So it turns out Pete and I are sharing our home with a mouse. Now I’m told that everything happens for a reason and I’m wondering if the mouse has one. Given he’s not really a threat to anything serious and is probably ever so cute, if he ever presented himself in person/rodent that is, I’m not particularly bothered.

He’s eaten through some curious things under the sink: one carrot and coriander soup carton, three dishwasher tablets and the best part of a Brita water filter and the scurrying in the roof above the bedroom of our loft conversion can keep us up at night. It’s also possible he left an unwanted gift in some leftover peas that Pete ate last week, resulting in a very upset tummy (for Pete, not the mouse). So common sense has reared its head and a humane trap must be sought. I really don’t want to kill it, it’s done nothing it shouldn’t and even if it had, death by trickery is surely a bit mean to say the least.

As with most domestic questions that arise in life, I turned to the internet to see what might be best. And also to find out if it’s likely our friend has any its own friends or relatives living with him. Apparently, if you remove a mouse as soon as you can, further invasion is less likely. If you leave it, then they set up home and suddenly there’s an extended family feasting on your soup cartons. Makes sense.

I also read a much more interesting forum post somewhere that claims playing Wagner to them, day and night, will drive them loony and send them packing. Experiments were carried out using feistier passages of Berlioz, Mahler and some angry bits of Beethoven, but Wagner yielded the most favourable efficacy. Call me bonkers, but I might actually give this a try. It didn’t tell exactly which pieces were used (should that be what Wagner works worked?) but the point is that it’s basically noisy, long and complicated. I’ll start with Das Rheingold I suppose and see how we go. If they’re still hanging about when we get to Götterdämmerung then we might be in trouble. But hopefully mice just aren’t into chromatic harmony.

I’ll have to report back with the results, but hopefully we’ll have the poor mouse evicted soon. I wonder how he’d react to Mozart’s Die Fledermaus? Oh my word, it’s just struck me! The mouse does have a reason – he’s been sent to improve my appreciation of Wagner.

Out

So, despite my usual wish of not wanting to be attached to a computer every waking hour of my life, I’ve decided to embrace that age old tradition of blogging. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to know my innermost thoughts but apparently, a regular scribbling of thoughts is good for the creative spirit or something. Most of my if-I-had-a-blog ideas, or what I think I should write here, occurs to me in the shower in the morning, but most of it is forgotten by the time I’ve put my helmet on and scootered off to work. So when I say regular, I don’t know how regular exactly, but as the juices strike me, I shall pour forth. And I’ll try not to sound like a pretentious twat.

I’ve been thinking, the more you squeeze a tube, the more comes out. (Didn’t I tell you most of my greatest thoughts come to me in the bathroom?) This suggests to me that it is more productive to squeeze the tube than to let the tube just do whatever it wants to. The tube, while potentially full of promise and an endless stream of product, is rather like us (well, like me) and essentially lazy.

In short, I’ve decided the more I’m restricted, the more productive I am. I don’t mean just musically either, I mean in life too. The more things I have to squeeze into a short space of time, the more I’ll actually get done. I’ll do all the things better and I’ll be more inclined to actually do stuff rather than put things off.

For the last four years I’ve worked for a videogames company. My division is currently on a singing game for Disney called Sing It. As Disney is the publisher and we are the developer, we are the ones that decide what the game will look, sound and feel like. Yet, they place all sorts of restrictions on us. Given that all the assets (songs, videos, characters, sounds, names etc) belong to Disney, they obviously have the right to say what we can and cannot do with them. As a result, we’ve developed a very slick, modern, exciting game with lots of features which is great fun to play. Now if Disney had said to us, “Make a game for us to publish, do whatever you like, but make it good” I can guarantee the first hundred beta attempts would be terrible. It would be a sprawling, unfocussed game and would get bad reviews, because there were no restrictions, no definitions, no guides, no parameters.

When it comes to music, it would seem churlish to say freedom produces bad results (definitions of good and bad and subjectivity being another discussion altogether) but in the musical world in which I compose, it would be impossible to write anything sellable or listenable for my audience without any restrictions. I write for musical theatre and the odd bit of pop and rock when I’m in the mood. Although it’s extra to my full time work, I take it seriously enough to know when something’s commercially worth pursuing or not. I also know the music of Disney and Hollywood Records’ catalogue inside-out (sometimes not such a good thing, the Mouse messes with your head) but I have a pretty good ear for that particular audience.

The restrictions that I place on my writing are pretty straight forward. Firstly, I demand a good tune at all times. If the melody isn’t whistle-able and easily sung, it needs making so. This usually boils down to form and the way something flows. The best way is to write it, pretend it’s perfect and just get on with finishing it, then leave it, forget about it and come back to it. All the errors of judgement and problems with the form are always much more apparent. And yes, there are always improvements to be made, music is never perfect.

The second restriction I exercise is more of a question: What is the piece saying? If it’s not saying what it needs to, it’s not right. If this happens, I usually bin it (meaning I put it in the magic place of stray bits of music and lyric for possible future use). Similarly, if the audience for whom it’s intended won’t hear what it’s trying to say, then it needs work. I often find that if you try and write something without anything to say, you end up with drivel. It’s the same as listening to somebody talking who actually has nothing to say: small talk, polite chitchat, drivel. When you apply this to orchestral music then you have a set up where you’re trying to say things with instruments. They’re the same as voices, but instead of conveying what they want to say using words, they use sound to emote. For me, this is far more powerful than the human voice, especially when it comes to extreme sadness or high drama. The vocal equivalent of a tutti orchestra going full pelt, kettle drums and all, can say so much more than a hundred people shouting, “Drama! High drama!” (that’s basically what it comes down to in musical theatre) at you. Or a well arranged cello part can portray the story of a sad tragedy in a much more palatable way than somebody droning on about their misfortunes.

In any case, my point is that without this restriction, there’s no point in writing. You may as well go and make small talk with strangers at a bus stop as artistically you’d be achieving the same thing.

For me, a musical is about the story. Yes, it’s called a musical not an historical, but the music is the means by which we experience the story. Now if the story is weak, the whole thing will unravel, no matter how good the music, book or performance is. This isn’t true for opera so much as worship is usually offered wholly to the score, giving vast leniency to an often ropey plot. Ooh get me. I’ve seen a few very well received musicals, the story of which falls apart ruining everything for me. Needless to say, Sondheim wrote musicals that had seamless stories, which always wrapped up firmly and inevitably, err, inevitably: What should happen to the narrative always did happened. But there are shows like Stephen Schwartz’ Wicked, which is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, until you get to the last quarter and you’re not entirely sure what just happened or why, but the action continues to a dramatic close as if the story reached a natural conclusion. Gregory Maguire’s book that it’s based on is deeply complex so the stage show has to be pared down. But just a little too much is left for the audience to wonder about at the end. This is a shame because the music is gloriously powerful and very moving in places and the characters and the world they inhabit is fascinating.

As the musical is all about the story for me, the last thing you want is a score that pretends it’s invented a new chord or sounds like the composer has revolutionised the western system of music as we know it. Musical theatre is simply not the place for this sort of business and it interferes with the experience. As with many experiences in life, if somebody is making an absurd song and dance about one thing, it’s usually another more awkward thing they’re trying to avoid or distract from, ie a weak plot.

I’m going to wrap up my first blog entry there as I’ve said what I wanted to and to continue needlessly would, as I mentioned, result in drivel.

Jamm x