Ever sat down and listened to TV news themes? I mean, really listened to them?
No reason why you should, of course, unless you’re a geek like me.
As part of my university coursework in 1996 I analysed how the best news music on TV is put together – something I only remembered last night when flicking idly around YouTube and spotting some corking examples.
Well, it’s never too late to share wisdom with the wider world. So I can now exclusively reveal how to create the mother of all classic news themes.
Pencil sharpened? Manuscript paper at the ready? OK.
The main feeling you need to convey is Order Out Of Chaos. News is a big sprawling mess – what we’re about to do in our bulletin is rein it in and make sense of it. Your title music should depict both parts of that equation: first the chaos, then the resolution.
You will need:
- Drums – and lots of them. Ideally orchestral drums, including cymbal rolls (to build tension) and timpani (to add power). It’s a violent world out there, and drums spell that out like nothing else. You can dust your music with a smattering of modern percussion if you like (Simmons drums in the 80s; Roland TR909 in the 90s). But big, aggressive thumps and crashes are your core tools, and will never go out of date.
- Irregular time signatures. Put simply, this means throwing in rhythmic curveballs, and lots of them. If your music is in 8/8 (that’s eight short “quaver” notes to the bar), then you should throw in a few bars of 7/8 too. Maybe some 5/8. Keep ‘em guessing. This is supposed to be chaos, remember – at least for the first few seconds. If you can manage it, make the time signature completely unfathomable.
- Brass is your friend. It cuts through the musical mêlée like a clarion call. Brass represents the singleminded clarity your bulletin is about to bring to world events. Make it loud, and make it proud.
- Your chords and melodies are the best chance you have to demonstrate the Order Out Of Chaos principle. In the first part of the theme, you’re aiming for distress, worry, confusion. But suddenly, at the end, all must come good – the viewer should feel calmed and relieved that everything is in hand. If you want to tease, leave your theme harmonically unresolved for a few seconds during a voiceover, before the final chords. If you really want to tease, leave things unresolved as the theme becomes a bed for the headlines. Then, and only then, bring the music to a resolution before the start of the bulletin proper.
- And finally. There are certain instrumental devices which are shorthand for “journalism”: you can’t go far wrong with tuned percussion (traditionally, the xylophone) tapping away like an old-fashioned teleprinter. Mmm.. newsy!
OK, so those are the principles. Let’s see how the BBC’s offerings over the years have stacked up.
Early Evening News 1986 I like this one a lot. It’s far from the most bombastic theme imaginable, but harmonically it’s pretty dense and unfriendly (a good thing, in news) - at least until the resolving chord at 0:18. Xylophone and timpani are both present and correct, while the bed beneath the headlines adds tension. And what’s that whole mini-fantasia at 0:11 about? Brilliantly abstract.
Nine O’ Clock News 1987 This time we start with tension – synth vamping underneath a stern voiceover. Things get underway at 0:19 with two straightforward, powerful bars of 8/8 – but the next bar is cut short at the 7th beat (a masterful trick). Everything resolves triumphantly at 0:31, but hey – we’re just toying with you… by 0:35 we’re knee-deep once more in harmonic stress. It’s only after the headlines at 1:10 (35 hold-your-breath seconds later) that everything’s finally put to bed. Phew. This is music almost enough strong enough to distract from the ridiculous “flying fishfinger” graphics.
Six O’ Clock News 1991 Slightly disappointed by the limited use of percussion here – not a cymbal roll in sight. But you have to tip your hat when we change key just five seconds in, at 0:13, and switch between time signatures with imperious glee (did I spot a bar of 12/8?) Tension again accompanies an uber-butch voiceover; thank the lord this time it’s resolved just before the headlines at 0:30. What else? Oh yes, some prime Newsnight/Day Today electric guitar!
Six O’ Clock News 1996 Oddly I can’t decide if a giant imaginary cut-glass coat of arms floating in midair is more or less visually absurd than frozen food in space. Either way this is a great piece of news music – especially at 0:10 where everything hangs beautifully, tensely, in the air for an age, while french horns sound the news alert. (Note how the first bar of this theme was also used to segue into the “nicer” Breakfast News theme of the same era. Comparing the two themes is interesting – optimism in the morning, pessimism in the evening.)
One O’ Clock News 1996 Like breakfast, lunchtime needs a different musical approach – anything over-strident is likely to cause indigestion. Nevertheless, the same basic tricks apply. We have another rapid keychange (0:06) and some odd time signatures, but this time rendered using a much lighter orchestral palette. Even the tension at 0:21, behind the voiceover, is handled gently. Is that a sun-dappled harp joining in with the arpeggios?
News Channel 2008 I know I’ve jumped a few generations here, but fundamentally one version or another of this, written by David Lowe, has been the sound of BBC News for the last few years. And don’t get me wrong – I do love it, especially accompanied by the full top-of-the-hour sequence you can watch below (the visuals are terrific). It’s contemporary, it’s accessible, and it’s extremely versatile. But I can’t help feeling it could be improved by the addition of a bit more drama and surprise.
Nine O’ Clock News 1990 I saved this one ’til last because, well, it’s genuinely in a category of its own. This is the pinnacle of hardcore news themery. It has the traditional key moments (e.g. harmonic tension at 0:32, resolved at 0:34), but it does them with a level of bombast reached by no news music either before or since. Time signatures are irrelevant. This is the sound of an orchestra pumping away at 11, while percussive howitzers of news are blasted off indiscriminately from all sides. All we can do is duck for cover. I have no idea who composed, conducted and/or produced this, but they did one hell of a job.
