Inspiration: Cross-Create

music by craigCloutier

I'm working on a song in my voice lessons that I am having some trouble with. It's an Irish song, and it's essentially the same four-line stanza that repeats three times. I LOVE the song, but I felt like it was all the same mood, the same inflections, etc. the whole way through. The hard thing with this kind of song is building a story around it so that you can give it variety and interest within the same set of notes. I was feeling kinda bummed about working on it cause I wasn't really sure where to start.

Normally, my voice teacher has us write out our lyrics on a piece of paper so that we can see the build of the thoughts as the melody changes. For example:


xxxxx
xxxxx
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xxxxx
xxxxx
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     xxxxx



          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


               xxxxxx
               xxxxxx

               xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


But with my current song, it looked like

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Boring!

So, he suggested that I make up a story. This is fairly normal, because you want to create circumstances for yourself in a song that are specific and that speak to you and fuel you to perform the song. However, for this particular song he suggested that I think of it like a screenplay. It's basically like making my own music video in my head, but it's not a way that I've worked before so it may turn out to be really helpful.

Decide the specifics of the story, thought by thought, and even imagine what the camera shots look like - when is the camera on you?
when is the camera from your perspective and who are you looking at and why?
when are you singing in voice over and we're seeing a flashback into the time in your life that you're singing about/thinking about?

I think this is not only an awesome idea, but an idea that inspired me - what if I started to apply different mediums to things I'm working on? Like applying screenwriting or film making to singing performance.

My voice teacher told me about an artist friend of his who would put on a symphony and paint what she heard. Sometimes I'll put on music while I'm writing, and damn does it make me feel like everything I'm writing is brilliant!

Cross-Creating is like cross-pollinating. When plants are cross-pollinated, they often end up getting stronger and better able to pollinate (they often have taller stamens, at least according to Wikipedia...).

Maybe if I start cross-creating, my art will get stronger.

Other things to try in the future:

Paint the feeling of a poem
Take pictures of things your character might look at or find interesting - how would they frame it?
Choreograph a dance that embodies the story arc of your character in a play
Sing a monologue - what would it be like if this monologue was the main number of a musical?

Yay making things!