Joshua, does the Whole Musician Workshop have a website? What does your organization do?

In college I had an elective to kill and decided to use it on took a course devoted to screenwriting. I took the course because as someone that wanted to compose music for dramatic purposes, I felt that if I knew the writer/director’s language/point of view/vocabulary I would have a good chance of being able to communicate more effectively with them. With the exception of John Carpenter, there aren’t too many director’s that can speak a musician’s language. It really helped a great deal. It taught me all of the elements that go into a good story. Ad if yu watch classic movies or read well-written books, you do find the elements discussed.

Lets see if we get some more posts as I want this to eventually go into some “conceptual” thoughts about the actual composition aspect.

All the best,

Jerry

What an wonderful invitation for a conversation!

Having worked extensively as a performing and composing musician in the worlds of musical and non-musical theater, I have given a lot of thought to the topic of drama and music- how they function under the same principles and how they are distinct.

In my experience, there are countless ways to marry dramatic expression and musical expression. Here are a few of the many approaches I have discovered:

1) Think in dramatic terms. Think about conflict and resolution rather than tension and release. Think about composing for characters and actions rather than for moods and emotions.

2) Collaborate directly with actors, directors, and writers. Improvise together. Record and listen to what you come up with. Let the differences in your crafts inspire new modes of expression.

3) Experiment with opposites. When you have an impulse to express strength, go for gentleness. When you want to be serious, try to lighten up. This practice can facilitate more spontaneous (and therefore dramatic) decisions.

4) Study different theories of dramatic structure and schools of theater. Writers, directors, and philosophers like David Mamet (True and False), Aristotle (On Poetics), Peter Brooke (The Empty Space), and Jeffrey Hatcher (The Art and Craft Of Playwriting) may not address musical composition directly, but their insights into the composition of a story, a scene, or a character are filled with implications that can be adapted and applied to the craft of musical composition and performance.

I hope you get many responses to this question because I think that musical and dramatic structure and expression have a lot in common and we can learn a lot by bridging the gap between what is considered musical and what is considered dramatic.

Thank you for bringing it up,
Joshua Pearl
Director, The Whole Musician Workshop
Woodstock, NY