If you compose music and instead of rock star dreams, you see Broadway lights, you can and should compose for musical theater. There is quite a bit of money to be made in this market. It may be hard , but the jobs are there. The best thing about writing for musical theater is that there is no set time limit on how long your songs should be. It’s not like commercial radio stations, so you are free from that type of constraint. When you are writing for a show, you get royalties for every performance that is done. If your show is performed all over the world, you will receive royalties from all over the world.
If you have a hit show, the composer, lyricist and librettist make seven to ten thousand dollars per week from that one show. If you times that amount by how many touring companies there are, the pay is even better than that! Songwriters are also paid from the release of the original cast album, sheet music sales, piano/vocal, public performances on television, film and clubs. Composers and lyricists get an equal share in sales from television and film.
Writing For Theater
A musical is composed of three different parts: The Libretto(script or book), lyrics and music. Writing the songs for stage is just a small fraction of the musical. It is crucial that every writer working together understands how each individual creates, and they need to come together and become a perfect whole. It goes without saying that every song needs to flow smoothly together. If the writers are not united, there is no musical. The music and the lyrics are the voice and emotions of the characters in the show.
The libretto tells the story, structure and characters. As I have described above, the lyric is the voice of the characters. It has to express the characters mood. The music is the support system of the lyrics by dramatizing it. To write a musical, you have to read the book, create the lyrics based on the characters, then you compose the music. Composers and lyricists need to find a scriptwriter, playwright or aspiring film or television writer. One thing you should never do is put together songs and find a story that fits them.
A lot of shows that fail had great cast recordings. It’s very important to know that if your book is not strong, you don’t have a show. Don’t attempt to do a musical all by yourself unless you have a very strong background in staging. The reason is because not many people have mastered writing the libretto as good as the lyrics and music. Simply find a playwright and plan the show together, or you can find a play that can be made into a musical. All you have to do is get the rights to it and work with a playwright that will write the book.
Pop Music and Songwriting For Theater
There is a distinctive difference between pop music and songwriting for theater. You can basically write a pop song anyway you want. You don’t have to have perfect rhyming in a pop song. When you are writing for musical theater, the producers, publishers and especially the audience want an extremely high level of lyric writing. All the lines in a song have to be perfect rhymes. You have to include internal rhymes. All you have to do is look over any lyric from the greats like Oscar Hammerstein or Cole Porter to know where you have to be. Musicals are like manuscripts, they are rewritten several times until it’s perfect.
Legal Matters
When you’re going to put on a musical, there are things that you have to do before submitting the show. Everyone who collaborates-book writers, lyricists, the musician, has to sign a collaboration agreement. A collaboration agreement is when terms are made up about the way everyone will work and what would happen to the show if the collaborators break up. The Dramatists Guild has a standard form for their members. You can become a member by requesting information at this address: 234 West 44th Street New York, NY 10036.
If you’re using material that’s not public domain, you have to secure the rights to it, before the show goes into development. Copyright your scripts and songs. Don’t fail to do that no matter what! You can do that by cassette or lead sheet. You have to copyright it as an unpublished collection under one title. Only then will you be ready to submit.
