Random Musings

I really had a treat whilst attending the “Writing The Songs” workshop organised by Musical Theatre Limited at the Arts House today.

It was so good I wished more of my songwriting friends had attended this workshop.

It was a four-hour session conducted by four accomplished writers in the local musical theatre scene – Stella Kon, Kenneth Lyen, Desmond Moey and Elaine Chan.

They each took turns to share their expertise when it comes to writing either the lyrics or music to songs in musicals, and I thought it was thoroughly enriching…especially so since I am totally passionate about musicals.

Plus, I’ve always maintained that it is my secret desire to one day write the songs to a musical.

So it was really wonderful to hear, for instance, Desmond share about how he struggles with whether to compromise on even a single note in his melodies with the singers, or Elaine share about how she works on original material with the Selena Tan and the Dim Sum Dollies, or how she handles constraints faced when a particular singer’s range might not adequately handle the demands of the song.

Fascinating stuff.

Towards the end we had a hands-on session where we were to write a song based on a given scenario: Imagine the story Cinderella, just after the clock strikes midnight, when Cinderalla runs away from the Prince after they’ve been dancing together for awhile. Write a song based on that exact moment, from the Prince’s perspective, expressing his feelings at that point in time.

Interesting premise!

We were broken into groups of about five each, and collaborated to come up with a song. (Good thing we had a piano to work with at the EarShot cafe.)

Although we didn’t have time to finish all the lyrics to our song in the end, I really enjoyed the time of collaboration with my group-mates, whereby we came up with so many good ideas by brainstorming and bouncing ideas off one another.

Now, I’ve always been one who is averse to collaboration, cos maybe I’m quite selfish in nature when it comes to songwriting, but today I witnessed first-hand the beauty of collaboration in songwriting.

It just opens up possibilities and perspectives which you will never see if you were to do everything alone.

All in all, I’m very thankful that there is an organisation such a Musical Theatre Limited that is so passionate about promoting the love for musical theatre here in Singapore.

There is no other group like theirs here.

And I’m also very thankful that there are accomplished musicians/songwriters like Elaine Chan (composer of countless DSD and Wild Rice songs) who are so down-to-earth and generous in their efforts to share their knowledge and expertise with us aspiring songwriters.

I think all this bodes well for the musical theatre scene here in Singapore.