Underscore

How to Explain It

"The music is your scene partner. Let it affect you. If the tempo changes, something has changed for your character. If the volume drops, respond to that. You are not illustrating the music: you are in relationship with it."

Objectives

Underscore develops two related skills: receiving offers from non-human sources, and responding to emotional information without literalizing it. Performers who have difficulty with Underscore typically literalize the music: a tense chord produces a chase scene, slow music produces a funeral. The goal is emotional integration, not dramatic illustration.

The exercise also develops the capacity to hold two tracks of awareness simultaneously: the logic of the scene and the emotional signal of the music.

Coaching the Musician

The musician's role is to respond and lead in alternation. For the first minute, follow the performers. Then begin to lead: shift genre, shift tempo, shift key. Watch how the performers respond. The best musical directors in improv are improvisers themselves, and this exercise is as much a training exercise for the musician as for the performers.

Coaching the Performers

• "Listen with your body, not your head. What does the music make you want to do physically?"
• "Don't illustrate. Let the music be underneath, not on top."
• "If the music changes and you don't, you've stopped listening."
• "The music knows what the scene needs before you do. Trust it."

Without a Musician

For groups without a live musician, a facilitator can control recorded music and shift tracks at key moments. This is less responsive but still develops performer sensitivity to external emotional signals. Brief the facilitator to shift tracks deliberately, not randomly: shifts should happen when the scene reaches a decision point or a plateau.

Live musical underscore has been a defining element of Second City performance since the company's earliest years. Fred Kaz, who served as Second City's musical director from 1961 to 1971, was known for his ability to support scenes in real time, providing music that amplified emotional content without overwhelming the performers. Second City Unscripted documents Kaz as the person who would "underscore scenes and also let you know when the scene was over by playing the-scene-is-over music" : a description of underscore as both dramatic support and structural signal.

The exercise as a discrete training form : playing scenes beneath live music specifically to develop performer responsiveness , belongs to the general tradition of musical accompaniment in actor training, applied to improv pedagogy. Asaf Ronen addresses the directorial dimension of musical underscore in improv, instructing players to use cultural associations from "soap operas, romantic comedies, sitcoms, awards shows, dramas" to guide the keyboard player's choices rather than describing emotions directly.