ATYP
ATYP
Australian Theatre
for Young People
REFINING STORIES
When collecting lots of different ideas it’s important
to have a system or way to collate and refine these
ideas. How does Yve do this?
→ Follow
Yve’s
Pinterest
boards to
see her
inspiration.
“I make Pinterest boards of
things that make me excited.”
YB
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- Use the list you have created pick your
favourite question. It can be the most abstract,
random or realistic question, as long as it
interetsts YOU.
- Make a Pinterest board that refelects every
aspect of the question you have selected.
FINDING THEMES
Australian Theatre
for Young People
MAKING MUSIC
Every artist has their own unique way of
creating their art. Here is an insight into Yve’s
method of making music:
“To write my songs, I first choose my favourite
stories that I think would be well expressed through
music. In my experience, these stories are usually
the most honest or exposing ones.
To create a song from a story I use 3 key steps.
1 - I think about what musical genre would suit a
story. To test this out, sometimes I find karaoke
backing tracks of songs online and try singing so
tires over them to see if they suit the genre.
For example, I got lots of stories from people telling
me what they thought they wanted to be when
they grew up. Because these stories were about
confidence and certainty, I decided to bring them
to life as a hip-hop song because to me, hip-hop is
the perfect genre to express confidence and swag.
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Once Yve has selected the stories that excite
her she looks to find THEMES that connect
stories or small events from each story. Themes
are overarching ideas that recur or provide a link
throughout the piece of theatre as a whole. Linking
different source material through a similar theme
allows for complexity in a piece of theatre and
helps audiences connect with a work.
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- Find themes within this story from Yve’s site
“When I was 5 I broke my arm dancing on a
stool to Shania Twain. Every time she came on
the radio, for the next 5 years, I cried. Because I
thought she pushed me off”
- Can you link the themes from this story with
anything in your own Pinterest board?
MUSICAL GENRES:
- Use the story from Yve or create one of your
own.
- Decide on the themes in the story
- Make a list of Musical Genres that might
match (or contrast) the story
- Find a 3 different Karaoke tracks in the style
of the genres you have selected
- Have a go at putting the story to the
soundtracks
THINK which ones worked/didn’t work? Why/
Why not?
2 - Now it’s time to think about melody. I like to
use the words in the story I have been given to
create my rhythms for example; one of the stories
contained the sentence:
“but yeah but just like not in a weird way”
this inspired a whole jazz number in the show,
because I clapped out the rhythm and it sounded
like a swing beat.
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FINDING RHYTHM IN A SENTENCE
Using the sentence:
“but yeah but just like not in a weird way”
- Play around with emphasising different
words in the sentence
- Try to find a rhythm in the words. Elongate
some of the sounds, put spaces between the
words, and use repetition. Does this make any
difference to the way it sounds/feels?
- Create your own sentence and find its
rhythm.
3 - Once I have my melody I produce the track with
musical director Alex Groves. To do this, we choose
a bunch of instruments to sample see our screen
grab below.
We also like to sample sound effect that are relevant
to the story. For example, in the show we have a
whole drum line made with knives and forks, and
another made of torn up paper.
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