What a whirlwind these past three days have been!  Tomorrow will mark the half-way point of music rehearsals and we still have a long way to go.  However, I am finding more and more ways to incorporate the steps I take to learn a song into teaching others how to effectively learn theirs.

On Monday I started off rehearsal with the song "I Know It's Today," which is sung by Fiona, awaiting her knight in shining armor to rescue her from the dragon's keep.  What's really interesting and fun about this song is that it's sung by three different Fionas: a young child, a teenager, and the adult Fiona we all know.  The two young girls playing Fiona in her youth are not new to community theater, but are semi-new to singing harmonies.  On Monday I worked with them chord by chord to really lock in the sound and help them hear where their parts fit in, which they mastered perfectly by Tuesday.  Once I had the notes in place, I started asking them questions about their personalities and what it was they were thinking when they sang.  When I started giving them moods and certain words to focus on, they took it to a whole new level.  They weren't just singing notes; they were telling their own special story!

A challenge of working in community theater is the fact that not everyone reads music.  For instance, Donkey has a sense of rhythm, but has no idea how to read notes.  My approach for Donkey was to listen to a recording of his song(s) first to get a basic idea of how they go.  Then, I took section by section and we spoke the text in rhythm first, then I played the notes on the piano, and slowly we put them all together and ran it with the rehearsal track.  With Donkey,though, his solos are much more about words and character than accurate notes, so we had a fun time free-styling and letting his personality shine through where it was feasable.

I have also rehearsed with Lord Farquaad, who is quite young in this production, yet he already takes voice lessons and has a musical background. He has no problem mastering most of the notes, but there is an element missing that I'm trying to instill: his character.  Believe it or not, character can help make the music easier to sing!  Lord Farquaad is what I like to call "adorably evil": he will tease you and taunt you, then flip his hair and giggle because he's fabulous, then cough and strike a powerful stance because he's the ruler of a kingdom.  I helped him find all of those instances to let the adorable-ness take him up to high notes and stateliness open up his sound and articulate rhythm.

All in all, in three days I have put together roughly six songs with principals.  Tomorrow I begin work with the ensemble on a song, then we hit the ground running next week with the rest of the show music.  I've got my work cut out for me, but I find great comfort in the fact that I'm helping people and making the learning process easier.  Sleep tight, kingdom of Duloc.  I'll see you tomorrow.

"I Know It's Today"