Posted on June 2, 2006 at 5:43 pm

Thank you all so much for writing back, please keep it up!  I think this website works best when it’s a collaboration between me and the readers, and this blog is the most obvious example of that.  All right, back to the questions!
Mindy Cimini writes:
I had the pleasure of seeing “Wicked” when it was in town and besides being enthralled by the show as a whole, I also noticed they had a travelling rhythm section.  Immediately, I thought, “I want to do that.”  Before that little ephiphany, I’d conducted/played in a little 5 person combo for a show my school did and enjoyed it.  I then got to play lead keyboards for our main stage musical this year and loved every minute.  My question then, is what I should major in if I want to be playing in/directing pits for shows?  Is there a better major besides piano performance to get me there?  What college, in your opinion, would be the best for that area?  I’m only ending my sophomore year, so I have a little time, but as I said, the brochures in my mailbox are easily persuading me otherwise.
JRB responds:
Groove and time, groove and time.  I don’t know a single piano performance major in the country that will teach you how to play contemporary pop styles, and ninety-six percent of Broadway musicals are written in those styles.  Don’t just play your Scriabin and Brahms; if you really want to do this, go play in the jazz band (if they’ll let you in!), play with church choirs, and most importantly, play with drummers and bass players and guitarists.  Learn how to be part of a rhythm section.  Some schools have majors in accompanying (Eastman did, I know) and that couldn’t hurt.  But really, the best way to learn how to play in pits in to go play in pits.  Even when I was in high school I was playing for local theaters, and that experience is not something you can replicate in some other environment.  Just keep it up – it’s not like there are a lot of people who want to play theater music, so if you keep your ears open, you’ll find the opportunities are all around you.
Matthew Masten writes:
This is Matthew Masten, a freshman music theatre major at Elon University and I just wanted to thank you for coming to our school last Friday.  I was wondering what was your inspiration for “Someone To Fall Back On”.  The lyrics and music are both so moving (plus you sound wonderful). Thanks so much for coming to Elon and I hope you come back or at least I get to see you again sometime in the near future.
JRB responds:
I wish I had a good story about it, but it was really just something that I wrote one night in the basement of Lincoln Center after a performance of “Parade.”  But I did want to write and say I had a sensational time working with the students at Elon, and I’d be delighted to come back again soon.
Andrew Fox writes:
In most of your interviews and writings and whatnot, you seem to basically be saying that great songwriting has two sides to it–one is excellent technique, and the other is bare honesty and blood and heart and all that. But so far you seem to only have offered [excellent] advice on the first part–clear structure and interesting changes/rhythms and all that. But what about the second part? I find that when I set out to write “honestly” everything ends up turning into that boring, confessional stuff that so many people seem to be making.
How do you keep the blood flowing through your music? How do you “know” if a funny song, or a dismissive song, or a [insert any adjective other than “confessional”] song, is honest and pumping with life underneath? And when it’s not there, how do you bring it?
JRB responds:
I feel like I sort of answered this one already, but it’s worth elaborating on.  If you don’t feel deeply, feel intensely, then you won’t have much to write about.  No one can teach empathy.  I’m a tortured soul, you know, and I channel that when I write.  A half-assed character is impossible to bring to life through song, and I think a lot of theater songs suffer for not being about anything important enough.  I feel like I’m rambling.  When all else fails, steal – Joni Mitchell’s work resonated for me so deeply that I often just took her phrases and her ideas and appropriated them.  You won’t hear those songs (trust me), but it was by finding what really sang to me in other people’s work that I was able to find what was my own.
Zak Monneyham writes:
Do you have any events planned in or around the Bay Area in the soon or distant Future?  I just moved up here to go to school and now you’re playing in Temecula (half an hour from my mother’s house and I don’t have the money for a vacation).  You should play in SF sometime.
JRB responds:
Man, I’d love to do something in the Bay Area, but I can’t manage to get in there.  Any ideas about where I should try to play?  Some place with a great piano?
Tesla540 writes:
I am singing “A Part of That” for a concert and although I pretty much understand the gist of the song, I’m wondering what the background story is or if there is something specific in the show that explains the song more thoroughly?
JRB responds:
Cathy is at one of Jamie’s book-signing events, probably at a Barnes & Noble in New Jersey or something, and she’s playing the part of the dutiful wife, entertaining the long line of folks who are there to have Jamie sign their copies of “Light Out Of Darkness.”  I’m sure right before the song starts, someone says, “So, what’s it like being married to a genius?” and Cathy responds by singing the song.  The important thing to say is that she’s not supposed to be mad at him in the verses when she talks about his process, she’s supposed to be saying, “Isn’t he wacky?  Isn’t this a crazy life?”  She’s got to keep the ball in the air and keep entertaining the crowd.  The “Aren’t I?” at the end is the only time she slips.
Allison Hersh writes:
I am so excited to hear that you are coming out with another show and I can’t wait to hear it!  How will I know when recordings come out?
JRB responds:
Just keep reading the website!
Lucy Downing writes:
I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until I read the questions and answers on your website that I realized that creating music and lyrics actually has “rules” and “techniques” and “structure”!  My question is … does having these “rules” and “structures” make the creative process less enjoyable for you?  Or do you welcome and embrace them because they give you the tools to express what’s inside you?
JRB responds:
You know, these days, when so much of my writing is for specific assignments and commissions, I love those rules and structures.  The fewer choices I have to make, the happier I am.  And certainly, when I get stuck, it’s great to have a lot of technique to fall back on.  But more importantly, I just wouldn’t know how to write with no rules; I mean, where do you start?  When do you finish?  What’s supposed to happen?
Liz Han rambles:
I music directed (well, attempted to) “The Last Five Years” at our Fringe Festival in Edmonton this past summer.  My two questions for you are these: What’s the deal with the chimes in “The Last Five Years”? They happen at such specific moments is why I ask. And secondly, why IS the accompaniment score so damn difficult?  I’ve seen tough scores in musical theatre, but always felt that considerable shedding is all they ever needed.  Yours are different in that each style of each song is so true to its groove/feel.  Your attention to this kind of detail, if I haven’t read too much into everything, is exactly why this is all worth exploring, and raises the bar for us all. And when you dig music/words of this calibre, and live in Edmonton, Canada as a po’ass pianist playing in a dinner theatre pit…it’s sometimes the only thing joyful in a day. So thanks for that.
JRB responds:
1. The chimes: I think I got hooked on chimes when I was writing “Parade,” and they were so important to the storytelling there.  They’re used twice in “The Last Five Years,” but one was sort of an accident.  (It’s actually just one chime, an Ab.) The one I really wanted is in “Nobody Needs to Know,” I was writing the song and it just kept building and building and I knew when I got to “All that I ask for is one little corner” that I wanted something to push it over the edge.  The chime just seemed like the perfect thing; I especially love it because it’s such a surprise in the texture of the orchestration.  Then there’s the other place I use in the show, which is the transition between “I’m A Part Of That” and “The Schmuel Song,” and the story there is that we needed a little something to work as a transition, and I looked around the orchestra pit, and there was the chime, just staring at me, so I told the cellist to hit it four times.  And now it’s in the score.
2. Why is the accompaniment so difficult?  How’s this for a terrible answer: it’s not that difficult for me.  I can’t make it through one bar of “The Light in the Piazza” or “Floyd Collins,” those are difficult accompaniments.  “Sweeney Todd”?  “On The Town”?  Now that’s some hard shit.  My stuff?  I’m not trying to be coy, I know it drives the best pianists in the world insane, but I guess part of the story is that I’m such a weird and idiosyncratic player that what I write feels very natural to me and feels completely bizarre to other pianists.  I like to think that my stuff looks really hard on the page but falls well under the fingers.  But, as I write often in this blog, groove and time are not standard equipment on most theater pianists, and my music doesn’t really sound like anything unless you have a really solid groove behind it.  I’ll also admit, as my friend Tom Murray points out, a lot of my accompaniments are overwritten, particularly in “Songs for a New World,” you can leave out a lot of the filigree and the songs still sound exactly right.  At any rate, thank you for putting so much energy and attention into getting it right, I can’t tell you how appreciative I am of that.
[A couple of hours later, I had an addendum I wanted to make: Some accompaniments are vastly different than others. I’m completely comfortable playing “Moving Too Fast,” which is exactly the sort of thing that makes most musical directors want to chop off their hands, but I can’t even get through “Dreaming, Wide Awake” or the fugue in “Still Hurting,” neither of which is actually all that difficult for pianists who have a solid classical technique.]
And I appreciate all of you for reading and writing me! Keep it up, and I’ll keep answering! Also, if there are things that you’re looking for on the site but you’re not finding, let me know and we’ll try and get that going. I probably won’t write again this weekend, since I’m off to a big French Woods reunion and I have to polish my Tony Award. Have a great weekend.