The SOUND of Brain Chemistry For Lovers
One of the reasons music is so powerful is how it makes us feel. In spite of myself, I have an emotional reaction to some of the most inane and psychologically manipulative movies or even commercials because of the background music that's used in conjunction with the images. My husband John Smith, who has composed and produced the music for 1000's of commercials, talks about the psychology of chords and how easy it is to manipulate an audience to feel what you want them to feel. For instance, let's imagine that we're being shown a scene in a film where little Johnny is about to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. His loving family is around him, but the camera moves to a figure smiling in the background – Johnny's uncle perhaps. If the chords being played underneath the Happy Birthday song are in a major key (the ones we usually hear) we experience a sense of happiness and that all is well. If the film composer instead uses some disturbing sounding minor chords – or a violin section playing a rhythmic figure that we associate with the soundtrack to horror movies we're familiar with – we feel discomfort. “Oh no! Something horrible is about to happen to little Johnny! Maybe his uncle is about to go mad and smash his little head to bits!”
You get the idea.
In Brain Chemistry For Lovers, we wanted to take advantage of this ability that music has to take us into the feeling or limbic part of the brain. After all, inserting a science lecture into a concert means that you're doing a lot of talking – an activity that stimulates the left side of the brain (Broca's Area on the left side of the left frontal lobe, and Wernicke's Area on the left temporal lobe) whose job it is to processes verbal information. We wanted to find songs that not only had lyrics that were applicable to the phases of love being described, but really helped the audience to “go limbic” – or feel the effects of the chemicals related to those phases. We could have written original songs for the show, but to make the contrast between the science and songs even stronger, we decided we needed songs that were really familiar. So familiar in fact that a broad range of people would be able to connect to a very powerful brain system having to do with emotional memory – called the amygdala.
Talk about being manipulated!
So who is this “we” I keep referring to? The master manipulators? Allow me introduce them!
The WE in Brain Chemistry:
Darrell Grant is every vocalists dream accompanist. He listens, responds, and often anticipates my next breath or phrase like he's been accompanying singers all his life. In fact he has. The first vocalist he backed up as a young boy was his mom. In his professional life he's been the man at the piano for a wide range of vocalists – from jazz legend Betty Carter to 60's pop icon Lesley Gore. Plus, he loves to sing – which means his playing serves not only the singer, but also the song. He's a natural as collaborator and musical director for this show. We've had a blast working on the scripting together too. His adlibs during “workshop” performances became an integral part of the process of molding the finished script. The character he plays in the show is the perfect foil for my science/singer self. By interrupting and asking me questions and making asides about the science of love – he adds some levity and playfulness to the proceedings. We have a lot of fun bouncing ideas back and forth in “real” life too! He and I took a list of the chemicals that occur in the different phases of love and then pulled songs about them from the repertoire we'd been performing together. Over the next year we scouted for songs that we were missing. The audiences we were “work shopping” the show for added to the list as well. Songs like “Fever” and “You Go To My Head” that I'd sung a million times became new again in this chemical context.
My husband John is also a natural for this project. After all the music he's composed and arranged for (classical, country, pop, R&B, electronica…the list of styles is endless!) he has the right musical tool kit for the job. For some of the songs, Darrell and I went to John's studio and recorded the arrangements we'd been playing live. Then John wrote the orchestrations over them using much of Darrell's musical vocabulary. For others, he already had an idea of how they would go and arranged them from scratch. The resulting orchestrations are humorous, harmonically rich, and strikingly beautiful. Part Nelson Riddle, part Vince Mendoza with a dash of Danny Elfman thrown in, they take the songs to another level by creating an aural palette that has a personality all it's own.
Thank goodness he comes cheap! The orchestrations took 5 months from start to finish. It's never the writing that takes him time – it's the inputting of all the dynamic markings, bowings, and chord symbols that leaves Malcolm and me at home alone for nights on end. The poor man is still catching up on his sleep. This has been a true labor of love for him.
And then there's the Brain Chemistry Band – Mike Horsfall on vibes, Gary Hobbs on drums and Kevin Deitz on bass. These gentlemen are the “professors of jazz” both literally and figuratively. They all teach at colleges in the Portland metro area - and they all deserve Ph.D.'s in jazz having played with everyone from the Stan Kenton Orchestra to Kurt Elling, Dave Brubeck to Anita O'Day. They're the cake AND the frosting when it comes to the show. Gary and Kevin are so solid when it comes to their sense of time, yet tastefully creative when adding their own vocabulary to the story of the song. And Mike…well, he is ALL frosting – cream cheese frosting to take the food metaphor way too far. He has a fantastic sense of humor – and a keen intellect that, when combined make for some great comping and solos.
So there you have it – the SOUND of Brain Chemistry For Lovers. The music in the show happens on “stage right” – or the right side of the brain. The science of love is TALKED about on “stage left” – or the left side of the brain. By the end of the show we hope to have both sides integrated and communicating with each other. Of course that's a simplistic way of talking about the brain – but hey – this is performance art!
