Context is everything, or the art of the set up

Context is critical for people, because that's how we are wired up.  Psychologists and neuroscientists will tell you this.  Whole strategies for memorization are built around this fact, because the brain can access information most effectively if it's in the same state as it was in when the information was stored.  This has ramifications for the way we learn music and memorize lines, but that's a whole different article - this one is about the audience, and how to prepare them for the greatest impact.

A quick story.  Years ago I was participating in a "top gun" school, where the best a cappella quartets in my area were all being coached by experts that were flown in.  Part of the weekend was a show, and the coaches were all in the audience.  Earlier that day, a legendary coach named Larry Ajer told me that he didn't like hearing broadway tunes done in a show set, because they just didn't work outside of the context of the musical.  Then I got up and sang "Old Man River" and saw Larry in the front row, giving me a knowing look, and realizing that it was a broadway tune.

And he was right - Old Man River just doesn't make as much sense without the events and the setting of Showboat, the musical.  We can see in the lyrics a shadow of the meaning, but a lot is left to the listener, and not every listener is going to take up the challenge.  So we will get unpredictable results.

To get around this, if you can't actually mount the whole musical, you need to do something to put the audience into the right starting frame of mind, so they can take the journey that is the song and wind up where they are supposed to wind up, emotionally.  And that is the purpose of a set up.

One of the most requested songs that Realtime sings is the Scottish folk song Loch Lomond.  It's a beautiful arrangement (by fellow Vancouver musician Jonathan Quick), and Mark sings it very well, but I think the biggest reason for the amazing response it gets is that we do the following set up to put the audience into the correct context, and to create powerful images in their mind's eye.  In fact this set up is written right on the stock sheet music that we bought:

"1745, after the failed uprising at Carlysle, two of Bonnie Prince Charlie's men have been captured.  One is to be executed, the other set free.  According the Celtic tradition, the spirit of the condemned man will return home via the "low road."  He will reach his homeland before his comrade, but he will never see his true love again."

Then the song begins: "By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes..."

By the time we get to the chorus and sing "Ye'll take the high road and I'll take the low road..." the audience is dead silent, except for the occasional sob, as the meaning of the lyrics sinks in.  After we sing this in a show, more often than not we will have people of Scots descent come up to us and say that their father or grandfather used to sing that song, but they never really understood what it meant before.  It affects them deeply.

What do you think - would it be so effective, without the setup?

Now ask yourself, which of your songs come out of nowhere from the audience's perspective?  Maybe you can make them work better, with the right set up.