You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Copyright & Musicals

The good thing about doing work that is either highly esoteric or that requires a lot of context to understand is that the dumb stuff you do can't easily become anecdotes that follow you around. Not that I've done anything spectacular enough to be in the running for the Rogue Element award or anything; it's just I felt that I should balance out the "I am awesome" post of earlier in the week, in light of the fact that I'm occasionally a dumbass. (I think my brilliance to dumbass ratio is pretty good, but I'm certainly not a brainfart-free zone.)

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The soap in the toilet at work is "rose and [something]", which means my hands smell like turkish delight. Very odd, but somewhat resonant with the LWW film... which we're uninvolved with.

I haven't bought a hoodie.

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Looking for out of copyright material occasionally makes me feel like a bad person. For example, I was wondering whether "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" was out of copyright yet; it's a Gershwin song, and I was vaguely hopeful, since George Gershwin died in 1937. Unfortunately, Ira Gershwin didn't die until 1983, so there's another 30 years until those songs become available (or 50 years or more, if you're in the US).

See, saying that it's unfortunate that someone who's created something cool lived so long is the thing about investigating copyright that feels a bit wrong. I should be happy that these people got to live so long, and that they're still looking after their families after their death. (Or the stockholders or officers of the company that they sold the work to, in many cases.)

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If I'm not worried about reincarnation one way or another, since I don't feel there's any real "me" continuing in the absence of my memories and experiences, does it logically follow that it's okay for everyone to take my stuff if I become amnesiac? I guess that's reasonable - hah, take that, Amnesia Dan! No stuff for you! (You have to give my stuff back if I regain my memory, though.)

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Thinking about it, I'm not sure I've actually got a lot that's useful to say about writing lyrics that doesn't seem obvious... I guess there are three things that spring to mind. The first is that the payoff should always come at the end; the second is that you should take advantage of the fact that the audience is singing along in their head; and the third is that you don't have as much time as dialogue, but you have more dimensions to play with.

To expand on the first point - repeated bits don't count, so this works fine:

He's not into readin' books,
And he sure ain't got fancy looks,
But only he can eat what I cooks - can't help lovin' that man.

Putting the longer word of the rhyme second is generally the right move, too.

Lots of musical gags involve the fact that you're providing the audience with lots of cues to the word you're heading for at the end of the line - they've got the rhyme, the length, and the context. (This is why the old "faked swears" gag or implied other punchlines work.) It also means that you can use syncopation to keep the audience's attention, since it's doing the same job - providing stuff that's unexpected but still fits. And that's why uncompleted nursery rhymes can be so very creepy - the tension of knowing that there's a little bit more to come, and not having it resolved.

As far as length goes - with seven minutes, you've got time for about two shortish pop songs, or a bit less than a third of a Herbie Hancock jam. So you probably don't have time for things like bridges or long choruses, unless that's where you're sticking the majority of the action; and having the classic blues trick of repeating a line three times and then a payoff line may not be the best way to go. However, if you keep them short, you can get away with a references and allusions to songs that the audience knows - see, for example, the Scissors Sisters cover of "Comfortably Numb" which has the intro of "Eye of the Tiger". (Or possibly "Bootilicious" - which points out a danger with this approach, I guess.) You can evoke a lot about the singer with only a little effort from the music they're singing against - but that's really no different from choosing the appropriate background music, I guess.

Bah - I'm not sure any of this is useful. Maybe I'll try doing a musical, and see if anything becomes obvious. :)

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[Written at 8pm] Okay, I'm going to take this opportunity to complain. I left work about an hour ago, and I've now been called away from dinner with my Mum and youngest sister at the hospital in order to try and fix something that's gone wrong with filmout. It's not like I'm on call or anything - it's just that the guy who is on call had Hell Week, and we both know that he's too tired to work out what's going on. Baaaaaah!!!

I hope I don't get a call from my brother saying, "We've just watched our short film, and now we're off to do something awesome - want to come?" Because that would be the icing on the cake.

Posted by svend at May 20, 2005 2:00 PM