Boxes – What does the music have to say about dramatic change?

Acting 101 for Singers Day 1 Topic 6

Boxes

We will talk in Acting 101 for Singers Day 2 about what you are going to put in the boxes. For now, all you have to do is draw a nice big box right in front of each new section of music. If the audience would hear an obvious change from major to minor keys or fast to slow tempo then there needs to be a box. If you are changing from verse to chorus there needs to be a box. Anywhere this is a new section of music there needs to be a box. Why? Because if the music makes a big change that means something had to have happened dramatically to cause that big change. Here at the start of working on making creative decisions with our song we are first focusing on gathering information and not making the decisions yet. We want to identify what those big structural changes are and where they are so we can make decisions about what we think happens there later with all the information available to us.

Here is an example of how it could look

Note: This particular piece is much busier than most. There is a lot happening musically in a very short time. Most pieces will not have this many boxes in just two pages of music.

Common Mistakes

1. Overthinking it. Keep it simple. If you were the average audience member would it sound like something significant changed in the music? Think of a change of keys, tempo, melody, or soloist entrances. Remember we are looking for BIG musical change moments with the boxes.
2. Forgetting that the first box is always before the music starts and the last one after the music ends.
3. Not counting starting to singing as a big structural element. If there is an introduction to a song then almost always there is another box right before the singer starts to sing. Something had to have changed to make it so the singer had to sing.