Script/lyrics Spectrogram Song notes Album
Watch the
Promo Videos,
one and two, made
by Dominic Hook, particularly if you've bought the album
and want to get a picture of how we perform it before you
listen to it.
And here's the one page
pitch pdf for the show.
Written by Mal Webb, it's a 90 minute show, with Mal Webb and Kylie Morrigan playing 7 characters and some of the most complex arrangements and live-looping they've ever attempted, with voices, beatboxing, guitar, mbira, trombone, slide trumpet, violin and melodica. It's a bit like a radio show (more than a little influenced by the Goons). It was first performed on September 29, 2018. If you'd like to know when it's next being performed, check the gig page: http://malwebb.com/gigs.html or get on Mal's email list (by emailing mal@malwebb.com ).
Here's the basic gist of it:
Notey likes single frequencies. Noisy likes as many
frequencies as possible, but the perfect note and noise
have always eluded them.
So they visit a wise chap called Knowsy to try to work it
out, but soon find out that the science of music is a
series of near misses, shifting sands and slippery slopes:
Nature's cheeky like that!
Notey and Noisy will tickle your brain as its two titular
protagonists embark on an aural cerebral adventure across
the unstable landscape of the Facts, Figures, Physics and
Phrivolity of Sound.
Deconstructing the nuts and bolts of music is at once
joyful and terrifying.
Imagine a mongrel mix of the Goons, Victor Borge, Jacob
Collier and Julius Sumner Miller.
As an audient once said, "I didn't understand it all, but
it made me feel clever".
It incorporates a projection of a spectrum analyser and a
sweeping
spectrogram on a screen that both helps the audience
get their heads around the concepts and looks rather
pretty.
The show's initial idea was sparked alongside
Patrick Helean (of Questacon) and was developed with the
assistance (and error checking!) of Professor
Joe Wolfe (UNSW Physics, who's also a brilliant
musician/composer), as well as incredible
multi-instrumentalists and certified music geeks, Josh
Bennett and Linsey Pollak.
Of the people who saw the first performance, Josh
Bennett said, "It's like the inside of my brain done
as a musical".
And comedian Frank Woodley said, "Absolutely superb. A
wildly enjoyable attempt to explain the mysteries of the
profound pleasure of music. I love it. There's enough
brilliant ideas in it to fill ten musicals. A wonderful
witty tsunami of musical ideas, dense with the kind of
beautiful melodies, astounding soundscapes and
scintillating wit that I expect from Mal. A work of
ludicrous ambition that had me dancing in my seat and
grinning from highly stimulated ear to highly stimulated
ear".
Despite what you might assume from the title, it's not a kids' show, although it turns out that kids rather dig it! A nine year old who was at our first run with her mum, said, "I didn't understand all of it, but I didn't mind, 'cos I liked the characters so much... it was like looking through a window into a world I didn't know existed!" Cluey kid! When I asked if she though it'd work in her school, she said, "hmmm, it was good having the adults here". Yep!
And here's our original 1.5 minute trailerette from
Questacon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuAlmE19Ex0
and a longer one: https://youtu.be/S4epAwrqM58
And here're our tech requirements: http://malwebb.com/StagePlanNoteyAndNoisy.jpg
