Mozart is the musical Christ.
Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
Learning to play is mostly about learning to hear, and learning to really listen deeply to sound in a musical way is a lifetime's worth of work.
As a composer I could never find use for over 4 or 5 notes in any musical number, and as a playwright most of my plays have two acts because i couldn't think of an idea for the third act.
Musical numbers should carry the action of the play and should be representative of the personalities of the characters who sing them.
In terms of theater itself, no story is too strange or method of telling it too impossible these days. In many ways, musical theater has caught up with straight theater in that it's allowed more surreality and breaking of form, and that's really exciting to me - the challenge is getting people to produce those shows.
The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.
I don't know if this is a good thing to say, but the musical obsession has almost shifted to a creative obsession now.
I found it easy to produce. I'm not the musical guy. I can't read and play music like that, but put some drums and a sample in front of me and I can whip it up nice, and I'll work out some keys and find some interesting instruments to put under it.
People are always going to have favorite albums or songs and you know that's more the listener's personal bias than basing it on anything musical or actual. I'm the same way as a listener.
A good analogy [Charlie Hebdo] in lots of ways is "South Park" - the hugely popular American cartoon show - and the things that the "South Park" creators have created, like "The Book Of Mormon," the Broadway musical. If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in "The Book Of Mormon," right? It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.
Well, the most important thing in choreographing for a specific tune is to get the story line and try to make your movements, rather than just actual movements, let them become more or less a physical drama to, to what they were singing about. And uh, also, uh, honor the beat and the rhythmic pattern of the musical track.
I learned that when you do the best job that you can do, some people will idolize you, others won't care, and some will vilify you. I believe it is important to remain humble and thankful for the blessings in our lives, for the tremendous opportunities that are a result of our musical success.
Sadly, as a songwriter you sooner or later finish developing your musical understanding.
We sometimes feel like hamsters on a wheel, covering the same musical ground we did 20 or more years ago.
Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth."
In any regime there is always something that one should agree with, and in Shades there are quite a few notions that, on the face of it, seem like a good thing - the strict adherence to good manners, the fact that learning a musical instrument is compulsory, as is dancing, performing musicals and an hour's Useful Work every day in order to properly discharge your duty to society. But a cage is still a cage, irrespective of the nature of its bars.
When I auditioned to be part of the "This Is It" Tour, I didn't think I was going to get in. I didn't think it was for real at first, when I got the message on MySpace from the musical director to come in and audition for him. I came in and I played for the musical director, and that night Michael Jackson came in and sat down on the couch and I played "Beat It" for him. I just practiced as much as I could to make sure it was perfect.
Music and songs have always been a constant part of my life, and still are. My brother Michael, who is a songwriter and composer, is the one who most fully inherited the musical legacy of our family, but I got some part of it - mostly the feel.
The word "down," is very musical. It just always comes.
I don't really inject the rock 'n' roll thing, what I take from rock 'n' roll is probably the melodies and the musical behind it.
Most of the EDM tracks right now are not very musical, they have one note that keeps playing. You really don't need to be a musician to do records like this, so I think me playing guitar for so many years and listening to rock 'n' roll and real music helps me when I work with vocalists like Lana Del Ray and Miley Cyrus.
It's definitely about the rhythm of the words and how they sound together, writing one sentence and then another and another and cutting something immediately if it doesn't feel true. I come from a family of musicians and - while I have no musical abilities of my own - I think I inherited a good ear.
I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names/subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc.
Follow your musical instincts. Do what you feel is right. Don't be relegated to a certain category.
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