Chapter 6
The Heart Beat of a Performance
Normally a person's heart constantly beats throughout the day. If our heart stops, then we're in trouble and better get it going again soon or we're going to die. When we're scared or under stress our heart pounds faster and harder, but when we are calm it pumps at a calm pace. So how is a heartbeat like a story performance. They both have a rhythm. And just like the heart beat, when a scene is calm the rhythm is soft and slow, but when things get it intense it becomes harder and faster.
Rhythm Everywhere
Where do composers get their inspiration from. We can experience natural rhythm by observing our heartbeat, but there are also other sources of natural rhythm. The movement of the earth is a rhythm that consistently changes our world from day to night and from summer to winter. The weather also has a rhythm. You can hear a rhythm as rain drops hit the ground.
In our society there you can find human made, but unintentional rhythms like the ticking of a clock or the rumbling of a train. We can find rhythms occurring naturally around us and use those for inspiration.
Rhythm and Speech
There's also a rhythm to how we talk. When someone is calm they will talk slowly and when they get excited they talk faster. Even between people in a conversation there's a rhythm. In drama it depends on the style of the scene. Often the rhythms in drama won't be the same as the rhythms in normal everyday speech. It depends on whether you want your performance to be naturalistic (like real life) or whether you want it to be more stylistic (not like real life). In comedy people often talk very fast, while in a musical people will even sing there thoughts. Notice the rhythm in the language with these famous comical scenes.
Notice these scenes from musicals and how the music reflects how the characters are expressing their feelings.
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