Paula Vogel's

How I Learned To Drive

An adaptation of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer winning How I Learned To Drive, director Josh Feder headlined this work for the UC Irvine Drama department. Ensconcing itself in complicated themes and gray morality, I was responsible for music and sound for the production.

Through encouragement from the director, the show is almost entirely scored throughout: each scene and moment given cinematic-styled underscoring, with 45 tracks, and over 70 minutes of material written recorded in the span of under six weeks.

As Wagner played a reoccurring role throughout the narrative, I felt it appropriate to lean heavily towards a leitmotif-based system when composing. 

Li'l Bit, the protagonist, and narrator, served as the core of which everything branched out from. Her melody set the mood and tone. It's played on an acoustic guitar to denote her rural upbringing, but is additionally soaked in ambient synthesizer textures. I knew going in I didn't want the music to be emotionally controlling, especially given the nuanced topics the play explores. Instead, I aimed for it to be more contemplative: The choices and future laid out for Li'l Bit not always clear.

The theme for the deuteragonist of the play, Uncle Peck. I intentionally developed his motif to be able to be layered together with Li'l Bit's in the form of a counterpoint. Their melodies combine and separate at poignant moments, meant to signify their closeness, and their inevitable unraveling.  

Peck is arguably the most complex character, and while I wanted the parallels between him and Bit to be clear, his aural soundscape is always intended to be lower. At times where his southern charm breaks, and the differences between him and Bit grow, his acoustic guitar is traded out for somber, elongated cello lines.

In addition to his main theme, Peck has a sub-theme which reprises itself several times. Meant to represent his inner struggle, and eventual downfall, it begins on the same two notes as his regular motif, but deviates from there, with a steady, persistent rhythm every four beats. The Inner Demons melody is also utilized in counterpoint to to Li'l Bit's identity.

Rounding out the primary identities, which are shown in the opening three cues, is the overall motif meant to represent the family. "Family is family" is a reoccurring concept throughout the play, and so I thought it needed to have a unique place against the other two main themes. Li'l Bit's starts on an "A" note, while Peck's begins with an "F#." The Family Theme then opens on a "C#," completing a trifecta where combined, they'd create an F# minor triad: the tonic of the key which much of the score is written in. 

Additionally, the B section for the Family Theme contains a direct quote of Li'l Bit's motif, and later, the motif gets transformed into a sub-concept for Li'l Bit's mother. 

This variation is used in a fun, comedic segment, where Li'l Bit's mother gives 'life lessons' on 'social drinking.' For this sequence, I was requested to write "50s sitcom music," which I did my best to oblige. The melody is transposed up to major, and, against the entire set of mental rules I placed under myself when composing this score, I brought in pizzicato strings, and a set of saxophones: alto, tenor, and bari. For the three reprises of this theme, I had the melody getting lower, the tempo slower, and the entire recording, 'drunker.'

The final, really notable concept, is a theme developed for the character of Aunt Mary: Peck's wife. In the play, she gets a very unique moment, where she takes center stage, and narrates to the audience. She lays out her thoughts, her concerns, and practically her soul. It's a very intimate, somber scene, that I wanted my best to do justice to. When writing, I approached matters from the angle of the melody being a sort of inversion of Peck's theme. In the latter half of the track, Peck's theme is also directly quoted, in fact.

Continuing the dual identities for Peck, this work is performed on cello, but has a single reprise done on acoustic guitar.

I also worked as the sound designer, and general audio director for the show: handling, in particular, a section where the ensemble breaks out into song. The requirements there proved demanding, as the characters sang over an instrumental track, but then the sound had to seamlessly blend back into an original, vocal recording.

Design-wise, there were two particularly prominent elements: cars, and the music of the 60s. As this play was a period piece, and featured several source cues throughout, attention to detail was given to choices there: the director wanting to emphasize light pop music that had subtlety disturbing implications to the lyrics, that would pique the audience's ears.

Fittingly, as this play focused on driving, cars, and the sound of the road, were a keenly important role. The show opens and closes with the revving of an engine: in particular, this is used to an effect during a traumatic moment in the show. Music swells, the engine blares, and the overall sound reaches a cacophony, before abruptly ending with a hushed gasp for air.