The Doctor Who theme and my own music
Some of you may have noticed that I posted an updated version of my Beyond the Farthest Star mix on SoundCloud. I pulled that out of the archive and attempted to consolidate down wherever possible, eliminating samples of the original themes and replacing them with things of my own design.
This is a change I’ve noted in myself over the past year or two: significantly less reliance on samples of the original themes. Just because I have isolated Derbyshire elements and the Howell bassline doesn’t mean they have to be stuffed into everything, no matter how great they may sound. It just leaves a mix feeling predictable, unless something very new is done with those samples. I think that’s why even Murray Gold dropped the Derbyshire melody in his latest theme.
Heavily orchestral renditions of the Doctor Who theme lack so many of the necessary qualities of what a Doctor Who theme should be, and are often composed in entirely the wrong spirit (Murray Gold’s, for example). I don’t like them at all.
Something like my own Epic 2011 may work well as a theme for the new series, but then, I am personally very disillusioned with the new series, and in my mind it is not and is unlikely to ever be “proper” Doctor Who, so therefore while it provides me a new playground where I can branch out into other areas of composition, it does not reflect my ideal of what a theme should be or sound like.
The new series is in no position to push boundaries in title sequence or theme music; if anything, they seem to be seeking a more and more mainstream audience, which saddens me, but by now is only to be expected. (Murray Gold’s latest theme, while far from perfect, is a small step in the right direction. It contains too much bombast in some places, such as the choir buildup to the middle eight, but overall it is much more scaled back, and the electronic elements shine through more clearly—both of which earn points from me.)
I already began to have a feeling of “too much” even while working on Epic 2011; it’s why it branched off into the original and the “alternate” mix. The alternate has a much stronger brass component towards the end of the theme, which, again, was a great deal of fun to put together, but as I listened back I felt “no, this is too much.” I branched my project file off to a separate save before I continued, so I was free to push it as much as I wanted but could return to the less over-the-top version when I’d gotten it all out of my system.
I will say that the sense of “too much” has diminished considerably from the train wreck that was Murray Gold’s 2008 (Voyage of the Damned on) theme. That thing was atrocious.
Perhaps I’ll shelve Epic 2011 for a bit and put some effort into a new theme with entirely electronic (or electronically-manipulated) sound sources. I may pull the bassline out of Epic 2011 and start building a new theme around that, as the bassline in the current version is brand new (I just created it yesterday). I feel it’s almost too good to go to waste in a theme like Epic 2011.
If I hate orchestral Doctor Who themes so much, why do I spend my time composing them? I think it has to do with my branching out as a musician. I’m at the point where I’m having a lot of fun just “playing” with melodies and layers, but I’m still not at a point where I’m comfortable enough to be solidly developing my own music. I frequently hate my own stuff and abandon it before it has the chance to develop into something that doesn’t suck. As my friends know, especially those who are musically inclined themselves, I do not take compliments well. I genuinely do not believe that my work holds any value, and thus I tend to retreat even further, potentially even invalidating the opinions of those who speak favorably about my work (“well, this is crap and I know it’s crap, so the fact that they’re telling me it’s good invalidates their opinions on my work”).
Therefore the Doctor Who theme ends up, constantly, as my musical playground. There is a pre-existing structure to it that I know intimately, but within that structure I am free to play and develop, both with sounds and melodies. It is a very limited arena where I am free to try many things on a single piece. The Doctor Who theme is where I am most comfortable, so that is where I play. I am not afraid to post or share versions of the Doctor Who theme where I would be much more hesitant to attempt to write something original and share that to the world. It goes out to a potentially much wider audience, whereas the Doctor Who theme almost feels like it is my private domain, knowing it as well as I do.
I’ve gotten the Doctor Who theme boiled down to a science now, and I do wonder whether that makes me too close to it to produce something truly unique. Between Delia Derbyshire’s original and Peter Howell’s version, there is basically a set of “rules” (at least that’s how I consider them) that define how you should and shouldn’t modify bits of the theme. The bassline, especially, is the most fundamental part (and, tellingly, this is the part Murray Gold cares least about). It is the bassline that drives the theme, and remains a constant behind everything else. In Murray Gold’s renditions the bassline seems dropped in as an afterthought, and he has made critical errors in terms of understanding the notation (which should be inconceivable considering he is sitting on Delia Derbyshire’s original multitrack). One could argue, as I’m sure Murray himself would, that it is down to creative license, but the manner of these mistakes strongly suggests to me that it is simply down to laziness and a lack of careful examination of the original theme. At least if it were a conscious choice, I could live with that. But everything I know about Murray Gold and everything I have studied in his versions of the theme tell me that this is not a conscious choice; it’s just a lazy rush job. And for an official Doctor Who theme, that is so tragic as to almost be a crime.
My ideal position would put me in the role of an “overseer” of Doctor Who themes. Let someone else bring something new to the table, where they are free to experiment as they wish, but have the theme run by me so that I can correct small technical errors that stem from ignorance rather than those that were made for a creative purpose (for which a case could certainly be made). Many, many people simply do not realize what the original theme does, and if they knew, there is a good chance that is the way they would do it in their own versions. That’s what I try to help people with when I’m involved with someone else’s theme. I consider myself a “Doctor Who theme fact checker” of sorts. I have many of the original materials and I know the construction of the original themes inside and out, so my goal would be to ensure that knowledge gets passed on so that an informed choice can be made.
Stay tuned later this week; I am finally beginning the process of assembling and posting some of the more basic rules of the Doctor Who theme.