Tag: songwriting
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What Are the Odds?
This is a post where I reflect on my life to date and the story behind the number What Are the Odds? from the show I’m currently working on. You can skip the reflection and go straight to where I talk about the show, the background on this number or jump straight to the video,…
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Empty House
The end of February is fast approaching, and I am nowhere near the fourteen song target for February Album Writing Month. Unlike at my day job, where I can usually hunker down and churn out accounting memos and checklists and reports one after another, I am not blessed with the ability to be a prolific…
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Birthdays
Birthdays are strange and powerful. I don’t know what it is, but no matter how dismissive you try to be about your own birthday, you can never quite convince your own heart that it’s just a day like any other day. For me at least, it’s evolved from a celebration that I greatly look forward…
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Ivory Keys
In my last post, I mentioned that I recently took Pat Pattison’s Coursera songwriting course (as offered by the Berklee College of Music via their Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) partnership with Coursera. I had a couple of reasons: I am intellectually in love with the idea behind MOOCs…and they are on the rise. I’m…
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Broadway, here I come!
I’m high above the city I’m standing on the ledge The view from here is pretty And I step off the edge —Broadway, Here I Come from Smash. I’ve previously discussed how being brought up under Chinese tradition generally results in an obstinate tendency to refuse to admit failure and how it leads to an…
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The Art of Storytelling
Last month, I finally went and took the advice Stephen Flaherty gave to me over three years ago: “If you want to write musical theatre, don’t study music. Study drama. Learn about plot, characterization and structure.” At the time, I didn’t really grasp the importance of that advice. Sure, I intellectually knew that musical theatre…
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Audit Busy Season
Earlier this year, around my birthday, I felt like things were happening and life was taking off. Recently, I feel very much like life has slowed to a crawl – in terms of progress. The days are still passing by much faster than I would like (my mind still boggles at the thought that I’m…
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Remember Me
Okay, so this is not actually the first song we wrote. The first song we wrote is still in too terrible a shape to be released for public viewing. Here is the second song we’ve written instead. Jonathan was struck by inspiration and composed this beautiful piece of instrumental music a few weeks ago for…
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26 Songs
Series photo by Jon Bragg on Flickr. A few things have happened over the last two months to keep me busy and too tired to blog, not the least being passing my final CA exam and audit busy season hitting me like a ton of bricks. Now everyone knows to be any good at anything,…
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Jazz and Arancini
This is a post where I discuss the story behind my solo piano work Jazz and Arancini which I premiered at the Composers Collective Spring 2015 concert. You can skip the reflection and go straight to the background on this piece, the audio and video recordings or program notes. April’s been a pretty emotional month…
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Another Year, Another City
I am seriously unstable. I can hear you thinking now, “Deb, there’s no way you’re unstable. You’re: a) married; b) you’ve been at the same job since high school; and c) you have this crazy twenty-year plan to boot.” I can see why you would be confused. Allow me to observe that I am twenty-eight…
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A Tale of Two Generations
Recently, Sarah and I have been working on the opening number to our show, which is tentatively titled Graduation Day. Planning to do our opening number tmr @MTFmusicals's Factory Salon tomorrow w/@AdamGwon – a fan since I saw Ordinary Days @darlotheatre! — Deborah Lau | Paper Tiger YouTube channel (@DeborahLau) March 26, 2015 We recently…
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