SELECTING THE SOUNDTRACK - BY MAGGIE HAMILTON

The Book Club Play is my next adventure with Seat of the Pants. With a domestic setting, I found myself turning to food again as my gateway (entrée in the French sense?) to thinking about the setting and characters. In this case, one of the characters mentioned casually creating a dip. That made me wonder if it was really that quick and easy or if the character was humble bragging. It turned out to be as easy as the character made it sound - salmon dip if you want to know. But in turn it led me to think about the characters’ pre-hospitality rituals. For instance, do they need to do all the cleaning themselves and if yes, do they listen to music while they clean? Voila, my entrance to a potential soundscape has arrived with that question. In my younger, bouncier days I used to listen to Led Zeppelin when cleaning and dance around. My dancing days are no longer here, at least not when anyone is looking.

Picking music for a show is probably my favorite part of being a sound designer. I mean, who doesn’t like to listen to lots of music anyway? But this is a real opportunity to explore genres and artists I might not have paid attention to otherwise, so there are numerous rabbit holes to explore and enjoy. The fun is in discovering a song to convey or highlight an emotional element, especially if it is subtle. Of course, the aggravation is in finding a segment that does that but isn’t too long to use. Preshow and intermission music are easier in a way since you use whole songs instead of segments. Sometimes I just pick based on a gut impression that a song makes me think of a character in the show and then I make a game of coming up with reasons why the song lyrics fit the show (or not) each performance that I hear it again in context. (That’s more for shows where I’m running sound - usually when there are personal wireless microphones used - so I’m at all the shows.)

I keep my Google and YouTube algorithms nicely confused when it comes to music. It gets pretty funny sometimes but the novelty of what pops up is quite useful. More of those fun rabbit holes. Being able to use key words and publication dates and all the things that the internet knows how to do is very useful in finding new music that fits. I can explore an idea of what I want the music to convey for me, specific themes, or if I need information to be sure it fits a particular time period. Or any other specification, as one can look that info up.

Come see The Book Club Play and decide how effective I managed to be this time. At the least you will be able to enjoy the awesomeness of this excellent cast and the skill of the rest of the production team.