How to Create a Musical Form (or not)
How to Create a Creative Musical Form
By Kat Thelwall
*Not all points are at all recommended
T-1 year (immediately after Tiger Challenge 2023
-Decide you want to do a creative musical form for next year. Get all excited about it and create a Spotify
Playlist with potential songs.
-Forget about it for months.
T-5 months
-See the requirement for the Tiger Challenge, and think “yeah,
I’m gonna do that musical form. It’s
going to be awesome”. Listen to a few of
the songs on the playlist. Add a few
more songs.
T-3 months
-Think about doing the musical form. Decide you have enough time to do something
awesome if you start right now. Listen
to the playlist, take some songs off.
T-2 months
-The instructors are starting to remind us of the Tiger
Challenge. Get all excited about the
musical form again and try to start looking for inspiring examples of musical
forms on Youtube. Don’t have much luck,
but there’s still plenty of time…
T-1 month
-Decide you REALLY need to start working on this amazing musical
form. Life keeps getting in the way, but
you know that if you can just sit down and focus on this for 1 hour then you
can get it really going.
-For the next 2 weeks, every time you listen to music, you
think of whether or not it might make a good form track. Add tracks to the playlist. Go through the playlist and take out tracks
that are actually terrible.
T-3 weeks
-Sign up for the Tiger Challenge. Look LONG and HARD at the creative musical
form division. Decide that Fortune Favours
the Bold, so f*&^ it, you’re doing it.
As well as pretty much everything else.
-Look on Youtube and find a bunch of cool forms that fit what you are looking for, from the 1980s.
T-2 weeks
-Sit down and really focus on your musical form. You’ve gone through the playlist and whittled
it down to 3 songs that would really work.
You finally pick the first song that you ever thought would make a good
musical form track.
-Go into the gym. Put
on the song. Just try doing random moves
in time to the beat. Do this over and
over. You may look like an epileptic
squirrel. Don’t care.
-Decide you need to do this intellectually. Break down the song into composite
parts. There are 3 areas with different beat counts (1:4, 2:4, 4:4). Count the number of beats in each separate
beat count. Create an excel spreadsheet
with cells whose size are equivalent to the size of their count. Cut the last verse and chorus out of the song
so that the whole track is only 55 seconds long.
-Decide how you want the narrative of the form to go. Perhaps it should tell the story of your
training? Start with the most basic of
moves and go up in the complexity from there.
-Categorize all the moves/combinations you have learned thus
far in order of complexity
-Print out the beat count spreadsheet and the moves/combinations
spreadsheet. Cut out the
moves/combinations and try to arrange them on the beat count in a satisfying
manner.
-Get some semblance of a form, be satisfied with it.
T-1 week
-Now you should start practicing your form. Look at it and realize that there are lots of
parts that don’t make any sense and/or don’t match the rhythm. Rehash the form.
T-6 days
-Lose 2 days of working on your form due to working late
and/or being absolutely exhausted
T-4 days
-Try to practice your form, but realize it’s a bit of a
mess.
-Start to panic. Decide
that this form has really cause quite enough stress and taken up much more of
your time than it should have so if you just gracefully bow out of that
division now and focus on your OTHER forms then it will all be ok.
-STRESS CLEAN THE KITCHEN
T-3 days
-practice your other forms.
Feel that they are ok.
-Realize that you can’t bow out of the musical form now,
because you said you were doing it. So, you
WILL get it done, and perform it, even
if it is absolute sh&^.
-Break down the sections into 4 beat parts. There is 1 bar in 1:4, 4 bars in 2:4, and 16
in 4:4. So, the 1:4 section will be your intro, the 2:4 section will be some
basic combos, and the 4:4 section will be more complex.
-Decide that the 4:4 section parts should have a pattern so
that it’s easier to memorize. How about
Lao Gar, (other combo), kicks, and a part where you can breathe. That way you only have to learn 4 variations.
T-2 days
-Practice the form.
-Realize that with 2 days left you need to cut out any parts
of moves that you can’t do that well.
-Readjust the order so that sections or bars flow into one
another.
-Start to get a real sense of flow and order. Things are finally starting to look up! Maybe you can pull this off after all!
T-1 day
-Practice the form enough that you’re finally starting to
memorize the order. You do it 4 times in
a row without looking at the sheets!
Time to start trying it to the music.
-FAIL ABYSMALLY at doing it fast enough to the music.
-PANIC
-Practice it some more without the music. If you can just get the muscle memory down
you might still be able to do this with making a complete ass of yourself.
T-0 days.
-Wake up early. Go into the gym. Start practicing your musical form.
-Do a few reps of your other forms, so they’re not totally
neglected.
-Go to the Tiger Challenge.
Perhaps there is some magical hope that the stars align and you pull a
magic rabbit out of your ass and everything works out perfectly.
-Get up and do your musical demo. COMPLETELY flub it.
-At least you tried.
And, because you actually got up there to do it and there were no other
competitors, you won gold.
-The stress is over!
-NOW, you have an amazing form to practice the snot out of
to perform at NEXT year’s Tiger Challenge!
What a rollercoaster this story is! Awesome that you documented the whole process, this will be very valuable as you being to work on your musical form division for next year!
ReplyDeleteI felt your tempo throughout this blog, and I’m tired!! Lol You are absolutely correct, everything is a win - you practiced and you competed, a win all around!! And I do agree, start now for next year, and there will be so much less stress!!
ReplyDelete