The Music of Untameable:Â âWhen No One Is Watchingâ
Welcome to the first entry in my series discussing the compositional process for the music of Untameable, a play written by Daria Marinelli and directed by Elana McKernan. The score of Untameable was produced concurrently with the rehearsal and choreographing of the play, which allowed me to make adjustments each week based on the logistical and emotional demands of each scene. It was a highly rewarding collaborative process, one that I hope to repeat sometime soon.
The general evolution of each piece began with a 'rhythmic cue' that I would lie out, consisting of the estimated duration, tempo, and meter for the piece, upon which I would then build the melodic, harmonic and textural content. Some of the pieces scantly changed over the course of four weeks, while others were altogether scrapped and rebuilt. This month I'm returning to the music in order to remix some of the pieces to my satisfaction (it was a hasty process) and extend others, in order to expand on compositional ideas I had that didn't work within the context of the play.
Writing such a large (for me) volume of music so quickly was an extremely instructive process, and my hope in constructing these blog posts is to expound on how my influences work their way into my sonic palette ("imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...") and illuminate how a piece of music can change over time because process is so important to me as an artist. Each piece will be made downloadable until the next blog post in the series.
I'd like to begin with one of my favorite cues from the show; the scene is a food fight between a prince and a queen.Â
I needed to allow time for the king and queen to slowly enter the banquet hall and then promptly dismiss civility and engage in a child's version of war. I'm a huge fan of Steve Reich; one of my favorite pieces of his is Tehillim. I knew that was the textural palette I wanted to reach for to create a dance piece that balanced lightness and regality. I didn't land near what I set out for but... that's part of the fun of composing!
Like many minimalist or contemporary composers, I'm drawn to danceable rhythms in unconventional meters. I produced this rhythmic cue; the introduction was originally intended to be a variation on a harmonic progression that would appear throughout other parts of the score, and the remainder was a simple 5/4 beat that invite movement and groove.Â
 Since rhythm was such a crucial element of this piece, I spent the next chunk of time creating supplementary rhythms to the main beat (mostly by clapping along to a loop of it) and layering in appropriate instruments.
About the notebook paper... shortly before I was hired to compose Untameable, I cleared out a lot of stuff from my parents' house since they moved ... since I hadn't had composing work in a while, I neglected to bring any blank sheet music with me from North Carolina. Oops. Trying to decipher my chicken scratch now has proved a daunting task.
The meter evolved from unchanging 5/4 to having a turnaround measure of 7/4 and a bridge that ended in 12/8. Pop structures are a big influence on my writing, so it was important that none of these changes felt forced, and that the music kept momentum during these meter shifts without the listener even being aware of them; I feel I achieved this.
Once I got the timing locked from the choreography, it was time to add a tune. Sufjan Stevens is probably my favorite musical artist, and, like me, he is heavily influenced by Reich and minimalism. His music, despite being catchy and seemingly simplistic, is deceptively sophisticated, and typically employs uncommon meters. His song "Come On! Feel the Illionoise!..." (not typing out that whole title) features a simple approach to the bass line that I adapted.
Like Sufjan, I stuck to a mostly pentatonic scale for the bass line, although it shifts into a whole tone world for the turnaround. The tone I created was a layer of piano, banjo, sitar and steel guitar; the instrumentation again clearly influenced by Sufjan, but still fit into the texture of the world I was making.
Once I had the bass down, I layered chords on top. I wanted to harmonic material to be more complex to counterbalance the simple bass line. The beautiful thing about 7th and 9th chords is you can pretty much throw them around carelessly and it'll sound good. And yeah, I guess Sufjan must have dug a real deep ear worm in me when I was writing this, since I opted for a vibraphone for the harmonic content. The melody came soon after.
I couldn't come up with a melody for the bridge, but thought that the ascending bass scale and chords couples with the more aggressive percussive elements carried the momentum nicely enough. This is how everything came together for the show:
While I am extremely happy with this piece, I still feel like there is a potential to it that I haven't unlocked. It's so short, but it's so catchy that to repeat anything again would be doing it a disservice. Adding any more structural pieces to it would disrupt the groove and momentum. I really wanted a melody for the bridge, but everything I came up with was clunky and just unnecessary. The piece is lean and barrels along strongly; it works. I did make more changes than I anticipated though when I dusted it off again; lowered the melodic line, applied a new EQ to the bass, and gave the opening a more ethereal feel.
I hope you enjoy this post! Stay tuned, thereâs a lot more music ahead!
