EXTRA! EXTRA!

Hi! :)

Finally the huge gig was over! It was a christmas musical production :) Well, a bit off Christmas since it was held on January 3rd because there was no venue available for booking in our campus..

The gig was AH-MAY-ZING. I had LOTS of fun!! The whole process is complicated. Since this is a musical, the band don't play only normal songs, but we gotta do background music as well. In my previous post I mentioned about film scoring and stuff--the idea is almost the same, only we played it live. 

This is a dream come true for me. I dreamed to be a music director when I was in high school, and one day I told God that I want to be one. And, that's it. He made my dream come true :)

It was one heck of an experience! I was the assistant + bassist for last year's production, and it kinda taught me lessons that were useful when directing this year's. I had LOTS of lessons during the practice period. We practiced for about 12 weeks!! Actually we didn't practice every single day. For the musicians, we practice during the weekends, due to classes and stuff, but during the weekends we practice for like, 13 hours a day, and the practice hours were added as the performance was approaching. I developed no blisters. Thank God.

Here's a couple of lessons throughout the process:

Dynamics -- This is what I've called the ups-and-downs of a song. You may google it for proper definition. Gosh. This one is freaking irritating sometimes. Because there were times where the song that we played just feels so plain, and it all just sounds like noises even though we all played the right chords. I don't really know how  to explain this in words, but during the practice, we gotta figure out when to play loud and when to play  soft or when not to play at all in a song. Each instrument has different parts in the music or even no parts at    all. So we have to know when's our cue. Try play one song with all instruments playing at the same time at    the same level and the same chords until the end--you'll hear disaster. It doesn't work that way. Dynamics   apply to every frickin song. Even death metal has dynamics.

Listen -- Hmm.. If you'll be covering other people's song and intend to play the exact copy, then you gotta listen.  And by listening, I mean listen to your part in the song. When to come in, how the riffs go (if any), when to go loud, when not to play, what kind of effect should you use to get to the same feeling, etc. When that  part is figured out, now here comes the playing. When you play together as a band, you need to listen to  each other, and try your best to get to the appropriate level. For example, if you are supposed to be strumming in the background, then adjust your volume accordingly so you won't overpower the others. As music directors, you gotta be able to listen to what everybody's playing. I found this tough because sometimes there's multiple flaw being played at the same time and you gotta stop the whole thing and explain one by one on how it supposed to sound like and then repeat it all over again.

Encoding/translating/whatever -- The directors have imagined and set how should a song sound like for a scene, which sounds different than the original song most of the time. You may get comments like "it's not emo enough", "it's not supposed to be that funny", "it's supposed to be high", or even just plain "I can't feel it". You gotta be able to translate those into the music you play. Also, when you read the script, you gotta figure out what kind of music is suitable for a scene. For example, how to play for a fighting scene, or the most difficult one *for me* is what kind of music you play when people are in a mall and they were gossiping?

LEARN HOW TO READ THE FRICKIN SCORES! -- I finally realized that it would be so much easier when everybody can read scores. Our guitarist and keyboardist are educated, so they can read stuff. I myself can't read, so when I want to communicate what's in my mind, I gotta sing it =.= and many times my timing and their timing is not sync so it takes extra time to make it happen. Thank God everybody understand music language.. You know, the dukduktak jrengjeng, dumdum and tingtings xD

Obedience -- This one is VERY important. Many times you won't agree with the directors. But, you can always communicate to them about how you think the music should be. But then they still might not agree with you.. I'd say, obey. Because they have imagined it and it's perfect in their mind, and your job is to make that scene comes to life with music. So, if you can't find middle ground, obey.  I was pretty rebellious during this production >.< My apologies directors... For the musicians, thou shall obey thy music director as well, because they are the one who is communicating with the scene directors about what they want and you clearly have no idea. But then as I said before, you can always communicate your idea to the music director. Your idea might be the one they're looking for.

Relationship --  Now this one is also very important. Try your best to build good relationship with one another, and try to understand your team better. I found the breakfast/lunch/dinner before practices was really helpful. During those times we didn't really talk about the musical. We discuss satanic bands most of the time, listen to blues while eating, and listen to Power Rangers theme and some alternative stuff on our way home xD That was really fun. We talk music only during practice, but sometimes we strayed as well >.< I lose focus    easily. sigh. 

Compromise and Encourage -- When one of your team member is not feeling confident to play some stuff, encourage them. If they're not able to do some riffs because it was too difficult, then try to do simpler version where everyone is comfortable. It's better to simplify it than forcing it. Too much pressure is not good.

Don't panic -- During THE day, there were several mistakes.. After that song, we just look into each other and say "it's okay." Well, there's nothing you can do other than just kick ass in the next songs, right?!

Well, those are the lessons I've learned, and those are only my opinion. If you think that there's something wrong or I should add, feel free to point it out :)

Some of the practice days were the best days of my life. Like, totally.