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VI

On the ORCHESTRATING TECHNIQUES of ALEX LACAMOIRE with Lively Appearances by VANHALEN, ELMO, AND AN ACTUAL BEATLE

If you want to be picky about Lin’s songwriting process, he makes songs without actually writing them down. Like some of the best songwriters in the business–even the very best, such as Paul McCartney or Michael Jackson–he doesn’t record the musical ideas that swirl in his brain by notating them on lined sheets of paper with keys and sharps and flats. He used the music-recording program Logic Pro to create demos of most of the songs in Hamilton. He played chords on a keyboard plugged into his laptop, and created a rudimentary arrangement with sounds drawn from the program’s library of samples, adding vocals by singing or rapping into the little mic that’s attached to his headphones. There is an endorsement deal in there someplace.

As Lin completed these songs, he shared them with Tommy and a few other close collaborators, but only one person was responsible for immediately turning them into something else: Alex Lacamoire. As the orchestrator, he translated the demos into notated music (the keys, the sharps, the flats) that would allow them to be played by a 10-person band. Did a certain moment call for a touch of violin? A drum fill? Loud, soft, fast, slow? Alex made those interpretive calls, then discussed them with Lin and Tommy. It’s a very American pastime, this interpreting and discussing. Our musical culture is built on standards, songs meant to be reworked endlessly, such as “Blue Skies” or “Summertime.” And it’s not just our music: Think of the blood we’ve spilled looking for the best expression of “All men are created equal” or “Congress shall make no law. . .”

This process of interpretation turns out to be as vital to Hamilton as it is anywhere else in the republic. Andy Blankenbuehler, the show’s choreographer, says that Alex is the guy who makes everything happen. “Lin will have an amazing inspiration and put it forward in a way that you know exactly where he’s driving. Alex will pave the street.”

Like Tommy, Alex first came to know Lin through In the Heights. An actor involved in the show’s development told Lin about a music director he knew: a Cuban-American kid from Miami, somebody that Lin might like. Unlike Lin’s first meeting with Tommy, hiphop didn’t play much of a role when he got to know Alex, whose tastes ran more to radio pop and classic rock. (They still do: Other members of the Hamilton staff might own banana-yellow Van Halen T-shirts, only Alex wears his to work.) But they bonded all the same. They were both Latino, they both talked fast, they thought faster.

Above all, they discovered that their talents harmonized. Lin percolates a million musical ideas, but he is, by his own admission, “a shitty piano player.” He admires Alex’s superior musicianship, the way that a song springs to life when he’s in front of a keyboard. “Lac can make anything happen by playing it,” says Lin. From the time Lac started playing piano, at age four, he wanted to capture not just the notes on the page but what he called “the whole picture” of a song. “I tried not to just play the piano part, I wanted to play the drums on the piano and the guitar licks on the piano.”

Alex manages these musical feats despite a condition that you might think would derail a career in music. Around the time that he began learning how to make a piano sing, his family noticed he was having trouble hearing. Though he had always been fixated on music– while still a toddler, he would sit in front of the speakers, staring–he seemed to be missing things that people were saying to him. He was fitted for two hearing aids. Growing up, he sometimes wore only one of them, when his family couldn’t afford the other. In high school, he stopped wearing them altogether because he didn’t want to stand out. He kept playing, though. Today, he sometimes defers to his collaborators on how loud certain high-pitched tones ought to be, but prefers to think that his hearing deficiency might have aided his life in music. Maybe it trained him to listen harder. “Maybe I’m more attuned to certain things,” he says. He’s also humble, in his upbeat way, about writing songs of his own.

“Composing is very intimidating,” he says. “Think about who my friends are. Lin-Manuel Miranda. Tom Kitt. These people are titans of what they do. Why bother, since it’s not going to be as good as what they do?” When Alex does compose music, it’s for children’s television. “Sesame Street, 90-second songs–that, I can handle,” he says with a laugh. He’s particularly proud of “First Second Third,” which Elmo sings in a politics-themed episode of the show.

The final versions of the Hamilton songs resulted from the push/pull in the way that Lin and Lac interpret songs. “Lin’s approach is to keep things simple, simple. I’m more complicated,” says Lac. Lin has a different way of describing his friend’s creativity: “It’s not so much he likes it complicated, it’s that he’ll speed past one idea to the next one. And I’ll say no no no, two ideas ago was the winner.” Lac is not what you’d call a strict constructionist when it comes to orchestrating the songs, but then Lin doesn’t want him to be. “Lin gives me freedom to put my stamp on certain things,” he says.

Consider “You’ll Be Back,” the song in which King George warns the American colonists not to rebel. It was one of the first things Lin wrote for the show, back when he was sharing most of his ideas as lyric sheets with chords. As Lac looked for ways to lift the song off the page, he thought about using a harpsichord, which would evoke the song’s era and the royal stature of the person singing it. But the cheery music and romantic lyrics (it’s a love song, even if it does threaten mass murder) also reminded him of the other British invasion, of the late 1960s.

“It just spoke to me, it was so Beatlesque,” says Alex. “If we’re gonna go there, let’s really go there.”

Listen closely to it now, and you’ll hear a guitar homage to “Getting Better” and a vibraphone nod to “Penny Lane.” There’s even a synth shout-out to “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” The contrast between those sunny songs and the king’s threats makes him sound even more sociopathic, and hilarious.

Alex was delighted to have a chance to evoke The Beatles, whom he regards with “mad respect, mad wonder. There’s nothing better. That, to me, is the ultimate.” It turns out the admiration flows both ways.

After an early performance of the show at the Public Theater, Lin and Alex walked into the green room to find an actual Beatle standing there. Sir Paul McCartney told them how much he liked their vocal harmonies. Somebody snapped the photo that appears on this page, the one that shows three resourceful musicians standing together: Lin grinning under Sir Paul’s left arm, Alex beaming under his right.