Written Exegesis; LaLa Land Medley

Lala Land the Medley is a 6-minute choral medley arrangement that features 3 pieces
from the Hollywood hit movie ‘Lala Land’ (2016, Damien Chazelle) and is arranged for
four female vocal parts and several opportunities to feature soloists. The project features
the opening number ‘Another Day of Sun’, party song ‘Someone In The Crowd’ and
ballad ‘City of Stars’ with each vocal part having the opportunity to play the role of the
protagonist Mia or the love interest Sebastian.

My arrangement aligns with other composition projects that are created for high school
choirs or youth choirs such as the Australian Girls’ Choir, Adelaide Youth Choir and
Young Adelaide Voices. My work is tailored more towards a girls’ choir as the parts are
only written for female singers (soprano 1, 2a and 2b, alto 1 and 2) however this work
could easily be transposed for male parts for a diverse and inclusive range of vocalists.
Other types of work that my arrangement aligns with includes the Glenwood High
School choral medleys such as Hamilton (2017), Frozen (2014), Sondheim (2014), and
Grinch! (2018). These medleys consist of several songs, around 3-8 pieces, featuring
soloists and using a combination of vocal parts to create a story. My arrangement format
was created using the Australian Girls’ Choir finale pieces as an outline. These finale
medleys often use around 4 to 6 songs and use only female vocalists from ages 5 to 18
therefore the piece has to be challenging enough for the senior singers but also have
moments that are simpler for the juniors. My piece, ‘LaLa Land Choral Medley’ would fit
in among these companies and their vocal medleys as they use a combination of vocal
parts, difficult harmonies, and featured soloists to communicate the story of the movie
or musical from which the music comes from.

To begin this project, I listened to the entire LaLa Land soundtrack in order to decide
which pieces to include in the final arrangement. Several other pieces had smaller
arrangements made but did not make the final cut of the piece. I listened out for similar
keys, songs that would allow for harmony and solo lines and interesting moments in
each piece to highlight. From here, I made several arrangements of these pieces using a
microphone and an app (LoopStation) to gain an understanding of how the pieces will
sound and work together. After several attempts using LoopStation, I moved my
arrangements onto MuseScore and started notating the songs. On here I was able to
finesse the arrangements and have a clear understanding of how they could sound with
all parts singing at once. I decided to use the three most popular pieces from the film
and placed them in the order in which they appear in the movie, aside from the reprise.
After I had decided on my three pieces for the arrangement and had finished the
notation, I started to process of combining them into the medley and composed the
transitional bars. For some pieces, this was very easy, such as Another Day of Sun and
Someone In The Crowd as they are in the same key, however the transition between City
of Stars and Someone In The Crowd was much more difficult and I had to be creative
when creating a flow between the pieces. I also decided that I didn’t want the piece to
finish with a ballad and therefore decided to reprise Someone In The Crowd for a bigger
finish and an impactful last note. The last section of the reprise was inspired by the
ending of the piece ‘For The First Time In Forever’ from the musical Frozen to allow for a
positive lift on the last chord.

My original timeline laid out a week-by-week task update with completion of 2 pieces
every week. This was unachievable for me as I had many external factors affecting my
available time to work on my project including illness, nursing placement and work
commitments. Instead of using this week-by-week update, I started and completed my
project within three weeks, taking off entire days to complete the project. This was not
sustainable for me nor was it helpful for the project. I used a time blocking technique in
order to complete the project, blocking off entire days to complete my first step of
vocally mapping the arrangement, notate each piece and then finally put the pieces
together to create a cohesive medley. Whilst this technique allowed me to achieve my
goal, I was unsuccessful in completing the project in the time frame. For future projects, I
will need to create a new technique for time management to allow myself ample time to
complete the project within the given timeframe. This may include creating a day-by-day
schedule of both the project commitment and other commitments so I can visualise
where these time blocks for my project will fit in.

The journey from my proposal to my final project has drastically changed the outcome
of my project. Whilst many of the parameters are similar (6–10-minute arrangement
using 4-6 female vocal parts to create a musical medley), my actual project changed
from an arrangement of six songs from the movie Hercules to an arrangement of three
songs from the movie LaLa Land. My choice to change my project late in the timeframe
was impacted by the scale of which I had planned for my Hercules arrangement, my
commitments to my nursing degree, work commitments and unforeseen illness that
occurred late in the semester. For future projects, I would like to focus on time
management and music collaboration. In my proposal I had hoped to record my
arrangement with several amateur vocalists however my time management didn’t allow
for this to be arranged. In further projects, I would like to be able to record my
arrangements and collaborate with other artists to create a finished product.

My project is for school choirs, youth choirs and girls’ choirs to both educate and
perform. Schools may use my project to teach vocalists about singing in harmony and
teach tension chords, resolution, and jazz chords. The arrangement can also be used for
performances, to showcase learning from a score and performance skills. I adapted my
arrangement to suit a youth choir by creating easier harmonies and simple rhythms that
are easy to follow along and sight read. The score has difficult sections that are tailored
towards a senior student chorale that may be simplified if performing with a younger
class. The music chosen for the arrangement suits a youth audience as the movie from
which the music is from is a modern film and the original score is sung by popular actors,
creating notoriety and interest in learning.

To create a project for a larger target audience, I would create a different version of the
piece with simpler two-part harmonies to allow for a younger choir to utilise the entire
score instead of just some sections. I would also record and video a version of the
arrangement and publish this to social media to advertise the arrangement and gain
audience members. Through social media, I would be able to reach a wide variety of end
users such as choir directors, choristers and teachers that may be able to have a use for
my project. This video would be published to several social media sites to reach a wider
variety of end users such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Another way I could further
promote my project is by reaching out to colleagues in the industry such as music
teachers, music coordinators and current choristers and give them use of the project,
therefore promoting my project further through organisations.