At noon Adryan Russ and Shelly Markham arrived to play me the revised songs from the show I'm kind of dramaturging for them, after which I'll direct a staged reading - it's based on a fairly well known movie. They played me the opening number, still didn't quite get what I wanted, so I spent thirty minutes, shuffling things around, futzing with the arrangement and making sure all the choruses were always at every point beginning and ending in a major key, which it wasn't, and by the end of that it was working just as it should be. So, that's a big one fixed. Then they played me the second song, which happens well into the show. I changed up the arrangement a bit, made Shelly and Adryan smooth out a few things and that was that. The third song was one I'd asked for a completely new version of musically. And even though it was a little rough I knew it was better than the first version because it made musical sense to me in terms of the character who's singing it. Adryan had already told me they both preferred version one. So, I had them play that right after and they both knew the new one was preferable. So, we finessed that and that's three songs that now are cohesive enough to be in the show.
