Theme Tune!!

M

MusicSmoothie

New member
Hi. I have just started my own home recording hobby and it's going pretty well. I've got all the gear and mixing equipment, i play the instruments and so on... But what I would really like to do to start of with is write a theme tune.

For some of my compositions i would love to be able to write good catchy theme tunes, like the stuff you get on the TV these days.

Please if anybody can help me with techniques and other info, I will be very grateful.

Thank You :)
 
Sucks when no-one answers your question, doesn't it?

It is a strange question....

How do you write a tune? Hmmmm....
 
Hmmm...

A LOT of people here are leaning more towards traditional songwriting, IE, lyrics and music. They hear you asking "how do i write a tune", and maybe a little snub.

Me... I'm different. I used to be a drummer in a past life, and now I am learning composition. But I dont play any traditional "composer" instruments in real life, IE piano or guitar. I am leaning towards I like making instrumentals of various kinds, mainly classical-ish. Oh, i can identify each and every single note i would want the human player to play, if one wanted to perform any of my pieces... on guitar or piano... but, I dont play myself. I just compose. I am not interested in playing my stuff. That makes me slightly odd and different here... I'm clearly no songwriter.

NOW... the man did ask a specific question.

QUOTE:"For some of my compositions i would love to be able to write good catchy theme tunes, like the stuff you get on the TV these days. Please if anybody can help me with TECHNIQUES AND OTHER INFO, I will be very grateful. Thank You"

(moreover, he was polite)


TV Themes, I assume you mean like the music intro to a weekly series or such. Hm, that covers some GROUND. Some will use traditional music, say a past "hit" or a newly minted song. Example... "Greatest American Hero"

You all know it if your old enough... "Believe it or not, I'm walkin' on air... never thought I could feel so free ee eeeee"

(Them to Greatest American Hero actually charted)

I liked, personally, the theme music to "The Equalizer". That synthy upbeat piece was made by I believe Stewart Copeland, of "the police" fame after the Police broke up. To my ear, sounds like something you could come up with nowadays on "Fruity Loops" software. Instrumental, but in song format.

But... these things are all over the map. Sometimes, its just a solo piano ditty. Some can be incredibly un-complex, like just a flute with a catchy but basic melody and a snare.

Specific Technique? Hm... You dont HAVE 3 minutes to build up and deliver to the listener. You need a catchy melody. Momorable toe tapper of a melody. Skip key changes, not enough time... no bridges except for teh briefest one measure thing...

consider odd instruments you dont hear together very often. ANYthing really, it just has to have a very momorable melody. Some are intense, like the original theme music for "hardcastle and McCormick" - Hard rock guitar "Drive! Drivin' like the demon that drives my dreams..."

some are just, well, a piano... or a piano and a flute...

but I'd keep it to one minute, stay in key... and try many different chord progs(modulations) until I found the one that JUST fit best.

You taking ALL the work of a big piece... and putting it ALL into ONE MINUTE, the "guts". No time for key changes or bridges. memorable melodys and chord progressions.

If your gonna "build", you have to build quick. otherwise, if its intense, fast paced... just do that. If its light, airy... just do that. And try out odd instruments, or odd combinatins of instruments, to make it sound "different".

I her a lot of note melodies in Themes, not nearly as much lyrics over chords as you do in songwriting, as many themes are instrumentals... your note melodies must create the impact that lyrics/singing do for the regular song.

Pentatonic and pentatonic minor is known for making melodies that stick in the memory, I'd start there. DOnt be afraid to get a classical instruments generator for your software, a one minute classical piece might be just the ticket here, I hear that often enough...

I know myself, as a musician and composer, I find myself really noticing and hearing the soundtrack music everyone else takes for granted, and the TV themes. Sometimes I like the news music when I am visiting someone out of town, LMAO.

Since I just COMPOSE and have no desire to play my songs on stage myself, nor to perform at all... I'm probably closer to YOU and YOUR aspirations, than I am to traditional songwriting. I have any number of one minute "tests" that went awry and didnt flower into a longer piece, yet, some by themselves are very satisfying.

good luck in your endeavor, and if I ever see the word "theme" in the post, I will notice it and poke in to see what you post up. I look forward to hearing your first potential theme.
 
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...

Armistice? "For SHAME!"

The person came on here, and asked a specific question. If you dont have an answer for him, or even musings to TRY to help out like I TRIED (though I am not providing an answer, but I am trying to help)

... then why post juvenile, asinine, "nyah nyah" stuff? Why waste your time?

You know, we are all musicians and songwriters and composers. Some professional, some hobbyist. But, we all shit in the same pit, you know. How would YOU like to be cooped up in a room for 3 straight days with a bunch of, I dont know, construction workers? A musician would likely hate that. Why try to make this little spot in cyberspace like that? We all have more in common than not.

There's a LOT of musicians out there, making a living, likely a GOOD living... doing more than just playing in a band, and trying to write original songs to sing and try to get an album out of it.

Every hunting video? Someone wrote the music for that. A lot of them on a computer, by the sound of them. Porno? laugh all you want, but SOMEone has a 9 to 5 JOB making those cheesy soundtracks. They probably make more than I do, doing it.

When i watch a real forensics show on cable... they list like 40 music people that contributed to the show's soundtrack that night. listening, i hear 40 different blips of short music... and I'm pretty sure all those musicians contributed those little blurbs of music.

SOMEone writes jingles and music for toothpaste commercials on the radio. And yes, SOMEone writes the music for TV theme intros.

There a LOT more than just "traditional songwriters" out there, putting chords over lyric lines on notebook paper.

I am not sure where "else" in cyberspace i should "be", as i make instrumental stuff, most of it along classical lines. i am sure that guy has no idea where he should be, tryign to make TV themes, either. SO, we are both here.

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!

This is a songwriting and composition forum, the poster wants to compose a TV theme. If you cant help him, fine. if you refuse to help him, again fine. But why try to IMPEDE progress? What an incredible ass you must be in real life I should imagine, or is it just on the web?:spank:
 
The fastest way I know of learning the nuts and bolts of songs is by transcribing them.

When you write out a tune, all the mystery of the mechanics goes away. It's like a magician taking you behind the scenes and showing you how he did everything.

That doesn't mean the magic of the song goes away, just that the mystery is taken out of how it's made.
 
...

ah, excellent pointer Dinty! I forget that one myself, thanks for reminding me. I know myself, I lack the "ear" of other people here that have been playing a pitched instrument like guitar or piano for 20 years (yes, I'm jealous, LMAO) Its a handicap that's disappearing all by iitself, but slower than I would like, lol. I had to "make stuff" then listen to it, and decide if I liked it or not, and change it until i decide I maybe do like it.

slowly, without my realizing it, i started to get the tiniest beginnings of an "ear". i would occasionally notice the 1,4 and 5 in a simple 3 chord song on the radio, or hear my favorite pentatonic minor scale ringing out in a ditty on the radio. Every once in a while, i would try to re-create something from memory just to see if I could.

Now, you guitar players out there are going to laugh your ass off at me for this, but, go ahead, i deserve it... I used to sit down maybe once a month and try to make the basic "smoke on the water" chorus off the cuff without looking at anything, LMAO... (I never really pulled that off yet, lol) But one fine day, me and the old lady were watching a 3-dvd set of stuff, and after each 20 minute piece, it would return to the menu yet again, and the same little piece of menu music would play. We fell asleep to it, and woke UP to that music re-playing.

I fiddled around trying to MAKE it from scratch, sure that i couldnt... and surprised myself when I found that i could. I know, i know... I felt like a four year old getting "mom" to pat me on the head and place my dreadful fingerpainting onto the refrigerator, LMAO, but... i was very proud of my little fingerpainting. It was the beginning of a tiny bit of "ear" that I always thought I was going to have to do without...

dinty's advice is a good one... maybe my idea of trying to recreate some small TV themes you like by ear might be helpful too.

TV themes are available on sheet music for high school bands to play, I know this because in high school band, we used to do a medley of several TV shows every year for our little concert at the end of the year. If you politely asked a high school music teacher, he might let you xerox off some piano sheet music of a TV theme you could listen to then look at the sheet music of it, or at least I think he;d be sure to be able to tell you where you could get it from.

EDITORS NOTE: now in this thread we've all seen both ways it can work. We can all hang together, or we can all hang separately. Path A... we can all try to be as helpful as we can to each other, in any small or big way as we can, and we can all make progress. Or, path B... we can all stick our tongues out at each other and blow spitballs. Which I fail to see how that helps us all out. I'm a "Path A" kind of person. Maybe i have a screw loose, but, that just makes more sense to me. What else is the POINT of this big, famous musician site if not for that... i ask you.

Sorry I'm off on a rant the last 24 hours, but geez... I've been coming here off and on for a couple years steady. A couple years ago, in this forum there were several/many "big guys" that each had years in the songwriting and music writing game... "old hands" at this stuff, and they were all OVER handing out tips and advice to anyone that asked. I just dont SEE those helpful sages hardly ever anymore, and I cant help but wonder that this constant nyah-nyah stuff has irked them and thats why theyre not here as much if hardly ever, anymore.

You cant just pick a internet site out of the HAT at random, and expect to find older music professionals that have cut albums, seen many musical genres come and go, and are willing to help less experienced people out. Where else can you GO and get mixing advice from a guy that once mixed a real studio album for a big name band in the late 70s? Or records and produces local bands for a living that pays to send his kids to college, meaning he's a fairly well paid professional, and his advice is worth gold? All for free? NOWHERE else that i am aware of...

hell, I like to screw around and name-call and have fun and tease people until they get mad TOO... I dont expect this to be sunday school... but I dont want it to the extent we chase the PROS out, eh? (but I havent SEEN any of the long-time regulars in many months... this troubles me...)
 
Couple of thoughts:

The high school sheet music versions are usually full of errors. They are really dumbed down versions of the originals. What I'd do is download the originals off of YouTube. I always have a laptop plugged into my main computer system so (Hi Steve Jobs!) there are no copy protection systems that I can't get around. If you can hear it I can record it... it's not rocket science.

Ya people do get into snarling, spitting type behavior here, probably more than average. I'm not sure why but I would say there's a parallel in real life that if you go to a rehearsal with amateur musicians there's often a lot of bickering and when you go to a rehearsal with pros there's the same amount of joking. Sorry to say, but whenever I hear some here call people names and such it just wreaks "amateur".

Maybe it's because I've lived in Hawaii 30+ years and people accept more diversity than in some other places, but I never get it why some people here put a member down by calling them "gay". From the culture I live in that wouldn't be a put down any more than calling them "right handed". I'm not shocked, because there's no language/swearing that shocks me, I really just don't get it.

Here's some of my originals that could be thought of as theme songs:

http://musicmusicmusic.cn/copshowa.html
http://musicmusicmusic.cn/relaxation.html
http://musicmusicmusic.cn/musiccamp2010ed.html
 
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