“Play More”

First, I must say that the discussion about digital distribution in the previous post is worth a look.  There’s really interesting information that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

---

But I want to talk about playing music for live theater.  This past week I’ve been asked to “play more” in my role as musical improviser for a local show.  Now, I’ve done a lot of underscoring live theater, like well over 2000 shows in the last nine years, and I have some opinions about it.

First, the primary rule in all underscoring is that if you notice it, it’s wrong.  It’s called UNDERscoring for a reason.  The music goes under the action.  The best underscoring fits into the fabric of the drama so tightly, that all of the elements: blocking, dialogue, lighting, and music, create a single experience.  But the most important thing is the action on the stage, and everything else must necessarily be secondary.

I read a terrific article by a film composer in a book of interviews with film composers (I forget which composer, and which book), and he said that when you are watching a movie, ninety-three percent of your attention should be on the action of the movie, leaving seven percent of your attention for everything else: the temperature, your indigestion, the pretty girl two rows in front of you.  He said that the music has to make its statement within that last seven percent of the audience’s attention.  In my underscoring, I am always conscious that my role is supportive, not primary.

However, in my dealing with other theater people, actors, improvisers, and directors, I am frequently told to “play more”.  I think there are a few reasons for this common comment.

First, music makes drama better.  This is a mysterious occurrence, but it’s true.  Music can turn a blah scene into a blow-you-away scene (instead of a blah-you-away scene).  So, people overgeneralize this occurrence (music making drama better) and decide that if some music makes drama a little better, then a lot of music will make drama A LOT better.  Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.  There is a threshold where music will interfere with the action on stage.  There is a threshold where there is just too much going on.  There are moments in drama that do not require music, and that should not have any musical accompaniment.

In my playing, I try to develop a sense of the rhythm of the actors on stage, and accompany their rhythm.  A little game I play is to craft melodies “between the words” during the pauses in the dialogue.  In addition, I tend to play a lot during transitional moments, like location changes and scene changes.  This is because nothing else is going on, and so there’s nothing to interrupt.

Another one of my rules of musical underscoring is that if the action on the stage already has music (and in this case, I mean, a music in the words), then anything I play will interfere with that already existing music.

A rule of improv is that if what’s happening on stage is interesting, then there is no need to enter.  This is true for musical improv also.

Another reason people ask me to “play more” is insecurity.  This can cause an actor to want as much support as he or she can get, which, consequently makes the actor want music all the time.  This is a musical version of “fear of silence”.  It’s common for immature improvisers to have a fear of silence on stage.  They fill the silence with words, and sometimes won’t shut up.  Additionally, younger improvisers tend to become nervous when they don’t get frequent reactions from the audience.  Music can’t rescue a scene.  There are times when music is inappropriate, even if the actor or director thinks he or she wants it.

Third, some directors think that they’re paying the musician by the note.  This causes the director to want more playing to justify the expense of hiring a musician.  What the director is actually paying for is the musician’s judgment and experience–to know when to play, and to know when not to play.  Inexperienced musical improvisers can usually figure out when to enter a scene.  It takes an experienced musical improviser to know when to exit a scene.

A wise friend of mine, who also happens to be a musical improviser, said “if you’re playing all the time, then you can never enter.”  This is another rule of musical improv that I keep in the back of my mind when playing shows.  Often, the entrance of music is the most important role of the music in a scene.  The entrance can be dramatic, sad, funny, referential.  But once the music starts, then it can’t enter again, it’s already going.  The tone of the music can shift.  The tempo can change.  The octave can jump higher or lower, but the music is already going, and cannot enter once it’s already going.  This is another reason why not playing all the time is important.

Another trick I frequently use in my underscoring is to build a huge layer of sound to accompany the drama of a scene, tangle up the chords with more and more tension, until the moment of climax, and then drop out entirely.  This creates the sensation of the floor being dropped from under the actor’s feet, and makes that moment much more tense.  I also do this during nostalgic or sentimental scenes, where I’ll make a character be all alone on stage, as though not even the music is that person’s friend.

Lastly, musical underscoring for drama or for comedy relies on anticipation and timing.  If some musical reference comes up and you miss the moment to play your clever little reference to accompany the joke on stage, then you’ve missed the moment.  I heard a musical improviser play “It’s Not Easy Being Green” a full minute after a reference to green was on stage.  The moment had passed, but in the musician’s head a synapse finally connected and the musician didn’t have the good sense to not play the now hopelessly out-of-context reference.  Dramatic and comedic timing is not something you can learn by reading or even viewing, you have to learn it by doing.

There have been times when I have been tempted to answer the request to “Play more” with obnoxious noise for the duration of the show.  But I never did this.  I have never purposefully sabotaged a scene.  I have always and without exception worked as hard as I could, in my role as musical improviser, to support the scenes as seriously and as skillfully as I possibly could.  Frequently, the most supportive thing I could do is to not play at all.