Doctor Who theme music
The Doctor Who theme music is a piece of music written by Australian composer Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Created in 1963, it was the first electronic music signature tune for television. It is used as the theme for the science fiction programme Doctor Who, and has been adapted and covered many times.
Although numerous arrangements of the theme have been used on television, the main melody has remained the same. The theme was originally written and arranged in the key of E minor. Most versions of the theme – including the current arrangement by Murray Gold – have retained the use of the original key, with exceptions being Peter Howell and Keff McCulloch's arrangements.
Although widely listed in reference works, and many series soundtrack albums, under the title "Doctor Who Theme", its official title is "Doctor Who", although its initial sheet music release used the now-deprecated form "Dr. Who".
History
1960s
The original 1963 recording of the Doctor Who theme music is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music, recorded well before the availability of commercial synthesisers. Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop used musique concrète techniques to realise a score written by composer Ron Grainer. Each note was individually created by cutting, splicing, speeding up and slowing down segments of analogue tape containing recordings of a single plucked string, white noise, and the simple harmonic waveforms of test-tone oscillators which were used for calibrating equipment and rooms, not creating music.The main, pulsing bassline rhythm was created from a recording of a single plucked string, played over and over again in different patterns created by splicing copies of the sound, with different pitches and notes achieved by playing the sample in different speeds. The swooping melody and lower bassline layer were created by manually adjusting the pitch of oscillator banks to a carefully timed pattern. The non-swooping parts of the melody were created by playing a keyboard attached to the oscillator banks. The rhythmic hissing sounds, "bubbles" and "clouds", were created by cutting tape recordings of filtered white noise.
Once each sound had been created, it was modified. Some sounds were created at all the required pitches direct from the oscillators, others had to be repitched later by adjusting the tape playback speed and re-recording the sound onto another tape player. This process continued until every sound was available at all the required pitches. To create dynamics, the notes were re-recorded at largely different levels.
Each individual note was then trimmed to length by cutting the tape, and stuck together in the right order. This was done for each "line" in the music – the main plucked bass, the bass slides, the hisses, the swoops, the melody, a second melody line, and the bubbles and clouds. Most of these individual bits of tape making up lines of music, complete with edits every inch, still survive.
This done, the music had to be "mixed". There were no multitrack tape machines, so rudimentary multitrack techniques were invented: each length of tape was placed on a separate tape machine and all the machines were started simultaneously and the outputs mixed together. If the machines fell out of sync, they started again, maybe cutting tapes slightly here and there to help. In fact, a number of "submixes" were made to ease the process – a combined bass track, combined melody track, bubble track, and hisses.
Grainer was amazed at the resulting piece of music and when he heard it, famously asked, "Did I write that?" Derbyshire modestly replied, "Most of it." However the BBC, who wanted to keep members of the Workshop anonymous, prevented Grainer from giving Derbyshire a co-composer credit and a share of the royalties.
The theme can be divided into several distinctive parts. A rhythmic bassline opens and underlies the theme throughout, followed by a rising and falling set of notes that forms the main melody which is repeated several times. The bridge, also known as the "middle eight", is an uplifting interlude in a major key that usually features in the closing credits or the full version of the theme. During the early years of the series the middle eight was also often heard during the opening credits.
The theme is written in the E minor phrygian mode.
The theme has been often called both memorable and frightening, priming the viewer for what was to follow. During the 1970s, the Radio Times, the BBC's own listings magazine, announced that a child's mother said the theme music terrified her son. The Radio Times was apologetic, but the theme music remained.
Derbyshire created two arrangements in 1963: the first was rejected by the producers, but was released as a single. The second arrangement, a slightly modified version of the first, was used on the first episode of the programme. The two 1963 arrangements served, with only minor edits and additions requested by the producers, as the theme tune up to 1980 and the end of season 17. The most notable of these edits were addition of 'electronic spangles', and tape echo, from the second episode of Patrick Troughton serial The Faceless Ones onwards.
1970s
During the Third Doctor's era, beginning in 1970, the theme tune was altered. The theme was edited to match the new credit sequence, with an added stutter/pre-echo to the bassline at the start of the theme, a shortened introduction and part of the main motif repeated to fade at the end of the titles. The "middle eight" was no longer used in the opening sequence. Over the closing credits, parts of the tune were duplicated as required for the theme to end with the credits, rather than fading out as it had previously. The "sting", an electronic shriek, was added to punctuate the episode cliffhangers and serve as a lead-in to the closing theme from The Ambassadors of Death onwards, with a closing sound effect also introduced, both added by Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The "middle eight" thus fell out of use in the closing credits from this serial. The first three serials of season 8 reverted to the 1967 arrangement before reinstating the Third Doctor's arrangement for the last two serials of that year. During the Fourth Doctor era, the "middle eight" was heard on only four episodes during his first six seasons – The Invasion of Time parts 3, 4 and 6 and The Armageddon Factor part 6.In 1972, there was an attempt by Brian Hodgson and Paddy Kingsland, with Delia Derbyshire acting as producer, to modernise the theme tune using the Radiophonic Workshop's modular "Delaware" synthesiser. The "Delaware" arrangement, which had a distinct Jew's harp sound, was not well received by BBC executives and was abandoned. The master tapes were given to a fan at the 1983 Longleat celebrations by Hodgson and were never returned. The episodes that used it were redubbed with the 1970 Derbyshire arrangement, but lacking the short bassline stutter at the beginning of the music. The Delaware version was accidentally left on some episodes which were sold to Australia, and survives today in this form.
The first single arising from the show to make the UK Singles Chart was "Dr. Who" by Mankind. The track was based on the theme music and was Mankind's only hit single. Released by Pinnacle on 25 November 1978, the song peaked at number 25 in the UK Singles Chart and ran for 12 weeks in the BBC Top 75.
1980s
For season 18, Radiophonic Workshop staffer Peter Howell provided a new arrangement performed on analogue synthesisers, and having a more dynamic and glossy but less haunting feel. Its bassline was created on a Yamaha CS-80 synthesiser, with reversed echo added, adding to its characteristic "zshumm" sound and emphasising especially the bass slides. The sting at the beginning was also created with the CS-80, using its unique ring modulator section. The opening line of the main melody was played on an ARP Odyssey Mk III, the second on an EMS Vocoder 5000, and the "middle eight" and the brass section on a Roland Jupiter-4. The 1980 arrangement added the sting to the opening theme as well, while the "middle eight" was included in the closing theme arrangement of all episodes. Howell's theme is in the key of F♯ minor. The full version mix also contains a section that Howell calls the "trombone stop" which is a part in the record on which the brass sounds as if it goes up a flight of stairs towards the climax note at the end on which the reverse sting is added.The Howell theme was eventually replaced by a new arrangement by Dominic Glynn for season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord. This version – again synthesizer-driven, like the Howell arrangement, only this time using digital synthesizers – was made to sound more mysterious than previous renditions but was only used for this single season of the series. Glynn's theme reverts to the traditional key of E minor, even though it is largely detuned in some episodes. The bassline was performed on a Roland Juno-6 synthesiser, while the melody and filtered noise effects were performed on a Yamaha DX21 and Korg 770 respectively. The theme removes the bass slides which were featured in all previous official arrangements, and is instead merged into the main bassline.
The Glynn arrangement was itself replaced by a new arrangement by Keff McCulloch for the Seventh Doctor's era beginning with season 24. McCulloch's arrangement was made using a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synthesiser, with the initial 'sting' replaced by a crashing explosive sound. Producer John Nathan-Turner stated that the new music, logo and title sequence were to signal a fresh start to the programme. This was the first version of the theme since the little-used 1973 Delaware version to incorporate the "middle eight" into the opening credits. McCulloch's theme is in the key of A minor. Delia Derbyshire was reportedly unimpressed with McCulloch's version.