Melody in TV

Music Curriculum
Written By Edward Wolfe

We remember and often enjoy melodies on TV. I say “often” because sometimes we wish we could forget. I can recall to this day an advertising jingle from probably 50 years ago: “Ring around the collar!” Even though I wish I could forget that particular melody, it annoyingly has stuck in my mind.

Usually, though, we love the melodies from our favorite shows. Mark Snow’s melodies are particularly memorable. He wrote the themes for The X Files and Smallville and they could hardly be more different.

Henry Mancini wrote themes for TV shows. One of his catchiest is Peter Gunn. His theme to Newhart is another memorable melody.

Jerry Goldsmith’s theme to Star Trek the Next Generation set a standard for boldness and adventure. Alexander Courage’s theme to Star Trek (original series) is memorable all these years later.

No list of TV themes would be complete without Lalo Schifrin’s Mission Impossible. When the action/adventure movies started coming out, I always felt a little cheated if they played the theme in a more even meter rather than the original 5/4.

These themes show how we love to hear melodies—whether in the bass like Peter Gunn and Perry Mason—or in the normal treble for most others. Melody is one of the most memorable aspects of music.

Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com
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