The Lucid Wildflowers performance

Q&A What's the story? It's absurdist. There is no story. Who is in it? Laura Schlachtmeyer, Meredith Neuman, Annalisa Loeffler, and Ralph Boswell. Is it safe for kids? It is, but no child will want to sit through it. So, I just watch this on YouTube. Will I be able to see it later? Yes, and yes. It's a live YouTube event, but will be recorded for posterity. So this is some of that video theater that can be socially distant and safe? Exactly. Who made the puppets? Jeanne Bellware-Lewis. Wait, what are those puppets made out of? Polymer clay. Who wrote this absurd opera? The libretto was written by Andrew Bellware, Richard Byrne, Todd L. Johnson, and Laura Schlachtmeyer. The music was written by Andrew Bellware. What is the Hoboken MakerBar Symphony Orchestra? Saleem Banatwala. Conducted by Andrew Bellware. That seems awfully high-falutin' a name for what is essentially two people. And your question is? Um. Nevermind. What are the live instruments? Water bottle, 12-string electric guitar (untuned) played like a percussion instrument, a rotary saw, anvil, can of paint, theremin. How are you doing socially-distant theater? The two musicians are wearing masks and standing more than 2 meters from one another (at the Hoboken MakerBar in Hoboken, NJ). The stage manager/director is calling the show from home in Washington, DC. How many computers are required to make a socially-distant YouTube puppet opera? Five. One to play back the "backing tracks" of music, one to run Open Broadcasting Software in order to composite all the video layers and upload to YouTube, one for "intercom" on the Hoboken side, one as an "operator's" computer in Washington, DC, and another for Washington, DC intercom. Optionally is a sixth computer for confidence playback in Washington, DC but we've found that the 15-or-so second delay is really annoying when you're trying to run the show.

The Lucid Wildflowers

 Save the date.

The Lucid Wildflowers. A puppet opera.

Saturday, February 27th, 8pm.

Live on the YouTubes.

https://youtu.be/I2vRGGNAnkQ

Running time is about 20 minutes.

Featuring the Hoboken Makerbar Symphony Orchestra.

(Update: we moved the date to March 13th, 2021.)

Imaginary Operation

You may be asking yourself "What is The Imaginary Opera? Isn't that just a song we do?" 

It is. 

But it's also much more. 

There is a "book" (words and lyrics) to a 45-minute/hour-long operetta. Do you want to see it? Of course not, nobody will read it. The story is based on Apocalypse Now, the "world" is Blade Runner, and the characters are multifarious but the lead is from Escape From New York. The book needs a re-write. In fact, it needs a re-write from someone who isn't me. But I haven't found anybody who wants to do that (yet.)

Most of the opera's music has not been written -- that we know of. But the fact is that most of the opera will be the actors talking and over their talking will be some "space rock". So that's pretty easy, right? (Other than the band, which is presumably Diatomaceous Earth, there are two actors and one soprano who plays the "Chorus.")

So what is that piece of music we call The Imaginary Opera? Well, we'll probably do a number of versions just the way we do them now, but there will also be a version which will have a melody (with words) sung by the soprano "Chorus". Do we know what those words are? No. Do we know where it goes in the whole Imaginary Opera piece? No. Do we know what the melody will be? No (although I have some ideas.) 

So. You're thinking to yourself "Drew, this whole Imaginary Opera idea is pretty half-baked." Yes, it's almost exactly half baked. But I'm pretty good at completing things like this. And we're at the halfway point.

But The Imaginary Opera is a separate thing from a regular Diatomaceous Earth concert. At least I think it is under normal circumstances. 

Now we need to find a puppet maker.

The Vorga

Samanas!
Embedded below is a mix combining a thing we did with the Samanas and the recording I made of Maduka and Kate. The quote of last night's rehearsal was:
"Oh, somebody tuned these drums." -- David Wolfe

Andrew Bellware with Lily Kinner. The goofier version of this picture had my pick in my mouth.

 Lily played the Twin Reverb. The Twin makes a nice bass amp. I think maybe we need to experiment with the microphone placement to get a bit more of the mids and highs on it.
The isolation on the microphones was tremendous. I don't know why. I mean seriously, I have no idea why the isolation was so good.

David Wolfe on drums.

Again, we're doing the "guitar player's perspective" of drums. In this recording that means the two Oktavas are about 30" apart and aimed at the kit. Or, wait, no, Lily and I went over this a lot. She has a better sense of distance. I think she determined that the mics were 26" apart from one another. Then they're about 30" from the beater side of the kick drum.

This is an attempt to show the location of the three drum microphones. See them? I thought not.

I did in fact record with the AKG C12A as a center microphone for the drum kit, but this mix does not have any of that mic in it. I used the Lindell preamp and again the isolation was... fantastic. Weirdly good. But it just had the kick drum in it and wasn't a sound we weren't getting out of the stereo pair of mics, so I muted the channel.

Lily Kinner playing through a Twin Reverb. Did I ever tell you the story about when Debbie Harry told me on the phone that her bass player would use a Twin Reverb and then she got very annoyed with me when I showed up with a Twin Reverb for him to play through? 

This recording is one of those dream-scape sorts of things. Sort of a space-rock arabesque. Of course, the Doors song "The End" does that kind of sound and it's used at the top of Apocalypse Now, which is the feel of what we're doing maybe with The Imaginary Opera.

A bird's-eye view of the mic setup for the drums. The perspective is funky but the two Oktavas are actually on the same imaginary plane that the kick drum head is on. You can see the C12A is on a different plane would would likely make me want to time-shift it if I were inclined to use the sound of it.

The recordings this week have been quite inspiring. I've learned a lot about how to do an imaginary opera.

Greg Bartus, the master of space rock. 

Greg played through his Deluxe clone which sounds very, very sweet.
Did I mention that the bass (on a Twin) went through a Rode NT1A and then a Lindell preamp?
We're recording at 48kHz and hitting the M-Audio 2626 as A/D.
Coming up: on the Samanas Bandcamp page will be various other pieces we worked on. Man, I have to practice rhythm guitar.

First reading

So last night Maduka Steady and Kate Britton came in and recorded the dialog in The Imaginary Opera.

For me it was awesome just because I had a front-row seat to these lovely performances. We were a bit random when it came to who read for Holden and who read for Leon, which lead to help the impressionistic part of the opera.

Hearing Kate and Maduka do all the parts convinces me that we can totally use one actor for many parts. Kate even jokingly mentioned hand puppets but you know what? Hand puppets.

Maduka Steady.

About the text: my feeling is that we're in very good shape. I don't feel like the beginning of the show is like what the show is after the intermission. I feel that the Logan's Run references come in to heavily for not having been foreshadowed earlier. That's okay because I don't like calling Plissken a Blade Runner. I'm totally down with calling him a Sandman. And that's just what we're going to do.

Kate Britton

We're also going to write out the Krio.
Now it's time to work out the music...

Imaginary Processes

So, the Imaginary Opera. Where is it? What is it doing?

This is the process. I have two bands, well maybe three. And so that's being sort of a gang composing motifs for the music, meaning the music hasn't been written yet but we have some themes right now.

Much of The Imaginary Opera is either recitative or (depending on how you want to think about it) more like a musical where dialog is spoken rather than sung.

So there are bands improvising music to which they have no idea what sort of thing they're improvising to. Not yet at least. We start recording some of the dialog on Tuesday (wow, that's a very film way of thinking about it.) The goal here is to create an album version of the opera first, and then try to figure out how to stage it.

Danny Thompson, Super Genius.

So: your real question is: "Drew, what on Earth are we doing?"

And the answer is: I'm not entirely sure. We have a bunch of text. We have a pile of music. It needs to all be put together somehow. We're not 100% sure of even how the process of all this is going to work yet. So figuring out the process is part of the process. I just figure we put a bunch of really good people together and see where it goes.

If you're sensing a lack of clear direction here it's because there isn't one. Which is okay. Because (in my experience at least) it takes a little while to figure out what we do. Once we start doing it we'll wander a bit and then there will be good and cool things and we'll be all like "Ooh, that's nice." We'll go onto another section and we'll be all like "Let's do that thing we did before." Eventually we can say "Let's do that thing we do." And then inevitably, "Let's do that other thing we can do rather than the first thing" and someone will say "How about we do this third thing?" That third thing won't work. But the sixth thing will. You know?

Want to hear some experimental demos? Here's one. Note that seriously none of us in the band had any idea what we were going to do next:
http://blog.tyrannosaurusmouse.com/2013/02/icing-body-electric.html

Same here:
http://blog.tyrannosaurusmouse.com/2013/02/acid-rock.html

Note that we do have actual "songs" coming up. I just don't know exactly what they'll be. I have a notion of getting a straight-up opera singer to do some of the interstitial arias -- sort of art-song melodies on top of minimalist rock-band backings ("minimalist" just meaning a groove, the sound will likely be large).

http://blog.tyrannosaurusmouse.com/2012/12/you-are-so-lucky.html

http://blog.tyrannosaurusmouse.com/2012/12/melt-with-ruth.html And there you go.

Imaginary Leon

Looming Productions in Greenpoint is a very nice rehearsal studio. Inexpensive, too (which in New York is a real rarity).
The gear is in good shape. And if you're good with the G train, it's fairly easy to get to.
The funny thing about the space is that you go up an steel staircase to the second floor and then you step outside onto the fire escape and then come back into the building. So that part is amusing.
But in studio C they had a very tasty Vox amp and a Tama drum kit that was in fairly good shape. I don't really know or care what the bass amp was because after all, who cares about bass amps?
+++++
The audio embedded below is from a rehearsal almost a year ago at Complete Music. This is clearly something we need to develop. I think it might be cool if it were under the first dialog interaction between Holden and Leon in The Imaginary Opera. Ha!
So last night we were experimenting with some stuff and I thought I'd do some of the spoken lines from The Imaginary Opera while we were playing. You know, it's the whole bit with "there's a tortoise lying on its back..." And I discovered why the guys in T-Mouse dislike The Imaginary Opera idea so much.
Ethan said "It's like bad beat poetry."
And it struck me. None of them have any clue what it's about.

Now I've actually gone and changed some of the dialog in The Imaginary Opera a little bit so it's more like Stars, My Destination so the references in it are even more obscure.
This is not helping my case.
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that there are people in the world who don't have Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now all but memorized. Those people exist. Apparently they're all in Tyrannosaurus Mouse.
I think I might ask Maduka to do some of the spoken word parts and we'll put them on an iPod and do some in-rehearsal playback. But still if you don't get the reference and you don't get what the scene means, it might just all whoosh by you. Right? Who knows?
How much time do I have?

Imaginary Opera Framework

So there are 16 distinct pieces of music in The Imaginary Opera. The latest version of the script (with all the lyrics) is here.

1. Overture
2. Fiery the Angels Fell
3. Tattoo
4. Gold Grass
5. America's Shore
6. The Hollow Men
7. Death's Dream Kingdom
8. Late Summer-Autumn '68 (percussion ensemble)
9. Salome (dream ballet)
10. Fiery Waltz
11. The Dead Land
12. The Valley of the Dying Stars
13. The Vorga (Tattoo reprise)
14. Funeral Dirge
15. Falls the Shadow
16. Curtain

The band will be a four-piece (guitar, bass, drums, keys). 

I figure the overture and the curtain pieces would be written last. I already have some ideas for a couple of the pieces. I'm sure the lyrics will change as the music changes.

There are five actor parts. We could make Day Tripper/Holden a female role which would give us a 2/3 women-to-men ratio. 

1. Plissken
2. Chorus/Rachel/Priss/Zhora/Bryant
3. Gaff/Batty
4. Day Tripper/Holden
5. Leon/Bunny

Being able to look at this framework gives me an idea of the scale of the work to be done. The songs aren't necessarily "songs" in the popular-song sense in that they won't always have verses and choruses. But who knows, by the time we're done they might. Or at least some might. Most will be more like arias though. I mean, with a rock band.

Via.

Imaginary Opera Parts

I'm making a list of characters (who are doubled in some cases) in The Imaginary Opera.

1. Plissken
2. Chorus/Rachel/Priss/Zhora
3. Gaff/Batty
4. Day Tripper/Holden
5. Leon/Bunny
6. Bryant

You'll notice there's only one part for a woman. You'll also notice that "Bryant" is the odd-man out (as it were). His character is only in one scene and yet we can't even double him up. Maybe he'll just appear on a TV screen. There's some logic to that actually. 

The part of the Chorus/Rachel/Priss/Zhora is amusingly difficult. She has to sing, dance, and act. And she's a world of quick changes. Right now I dig the idea that instead of her (as the Chorus) supporting the other characters, the other characters support her. They bring her props and they help with her changes. That might be fun.

One thing we haven't established as well as we should is the notion of the palm-flower. I realize that might be "one too many things" but as a ticking clock in the palm of your hand it pleases Us greatly. 

I also do a crap job of killing both Batty and Zhora. I have to go re-work those parts of the script.

Then there's the issue of the music. There are actually fairly few songs in the piece. I think we have most of the themes or at least the rhythm guitar parts worked out. Or at least notionalized. I'll know more in a week. 

Lastly, wiring for guitar amps.

Ostinatoisms

So, there's a couple things I'm digging.

1. The kind of Pink Floyd ostinato with big chords over the top of it.
2. The Who kind of lots of fun with virtuoso bass guitar.

So the thing here is that those two things tend to be mutually exclusive because you need the bass to be playing those triplets or whatever with lots of delay. Or, you have the guitar doing that and then all of a sudden I can't play big obnoxious chords or self-indulgent lead lines. And that simply will not do.
Now one advantage of my bass player, Ethan Rosenblatt, is that if anything he tends to underplay. This is a good quality in a musician. We can, however, smack his bum and make him go all Entwhistle on us if we want to. And he's very good at it.
So, if we want the band to go all crazy but want to do it on top of some sort of ostinato then... then the option is obvious.
The Who - like repeated synth playback.
See? Pete Townsend already figured out the solution.
"Sheep" really hit the very bottom (or very top) of where Pink Floyd could go depressing-wise. It brings them back to Meddle-era ostinati and big fun guitar parts (the outtro is really exciting).

So yeah, I've talked about this idea before. It's time to start recording some ostinati.

Now for the big question. Do we use something like Abelton Live for playback? Or do we use QLab? I think we'll end up with QLab because we're going to need it for playing back all the dialog we need to create for the Imaginary Opera.