“Ah, sweet mystery of life…” Wouldn’t we all want to solve it, the mystery of life? The song of the same title reverberates through Annie Wobbler, at scene openings and closings. Lucky for us, the Hamburg Players have in their midst quite a few talented musicians - two of whom, Trevor Ferdy and Harald Djürken, were quickly roped in to arrange, sing and record their versions of it. Read on to find out how they did it in times of social distancing:
Harald getting ready to sing and record in his living room
“Most importantly, when arranging the song versions, I needed to be faithful to the era depicted in the scene,“ says Trevor, which in this case meant imitating the sound of the 1930s for one scene, as well as the ‘60s and early ‘80s. “I like imitating other songs, just for fun. It's nice to try to match the musical elements of a key piece of music that represents a genre well.”
Trevor at work mixing and arranging
But how do you go about creating music when the parties involved cannot meet up due to a pandemic? Thank God for the internet! “First of all, I created a skeleton piano track for Harald to record his singing to. He emailed me his recording, so I could then place it into a more spruced up version with instruments of an orchestra in it,” is how Trevor describes it.
That being said, the whole process proved to be slightly more challenging than he lets on. In particular, considering that both musicians were only able to stay in touch by phone, Zoom, or email throughout most of the production.
That’s what the vocals look like on a screen
As a singer, finding the right key and tempo while not being in the same room with Trevor was not without its difficulties, as Harald recalls: “I guess especially for the jazzier version, we would normally have improvised together once we understood what direction was needed. In the end, I recorded the vocals just with a metronome as a playback. It sometimes took us a few days because we were worked on the music in the evening or on the weekend. So, a few hours together in a room with a piano would have clearly made things easier. But even so, we were able to record, send and re-record music while in two different places. And it worked!"
Part of the soundtrack to “Annie Wobbler” on Trevor’s computer
You can hear Trevor’s and Harald’s cooperation in our production of Arnold Wesker’s Annie Wobbler between 1 and 11 September. More info and tickets here.