I was back on campus today for another "Butterfly Lovers" collaboration session. Sadly, Jeongyi couldn't join us, as she's somewhat under the weather, though mercifully C19-free, if testing is anything to go by. As I reported a post or so ago, we've pretty much got the shape of the show down, so we're at the point of finessing the arrangements of individual "numbers" (as I slip further into West End argot). We tackled the overall arc of the show, including the atmospheres I've put together to play behind Jeongyi's narration, and then looked at some specific song arrangements.
After the overture, the opening number (there I go again) is "Who Is He?". I've written a backing track comprising strings and arpeggiated synth. Although I've posted it before, here it is again:
The tricky thing here is tying it all together (who knew?!) There's a lot of dibbly-dibbly stuff going on with the synth which I think makes it particularly difficult for Chaoran to follow on the piano. It doesn't help that the whole thing goes into like 85 flats at various points and modulates here and there by a semi-tone (it seems that that the truck driver's gear change has become an international phenomenon), which is of course easy enough on the guitar (shift fingers one position), but for singers and pianists, well not so much. But on the whole, I think it's starting to make sense; the key thing it to make it, er, ethereal.
The second major song is something of a portmanteau, or at least it is as we've arranged it. The opening features Jeongyi and Yi singing a duet with Chaoran's piano accompaniment, moves on to a brief piano duet and finishes with an a cappella vocal duet. Obviously, without Jeongyi there today it was impossible to really nail it, but it's getting there. We spent quite a lot of time in particular on the dynamics, which is key to making this one work. I've urged Chaoran to really belt out the opening of the song (honestly, I would love to do a metal arrangement of this section - it's crying out for it), and then really drop down to almost nothing at other points. Again: work in progress.
The final number will be a duet: Jeongyi and me on guitar. I've written a guitar accompaniment which I tried out with Yi, and it seemed like it worked, but hopefully we can work on that next week with Jeongyi, as it's her "big moment".
Between songs, Jeongyi will be narrating the story, and I've proposed that we have sonic "atmospheres" behind these. I've already posted a couple of these, but here's another I've put together this evening from a brief recording I made of Chaoran this afternoon:
So how's this shaking out as a collaboration, then? In terms of outcome and general process, I have to say I think it's going well. Broadly speaking I think we've found a groove. One of the key things for me is that, for the most part, the others are now discussing the project in English. Of course, there's the odd lapse into Chinese, in what I can only assume translates as "what the Hell is he going on about?" (Which, frankly, is a question a lot of native English speakers ask around me.) Speaking selfishly, it's a great challenge to be as clear as possible, given that we're discussing things at quite a deep technical level, and this has forced me to really hone my comms "chops" (and therefore think as clearly as possible).
In our debrief, Tom brought up Lev Vygotsky's notion of of the "zone of proximal development", which draws on child development psychology to suggest that learning new stuff should- and I'm clearly paraphrasing here - stretch a student/practitioner beyond their existing skillset - but not too far. How well are we doing on that front? I guess I would have to say 50-50. From my own perspective I'm certainly moving into area that are new, but adjacent to my usual practice, for example the string arrangements above. And the others are definitely tipping their toes into new waters. But I'd still really like to push it. As it stands, I think we're going to end up with a series of (occasionally subverted) West End-style songs with bit of electro-acoustic jiggery pokery in between.
That said, we've got three weeks, so let's see where we end up.
Your assessment of the collaboration here is honest and fair. I think you will probably end up with the kind of show you suggest (and I don't mean that as a criticism). I think the only way you could have initiated more movement in your collaborators would have been by being more disruptive and really mucking about with what they had done. This would be been risky, of course, because it might have alienated them. Ironically it has been your eagerness to learn and expand ZPD-wise that has perhaps let your collaborators 'off the hook' a little.
Posted by: Tom Arsmtrong | May 28, 2022 at 06:28 PM