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ShowbizU: How Composers Collaborate- Joe DiPietro

Name: ShowbizU: How Composers Collaborate- Joe DiPietro
Uploaded: 2014-01-06T20:56:39+00:00
Duration: 1 min 31 s
Channel: Tim Kashani
Description: In this interview excerpt, playwright Joe DiPietro discusses how he communicates and collaborates with composers, particularly highlighting his work with…

6 Jan 2014 · 2 min

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1:31

In this interview excerpt, playwright Joe DiPietro discusses how he communicates and collaborates with composers, particularly highlighting his work with David Bryan. He explains that great composers possess a unique ability to ‘hear’ music internally, a talent that allows them to tap into a universal musical sense. DiPietro emphasizes that his starting point is usually the script or lyrical idea, which he shares with the composer to explore the song’s direction—whether it’s a love ballad, an up‑tempo number, or a particular style. The collaboration is described as a rolling, iterative process where the composer can present multiple musical options, and together they refine the piece, often arriving at a result that exceeds the original concept. The conversation underscores the importance of clear language, mutual creativity, and the surprising outcomes that can emerge when a composer translates a writer’s ideas into music.

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What language do you use to communicate, collaborate, work with a composer to, in essence, give you what you want? Yes, and I hope a composer gives me what I want, but also something more than what I want.
You know, if you work with great people like David Bryan and some other people I've worked with, like, you know, they're generally— the great composers to me hear music. Like, I think they're all a little crazy because there's a part of their brain that hears music that people like me don't have. That most people don't have, and so somehow they just can connect into this music that's in the universe and do it. But I think, I sort of just go back to the script, is what, hopefully what I'm writing, just by my words, they're like, oh, this needs to be this. But also, having said that, people ask what comes first, the music or the lyrics? It's really the idea to me with a song. Like, I'll sit down with David Bryan and we'll say, okay, so here's a scene, what if they sang this and what if we called it this? And then we talk about, is it a love song, Is it up-tempo? What's the style? We'll talk about that stuff. And someone like David, who really does hear music, he can play sometimes 4 or 5 different— is it like this? Is it like this? And she can say, oh no, that's— oh, I was thinking that, but that sounds better. So yeah, but it's a rolling collaboration. And you hope you work with people who— you hope you bring good ideas, and the people you work with can translate that to a musical place that surprises you and even surpasses your original idea.