Interview with Georgia Stitt: Composer, Lyricist, Performer

In this edition of our Musicnotes.com Songwriter Spotlight, we turn our attention to the multi-talented Georgia Stitt who has worked as a composer, lyricist, arranger, music director, performer, vocal coach and more! Whether she’s on Broadway or working in television, Georgia is a consummate professional with a passion for all things music.

Musicnotes.com is proud to highlight Georgia in this edition of our Songwriter Spotlight. We’d also like to mention we offer a great selection of sheet music for songs by Georgia Stitt or the Alphabet City Song Cycle sheet music for piano and vocals, too!

Is there a difference between writing songs for a stage production versus a movie or a TV show?

Between the musical theater and the film world, there’s a real difference in the expected style of the music, but the essential task of why you’re writing the song feels more or less the same.  The real difference is not between writing stage vs. TV/film, it’s between writing theatrically and writing pop music.  There are rules in theater music that just go out the window when you’re writing pop songs, and vice versa.  For example, in theater music, lyrics have to rhyme perfectly; anything else is considered a cop-out.  In theater music, the singer makes a discovery over the course of a song and winds up knowing something at the end of it that he or she didn’t know at the beginning of it.  In pop music, songs aren’t structured that way.  It’s perfectly acceptable — even desirable — for you to sing about an emotion for three minutes without ever questioning that emotion.  Pop songs say “I feel good.”  Theater songs say “I feel good but it’s not going to last because you’re married but even so I’m just going to enjoy this moment while it’s here.”  They are both unbelievably difficult to get right.

What are some things that you think about when composing choral pieces?

Some choral composers seem to enjoy just writing for the sounds of vowels or repeating words over and over again just because they’re there.  (Of course, I love a piece of “Alleluia” music as much as anything else, but so far I haven’t written anything like that.)  I want to make sure that at the end of a performance of a piece of my music, the listener has experienced something both musical and verbal.

Can you describe your role as vocal coach for AMERICA’S GOT TALENT in 2008?

America’s Got Talent” was the third reality show for which I worked on the music staff.  The first one was “Grease: You’re The One That I Want” in 2006 and the second was “Clash Of The Choirs” in 2007.  On all three shows my job was to be a liaison between the singers and the producers.  On the “Grease” show, most of the contestants were trained musical theater singers.  They were amateurs, to be sure, but they had been in musicals before and many of them had studied voice in school.  They were the musical theater kids.  Then on “Clash,” the contestants were choirs.  And again, though they were amateurs, these folks, both kids and adults, had experience singing in choirs.  They knew if they were tenors or baritones, most of them could hold harmony and read music.  They were the choir kids.  And then, finally, on “America’s Got Talent,” the show’s contestants weren’t all singers, because it was a variety show.  We had dancers, magicians, comedians, gigantic dancing balloons and an Elvis impersonator.

Of the 40 semi-finalists that year, however, 19 of them were singers, and several of those people had never had any kind of music training at all.  So I was coaching them (one-on-one, several times a week) about vocal warm-ups, introducing them to concepts like singing harmony, using natural instead of forced vibrato, and musical phrasing.  In one case I was desperately trying to get a contestant to quit smoking.  (He didn’t.)  One of our singers won the whole contest, though, and that was thrilling.

How has your educational background affected your ability to write and arrange music?

In college at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music (Nashville) I majored in music theory and composition and had exposure to so many different subjects — orchestration, conducting, accompanying, arranging.  And because of the wonderful liberal arts requirements at that school, I had to take classes that had nothing to do with music — philosophy, languages, history, English, computer science, and so on.  I remember one of my professors telling me that you couldn’t be a composer unless you had something to write about, and that’s what the rest of your education was for.  I will admit that a huge amount of my education since college has come just from doing it — getting hired to do a job and then figuring out what it is I needed to pull off.  But I’m eternally grateful for the basic education I got at the beginning.

Have you ever directed performances of your own music? What was that like?

Which comes first for you – writing music or writing lyrics?

In my world, it’s absolutely important that the rhymes are perfect rhymes, so I spend a lot of time trying to find just the right words to express the idea without forcing the rhyme.  And lately, I’ve been trying to make sure I don’t just regurgitate the same musical ideas over and over again.  I find my fingers on the piano want to go to the same chords over and over again, so I challenge myself to write away from the piano, or to try something different just to see where it leads me.  The best thing about writing both the music and the lyrics is that if you find yourself veering off in a different direction than you originally intended, you just let yourself go there.  That’s where I always discover the best work.

Can you talk about the songwriting process for ALPHABET CITY CYCLE?

Kate Baldwin recorded the songs so beautifully (for PS Classics and available on iTunes), and I’m thrilled that other singers are discovering them and responding to them so positively.

Is there a difference working in Broadway or stage productions now versus five or ten years ago?

Do you have any advice for aspiring vocalists? Songwriters?

What to you is the most important element of a song and why?

What’s Next for You?

This Ordinary Thursday” in 2007.  On the personal front, however, I’m having a baby in October and that’s pretty all-consuming right now!

Musicnotes.com would like to thank Georgia Stitt for taking the time out of her busy schedule to answer our questions. We would also like to extend our thanks for the photos she supplied to us and would like to mention that Maia Rosenfeld took the photo featured in this post. The photographers for the main image are (from left to right) Maia Rosenfeld, Mike Rozman and April Mills.

For more about this talented songwriter, be sure to visit the official website of Georgia Stitt or visit Musicnotes.com for our catalog of sheet music by Georgia Stitt.