Reprogramming Directive

Series photo by Jon Bragg on Flickr.

A few things have happened over the last two months to keep me busy and too tired to blog, not the least being passing my final CA exam and audit busy season hitting me like a ton of bricks.

Now everyone knows to be any good at anything, you either have to have talent or a lot of practice. To be brilliant at anything, you need both. Since no one starts off chasing their dream with the intention of being less than brilliant, theoretically I should be spending all my spare time practicing writing musicals.

Which I have not. Because not only do I succumb to procrastination far too often (and generally on the pretext of exhaustion from work), I am also too scared to write anything that is less than brilliant. I am terrified that all my years of drilling in classical piano has retarded my ability to improvise and create and I’m left only with the ability to interpret what other people have written. I am petrified that my long hiatus from anything musically serious has killed off what little ability of that is left. I am convinced that whatever I write is inevitably going to sound horribly cliche, awful and bland.

The fact is I have never written a song music first. Ever. This majorly bothers me. Someone who aspires to be a composer like Stephen Flaherty or Andrew Lloyd Webber should be able to write music first.

The other thing that bothers me is I feel like I can’t write lyrics first either. The last time I wrote anything creative was six years ago in my final year of high school. I’m paranoid that the last six years of being analytical and writing boring technical accounting memos and business reports have killed my ability to write creatively and to express emotion. As you can see by this long-winded ramble, I am horrible at expressing myself.

Anyway. At the beginning of the month, I got talking with a friend from my piano eisteddfod days about these debilitating fears and we decided we would stop whining and do something about it. Every week, one of us will start off by writing a rough set of lyrics and the other person has a week to come up with some musical ideas then we’ll work together on both music and lyrics until we have a half way decent song. Hopefully at the end of a year, we’ll end up with around 26 songs, some of which I can put in the 20 minute portfolio I need to get into the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at Tisch, New York University.

We’ve started working on our first song already and I’m feel very, very rusty. Things I have realised over the past month include:

• I can’t write music for unstructured lyrics, at least nothing that ends up being a cohesive song. It must be in some sort of variation of a song form. I like the typical AABA structure of musical theatre numbers.
• I do not have a gift for melody, unlike some other people I know who have this marvellous God-given talent for coming up with great melodies. I have to work really, really hard to come up with a passable melody. I am also horribly unoriginal because everything I am writing comes out sounding the same. The accompaniment is pretty blah. I have a total of like…3 chords in the song. Ugh.
• I fail at writing bridges. At first, the “B” sounded so much like the “A” and actually reprises the middle bit of the “A” towards the end that I don’t really know if it qualifies as a proper “B”. I left it for about 2 weeks while I got smashed during audit busy season and came back to do some more work on it tonight. Now the first part of the “B” sounds okay, but I can’t bring it back to “A prime” in a way that musically makes sense.
• I think I might be trying to go for something too fancy with the complicated rhyme scheme. I am crying inside for using the false “time/mind” rhyme. I’m also cringing a little at the use of “page/stage” since it sort of feels like it’s there just to fit the rhyme scheme.
• I fail at improvising awesome piano instrumental solos. I tried for a few hours on my keyboard and just didn’t really get anywhere that I wanted to get so I’ve given up for now and written “placeholder” in my notes. It’s really the highpoint of the whole piece though so we need something much better. I hope Jonathan has some ideas!
• I fail at bringing a song to a satisfying conclusion. The ending is horribly weak. It sounds unresolved and then the ending sounds way too sudden. I feel like it’s not musically interesting enough to drag in a B prime but the way the last A just tapers off and has no real conclusion sucks.
• The best songs, just like the best prose, show, not tell. I think part of the problem is we have really obvious lyrics at the moment, like “I am going to do XYZ”. The line is not inspiring and so I can’t find any inspiring music for it. More rewording of lyrics to follow!
• Hammerstein and Sondheim are right on the money. You cannot write what you don’t feel; if you don’t feel it, then you don’t believe it and the whole song comes off as fake. And it is really, really hard to write music for a lyric you don’t believe in.

Anyway. I will be posting up the stuff we write…when it’s a bit more polished and I don’t feel like I want to die on the spot any time someone hears it. At the moment, only 3 people in the world have seen the first iteration of the first song and it’s all I can do not to try and dig a very, very deep hole in the ground whenever I think about it…

Okay, so this is not actually the first song we wrote. The first song we wrote is still in too terrible a shape to be released for public viewing. Here is the second song we’ve written instead.

Jonathan was struck by inspiration and composed this beautiful piece of instrumental music a few weeks ago for me to write some lyrics to…and I am very, very late (I’ve got a myriad of wonderful excuses, revolving around work, being busy going out, being busy going to uni open days, etc etc etc). I wish when I get inspired, I write stuff like this.

Anyway. The first image I got in my mind when I listened to this piece of music was “Final Fantasy” (and I promptly was very jealous of Jon being able to channel Nobuo Uematsu), as one of those poignant, wistful character themes…but the more I thought about it, the more the music sounded full of regret/melancholy.

When I initially wrote these lyrics, I was thinking along the lines of when Kim sings “I’d Give My Life For You” in Miss Saigon. I first saw a fellow student perform that in our Broadway music production and it took my breath away. Thinking back about my grandparents and my parents growing up and growing old, thinking about how I grew up and will grow old and how – when I have kids – my kids will grow up and grow old and what kind of world it would be…it reminds me life has become so much “easier” on the surface but so much more complex, competitive and difficult. Then I started thinking about what it would be like to grow old and simultaneously look back at my past and into my children’s or grandchildren’s futures. And a few weeks ago, when I saw “Gwen in Purgatory“, the picture that was painted of growing old in today’s society was truly bleak.

The scene in my mind as I wrote this was an old woman cradling a sleeping child and singing a lullaby. Her husband and the friends from her youth are long gone, her children are grown and have grown distant, busy with their own lives. But while she sits here, this small scrap of humanity in her arms makes her feel as if she is not alone. The past is a hazy golden age lost to the passage of time, which has stolen along more swiftly than she thought possible. And already she can see the babe in her arms grown into adulthood and herself fading away.

Image from Wisconsin Historical Images on Flickr.

I thought for a long time about whether I should post this and I almost didn’t:

1. It would have been easier to just…forget all about this project. To be honest, I haven’t seriously worked on project 26 Songs for the last few weeks.
2. I have never been a really good singer, nor have I done any serious singing since high school. I am so embarrassed by my shocking vocals that words fail to describe my mortification (poorly pitched, poor breathing, poor diction, poor/strange accents, very bad “switching” in registers…the list goes on and I won’t bore you by going into detail, I’ll let you fill in the blanks).
3. Criticism always feels personal (even when it isn’t) when you put a lot of your soul into something, so I hate sharing things I’ve created when I feel like they aren’t good enough.
4. I am really bad at expressing myself eloquently through words and hence one of my goals for doing this challenge was to improve my lyric writing. There aren’t a lot of “real” songs that I have written. In fact, this one would be something like number…6. I look at the lyrics I’ve written and I just want to cringe, but I don’t know how to do any better yet. Please bear with me.

In the end, I decided I would go ahead and blog this because:

1. I really need some sort of kick in the pants to keep myself accountable. This is just one way of getting it.
2. This isn’t about my singing. This is about me trying to become a better songwriter, and I need feedback.
3. One day when I write a real Broadway musical, some people will like it and some people will hate it. And they will write mean, awful, hurtful things about my songs, my music and about me and I will probably cry about it. I figure I could use some practice in getting used to it, getting over it and working on drawing out the valid criticisms and points for improvement.

And to be honest, I don’t really know how many people actually read what I write here in any great detail, so without further ado, here it is.

With (my terrible) vocals: Remember Me (Music: Jonathan Ong | Lyrics: Deborah Lau) by Leng

With only Jonathan’s beautiful music:
improvisation 1 by Jong85

Remember Me

I remember me, a girl begun to dream
Long before you came to be
I remember me, when life used to seem
Full of roads I’ve yet to see

I remember songs, the melodies we made
Stories from before your time
I remember sunlight, I remember shade
Summer rain and star shine
Before today
Before decay

You could spend your life in vain
In grasping for the sky
Or you could spend your life in pain
As every chance bids you goodbye

So many paths, unsure and shadowed
Many choices and mistakes
Some sacrilegious, some hallowed
All yours for you to make

I could tell you which ones to choose
Which ones where you would lose
But I know for sure that you’ll refuse
Want to walk in your own shoes
In your own shoes

Remember me, when I’m too old to dream
And the songs we used to sing
Remember me…
When my memory takes wing
Remember me
My memory

—Music by Jonathan Ong. Lyrics by Deborah Lau.

Not the standard Broadway AABA structure (more of an AABACA rondo form with a long extended instrumental bit in the middle), but worked alright. I think some of the phrases are odd:

• I’m still cringing at the false time/shine rhyme.
• I like idea of shadowed/hallowed but honestly…who says that?! And quite frankly “sacrilegious” is a stretch.
• When I was playing it over and over in my mind, the words sounded okay, but when I got around to singing them, some of them didn’t feel natural to sing.

So plenty of room for improvement! But I’m happy with where it stands as a first attempt.

Earlier this year, around my birthday, I felt like things were happening and life was taking off. Recently, I feel very much like life has slowed to a crawl – in terms of progress. The days are still passing by much faster than I would like (my mind still boggles at the thought that I’m now 24), yet strangely not quite fast enough (I can’t wait until I fly to New York next year).

At any rate, I guess it’s always easier to show progress at the very beginning, because there’s so many steps you can take – and most of them are fairly easy. But when you’ve gotten started and you’ve dived in, it’s sink or swim, and swimming for a long time gets tiring.

Anyway. I still want to try and write a song every two weeks. Since 30 September has just passed, my submission this fortnight goes out to my fellow auditors. We have survived another three months of the craziness that is busy season.

Image by Horrgakx on Flickr.

I originally wrote most of the lyrics in late August, right after I finished what has probably been my toughest engagement ever – and I think I’ve had some pretty tough jobs before. Every day, I got up at 6 AM to catch the 7 AM bus so I could arrive at 8 AM, worked through lunch until 7:35 PM at night so I could catch the last bus at 7:48 PM (and oh boy, if I missed this one, I had to take the train which would take even longer). I would keep working on the bus for another hour before I had to walk home, force myself to eat and fall straight into bed.

This would be the pattern of my existence for an entire month. As the deadline drew closer, weekends did not necessarily offer me any respite. It all culminated in what I can only describe as…hell. I will never, ever forget how it feels to start the day with a 7:30 AM meeting and work at a feverish pace in a meeting room, ticking and bashing my way through a set of financial statements until 3 AM (~19 hours). I got home at 4 AM, slept for 2 hours and went back to work until 1 AM the very next day (~17 hours). Yup. That’s nearly a full week’s worth of chargeable hours (which is 37.5 hrs) in just two days.

As you can imagine, I was in a really weird head space when I wrote these lyrics. I was feeling so overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, frustrated, fed up and yet giddy, light headed and perversely satisfied that I had gotten through the torturous experience with no visible damage (though how many years I’ve lost off my lifespan and mental damage sustained due to the stress…well, I have no idea).

Audit Busy Season by Leng

Audit Busy Season

Stumble outta bed in the morning
Walk in with my eyes closed and yawning
Triple shot of caffeine while my empty stomach’s reeling
How I hate that busy season feeling

At nine o’clock my phone starts ringing
By one, all I’ve done is nothing
Every fifteen minutes my internet is dropping
How I hate that busy season feeling

It’s dark on my way in, dark on my way out
Got a massive suitcase I’m carting about
“We’re not ready” goes the client’s tune
They didn’t read the audit pack ’til today at noon
How am I gonna get this done?
I gotta get this done!!

It’s three and I’ve finally got something
The client says “We’d better be signing”
Deadline’s moved ahead two weeks to Friday evening
How I hate that busy season feeling

It’s dark on my way in, dark on my way out
Got a massive suitcase I’m carting about
“I’m so sorry, I gotta cancel again”
“Think I’m gonna be working at least until ten”
‘Cos I gotta get this done
I gotta get this done!!

It’s seven P.M. we’re still reconciling
These TB accounts don’t agree to a thing
This formula’s wrong and the spreadsheet’s confusing
And now my computer’s crashed without saving

It’s a quarter to three A.M.
Finally signed the accounts for them
I’m collapsing into bed
Is this what it’s like to be dead?

It’s dark on my way in, dark on my way out
Got a massive suitcase I’m carting about
“I’m so sorry, I can’t come in today”
“Think I’m gonna be going somewhere far away”
‘Cos I’ve finally got this done
I’ve got this done!!
I’m done
—Music & Lyrics by Deborah Lau

Lyrically, I wanted to experiment with identities. The first real song I wrote with one of my classmates from the NYU Tisch Musical Theatre Writing Workshop (hi Chiara if you’re reading!) had these fantastic lyrics that all ended in “-tion” in every line. It gave the whole song this driving rhythm and a frenetic feeling. I don’t know how to shorten “They didn’t read the audit pack ’til today at noon”; one day when I figure it out, I will come back and fix it.

Formwise, I was tossing between the classic AABA and verse-chorus-bridge. In the end I went with a compromise – the chorus doesn’t kick in until the verse has been repeated twice. The bridge is in two parts, which I guess is kind of weird, but it was the only way I could think of to convey the surreality that is working at 3 AM. Seriously. The chorus was originally going to be the same every time, but since there’s a built in narrative, I thought it would make more sense if the middle lines changed every time.

Musically, I had a few things running through my head as I was writing the lyrics. For a long time, I’ve felt like everything I write musically is always very lyrical or classical (thanks, 15 years of classical piano lessons) so I tried to do something a bit different. In my head, I had a cross between Smashmouth’s “All Star”:

…and Busted’s “What I Go To School For” (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. At least it’s not the Jonas Brothers’ version).

Somehow when I ended up at the keyboard, Ben Folds Five snuck in with “Brick” and it ended up being a lot less pop/rock and more soft piano rock:

Here’s to surviving another busy season.