Wallitner Weekly 33

Hello everyone!

A lot of productive things happened this past Holiday season

I didn’t do a very good job of being consistent with writing these weeklies. But new year new me, right? I do have the excuse that last week was New Years and the week before was Christmas, but still.

I feel like I was very productive over the holidays. I wrote a handful of poems and around three and a half minutes of music. I also did a lot of reading and score study. My soon to be father in law got me a book called “Sondheim for singers” which has 39 different songs written by the late great Sondheim. I also got a book called “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. I would recommend the Pressfield to anyone interested in doing any sort of large independent project. Whether that’s painting or music or writing or business. It’s all about “resistance” and motivation. It’s a real kick in the butt.

I also proposed a 5-10 year plan to some of my mentors and peers for myself. One of my goals in the future is to own a publishing company. I want to help composers like myself get their music out there in a way that is actually profitable, as opposed to the current industry standard where the publisher takes up to 90 percent of the revenue. With the internet age, I think the split can be a little more even.

The first step in that plan of mine is to publish a ton of pieces. I want to get my name out and start working with as many different people as I possibly can. So I have a lot of writing to do.

I’ve got lots of plans for next week too!

Next week I work the tour of “Waitress” at the capitol theater. And then I am going suit shopping and whiskey tasting with my groomsmen and best man. Waitress is one of my favorite soundtracks, but I have never seen the show before. Im excited to watch it from backstage!

Hopefully amidst the snow and chaos Ill be able to finish up my first piece of the year this week. The working title is “Yet”. Its a story about a kid who is pushing the limits of the boundaries their parent sets.

The first bit of text is “ I’ve heard those words a thousand times. Do not climb that tree. But today I felt brave, so I climbed. Nothing bad happened yet.”

I really like pieces that tell stories, so although these words aren’t as poetic as my usual lyrics, I am very happy with the way the music sounds.

Conversations in music.

I have been studying Sondheim extensively the past few weeks. For those of you who dont know the name, he’s the guy who wrote the lyrics to “West Side Story”. He also wrote the musicals “Into the Woods” and “Sweeny Todd” just to name a few. Sondheim had this way of writing lyrics that were conversational and clever. He was a major pioneer for the idea that songs in musicals had to propel the story forward, not just be songs. And he could tell such deep stories in such a concise way.

I love lyric writing. However, its not something I thought I would end up doing, like these weekly newsletters, it started out of necessity and led to something I genuinely enjoy.

I was watching this interview with Sondheim about his life and how he started and how he ended up becoming so great. I learned that he had originally not wanted to write the lyrics for “West Side Story”. He hated the idea of “just” writing the lyrics. He wanted to compose.

This information came to me at the perfect time because I was in the process of kicking myself for “only” writing lyrics for so many people. I spent at least a week thinking things like “This is not what I went to school to do”, “What a waste of a degree”. Some of my greatest successes are set by someone else. My own fiancee said I write better poetry/lyrics for other people than I do for myself.

Now, don’t me wrong, I love writing text. But I wanted to be a composer, not a lyricist.

It was reassuring to learn that Sondheim was thinking the same things. Then one of his mentors said to go on and write the lyrics because it’ll be really helpful to see how people like Leonard Bernstein (The composer for West Side) work. And collaborating with people is a powerful thing.

Fast forward a few decades and Sondheim is one of the most famous musical theater composers, and he’s known for writing amazing lyrics.

I’m not comparing myself to Sondheim, but I think there is a valuable lesson to be had from both of our situations. There’s no such thing as “Only” this or “Just” that. No skill is lesser, and you can have more than one skill. Its all useful and the more diverse your skills are the more interesting of a person you’ll be!

Unrelated, I have to stop writing now because my fiancee is going to teach me how to crochet.