As we approach our Summer tour of ‘Shakespeare’s Scenes & Sonnets’, the music production behind the scenes is coming to a close.
Our composer and Musical Director, Simon Roberts, has been working hard on the numbers for this production and the process has not been easy! Simon & Claire have worked together previously on a range of different musical ventures but this one is their first Shakespeare production and, of course, it’s Two Roots’ debut!
The music for the Shakespeare show has been particularly complex because of the nature of the work, the songs needed to be original tracks but also had to have a modern, contemporary feel in order to work with the style of the piece. And because Shakespeare’s works are so prolific, the words needed to be done justice and used in an appropriate way which required an intricate and thorough process.
Writing original songs for any show usually starts with discussions and conversation about the overall feel and aim for the piece. For our Shakespeare piece, we wanted to stay true to the text but ensure that the songs really added to the aura of the show and left the audience with that ‘wow’ feeling. We also wanted to make sure that the music was fluid enough so that we could add effective movement to the opening and closing numbers, further adding to the storytelling of the particular moment the music is accompanying.
It used to be that when writing songs for a show, everything started with dots on the page and was edited or processed either on the instrument/using the vocals it was written for or by using a software program like sibelius or garageband to digitally produce the tracks. However, we’re lucky in that nowadays we can ping each other voicenotes, use apps to sample different elements and we can even create different vocal tones and sounds using AI voices. Simon very much tapped into the majority of these resources whilst creating the music for Scenes & Sonnets and it became a playful and exploratory process that involved using whatever we could to create the right sound for each song.
Claire’s favourite moment during the music writing process was recording the fairy voices for the Midsummer Night’s Dream transition track. From working on this, it actually gave her a better insight into the personalities of the fairies, as they very often get overlooked adaptations of the play and the depth of their characters tends to be underdeveloped.
When asked what his favourite moments of the process have been, Simon said he’s enjoyed collaborating with Two Roots immensely and in particular, the challenge of the brief itself which was to write modern, trap-vibes music to the words of Shakespeare’s plays. He is also really looking forward to hearing his music sung on stage, particularly because Shakespeare’s texts are more commonly all spoken word.
We have loved creating the original music for this piece. Each track has a very unique sound that not only adds to the story but helps create a truly exciting and dynamic atmosphere for our audience.
We hope you enjoy the music in Shakespeare’s Scenes & Sonnets as much as we do!
