by their assigned blood color. The ensemble voice assigned Olive is cute and bright while the voice assigned Jade is dark and chesty). During the recording process I simply go line by line, recording the harmonies I wrote during the orchestration stage for each character or ensemble voice part. I’m not too well versed in mixing, so all I generally do in that realm is slap a generic “natural vocals” patch on the recordings, balance the volumes a bit, and maybe tune the high notes up a tiny bit, since my alto ass has a tendency to go flat on high notes.

At this point the composing process is finished. For some composers, this would be the stopping point, where the music would be handed off to an experienced director and capable set of performers. That’s not the case here, because I’m crazy and insist on doing everything myself. Once the majority of the music for Time’s Apprentice was written (I say majority because I was most definitely still working on orchestrations up until tech week), I put out a casting call and managed to convince thirteen unsuspecting college students to be in a Homestuck musical. Only one person in the whole cast, my little sister whose brilliant death scream got her cast as the Signless, knew anything of the original source material. I wrote the show to be enjoyed by homestucks and non-homestucks alike, so it was important to me that my cast could get engrossed in their characters without knowing what the show was based on.

The staging for the full show was very simple. I didn’t have access to a real stage, only a rehearsal hall with pipe and drape curtains, so my set was incredibly minimal: nothing but a fake plant, a soapbox, and some chairs. For “Where I Stand,” the main part of the scene is simply a dialogue between Mara and Theresa. However, I still needed to make it clear that it was taking place in Theresa’s office as a government investigator, so I made sure to block ensemble members carrying stacks of papers across the stage, or groups of background characters chatting by an invisible water cooler. Aside from that, however, my direction wasn’t super extensive. I have no actual training in theater, so for most of the production process I was really winging it, and depending a lot on my actors. And they really did deliver. Theresa was performed by Miriam Goldstein, the same person who voices Theresa in the official demo of “Work” on my channel, and her expertise more than made up for my lack of directing experience. The final form of “Where I Stand” from the live production in April, including the full scene with dialogue, looks like this, skip to 1:14:40:

Writing and producing Time’s Apprentice was an insane experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I learned so much about script writing, lyrics, musical theater orchestration, and honestly, I learned that writing musicals is something I want to do with my life. This is what is so special about Homestuck. It is such an intense well of creative potential that it drives people to make their own epics and discover what they love creating best. There is no other fan community that could have given me the idea to take an insignificant plotline that doesn’t even take up 50 pages in this behemoth of a comic, and blow it up into something that stands on its own. Homestuck is a work that translates really well to live theater, what with all the fourth wall breaking and the act structure built into the comic itself, so if any of you have ever had an idea for a different Homestuck musical, I say jump on that idea. The comic is enormous. I did all this with just one insignificant plotline, imagine what other fans can do with the rest of the story.