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How story focus changes rehearsals
Had some great conversations last week at Harmony University about how adoption a story-centric performance philosophy would change rehearsals. Some surprising conclusions! Read on.
The first thing to realize is that having a well-understood story makes everything more efficient. Yes it might take some time to generate the story (especially if you do it democratically - see below) but you save way more time than you spend. Let's say it takes half an hour of group time to work out the four elements of a story to support a song. That's a good chunk of a 3 hour rehearsal, to be sure. But how much time do you waste giving people technical instructions over and over again? Without the story, all those dynamic and nuance instructions are random and they go in one ear, out the other.
Even worse is the risk of introducting a song that nobody likes, which eventually erodes morale and ultimately the song gets dropped. Wow what a painful waste of time! And if it was a contest song, even more so because you'll wind up behind the eight ball. If people understand the truthful, human element of the song, it's hard for them to not like it. Truth is, after all, beyond judgement! When people don't like a song, it's because of their pre-existing associations and biases. When you attach a strong story to the song, you can supercede those associations.
Realtime spent more time talking about our songs than we did rehearsing them, in the run up to our International victory in 2005. Why? Because clarity about the story made everything better - the performance got more powerful, the singers got more unified, even the technique improved as we got our left-brains out of the way. And these are laws of nature, so they will work for everyone, not just Realtime!
What's the best way to create a story? Well the answer is probably different for every group, but I'd lean towards a democratic approach. If you create your stories in an ivory tower, you are taking a big risk that your singers will never commit to it. Involve them in the brainstorming, and you'll get the buy-in you need, and you'll inevitably get a better story too! Seems to be a common pattern in nature - release a little bit of control, and everything goes more smoothly.
There's an efficiency impact there too. If everyone is involved in creating and fleshing out the story, the burden of communication is much lower. I'd rather give up a bit of control than spend 10 minutes explaining the story again *every* time that song gets rehearsed.
Finally having a story makes it really obvious that you need to rehearse performance, separate from technique. Here's a great exercise: lay out the (democratically created) story, and then ask three people to tell a story of their own that ties into it. You won't believe what you find out about the singers in your group! And everyone will have a more vivid and personal attachment to the story as a result.
Got any ideas of your own? Please comment!
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Knowing and agreeing on the story you are presenting to your audience is mission critical whether you are performing for a contest audience, on a show, or at rehearsal. It makes everything more interesting and meaningful, not only to the audience, but the performers too.
Getting the notes and words down is ground zero. All the artistry and magic happens once the words and music are 100% and delivered without event thinking about it, and there are no distractions.
Sadly many barbershop quartet and chorus performers I've encountered over the years never get to the point where THE BASICS (notes and words) are presented flawlessly.
I remember when I was preparing the Houston Tidelanders for the performance of Richard Bain's arrangement of "Always" back in 2002.
Once a military theme was selected, we secured costuming that reinforced the theme. Our uptune was World War I Medley as performed by ACOUSTIX, but it was our ballad that was the centerpiece of our contest set. We re-wrote the lyrics to the verse of the ballad to help sell the story that we were going off to war.
"When I'm all alone, far away from home, I think of you..."
I asked everyone to draft their own heartfelt "last letter home," the one that should they be killed on the battlefield would be eventually received by their loved one. Once the letter was written it would be kept in their pockets at all rehearsals, and on the contest stage, as it would actually be held folded in their hands at one brief moment during the song.
To raise the bar even higher, at one of the last rehearsals before the contest, I played the guys a cut from the soundtrack of the PBS (Ken Burns) series "The Civil War" a narration of a letter written on the battlefield by Major Sullivan Ballou, while a haunting version of Ashokan Farewell plays softly in the background.
Here's a link to a snippet of the cut:
http://www.amazon.com/Ashokan-Farewell-Sullivan-Ballou-Letter/dp/B001200KH0
Many tears were shed and the guys were now well positioned to deliver a very personal story to our audience.
Rehearsals were never about run-throughs of songs, they were about doing everything we could as performers to deliver a powerful story that connected with and MOVED the audience. We too moved in the process.
We finished 9th in the contest, but our placement had very little to dow with how we felt about the experience.
Todd Wilson
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