Singing gets laughs
How Patton Oswalt and Kyle Dunnigan milk melodies onstage. Because music can sneak in where regular ol' words can't.
Doing shows in Seattle this weekend. Tickets here.
Sing it out loud
A classic way to get a laugh: Sing the punchline. In fact, you’ll often get an applause break from it.
Patton Oswalt is a master of the singing punchline:
And here’s Kyle Dunnigan on old timey music:
Admittedly, this can veer into hack territory. But it’s uncanny how much crowds will give it up for a sing-songy punchline. It’s like injecting a quick hit of musical comedy shtick into your act.
There are ways to play with this too. Matteo Lane flips the script here by opening his set with opera singing and then paying it off with a spoken punchline:
Even if you don’t sing, you can add musicality to your spoken words. As author Tim Kreider (
) explained to , it’s as close as writing gets to sneaking past the left brain.I recently confessed to my students that I was the author of the meme “the mortifying ordeal of being known,” [from “I Know What You Think of Me”] not to impress them with my internet immortality but to point out that one reason that phrase entered the online vernacular is not because it’s an especially original insight (though it does, evidently, resonate with the zeitgeist) but because of its euphony: the assonance and alliteration of “mortifying ordeal,” and “known.” Euphony and cadence are the only areas in which the very abstract symbolic system of writing gets to exploit the subrational sensory pleasures of music, sneak in past the left brain and move us on levels to which other art forms have more direct access.
“Euphony and cadence are the only areas in which the very abstract symbolic system of writing gets to exploit the subrational sensory pleasures of music, sneak in past the left brain and move us on levels to which other art forms have more direct access.”
-Tim Kreider
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dear matt,
thank you for reminding me of how funny kyle dunnigan is. my goodness!
love
myq