seinfeldmusicguy

Well, Sacamano.. When Jerry called, he described to me a sound design problem: Jerry envisioned the opening credits of his show to center on him performing stand up comedy relating to the story line of the episode. He wanted a catchy recognizable "signature" music theme that would play along with his comedy monolog, but that would not interfere with the audio of his stand up material.

Watching video of Jerry’s comedy material, I noticed that his delivery has a unique funny rhythm to it. The pacing of his words, phrases & inflections has a musical quality. So I set the tempo of the Seinfeld theme by the rhythms of his speech patterns. Jerry's voice became the "melody" of the theme & I built the rest of the music around him. Instead of using drums, I tried to capture that fun, happy, quirky New York energy using digital samples of my fingersnaps & tongue and lip noises to rhythmically accompany him. (The organic nature of these sounds helps them to blend well with Jerry’s speaking voice.) The prominent simple bass line of the Seinfeld theme is in an audio range that does not compete with his voice.

Since his stand-up comedy was different each episode, the theme music had to be adapted each week to fit his routine. I architected the music to be manipulated in a modular fashion to match the timing of Jerry's lines. The Seinfeld music theme remained basically the same from week to week, but since the monologs were always different, each week his "melody" was a like a variation on the Seinfeld theme.

Although, after a few seasons, we abandoned opening & closing monologs, there were usually 30-40 transition music cues in each episode where we still hear those original sound elements.

Hope that answered your Q!

Big time. Isn't that NEAT?

Plenty of Larry David stories. Here’s an EARLY one.. Larry & Jerry both loved my Seinfeld theme right away. The day I created it, Jerry came to my studio and called Larry on the phone to play it for him by holding the phone up to the speakers! Larry approved instantly.

NBC was not-so-sure about it and arranged a meeting to discuss other music options. I was in the room, and honestly - I did not feel strongly about it and whispered to LD and Glenn Padnick (our boss at Castle Rock) that I could totally create different Seinfeld music immediately.

At that point?.. Larry was more upset with ME than NBC. Larry actually threw me out of the meeting.

LD refused to change the music and Glenn Padnick stood firm with him. Thanks for asking, Pinkus.

People don’t turn down money! It’s what separates us from the animals.

Hi there T-Bone -

My little man inside is an idiot. But THIS time? I listened to him. Slap bass. All the way.

At the time, the slap bass had not yet enjoyed celebrity status as a lead instrument. Primarily, slap bass was a groove element in funk music.

So using it as a lead instrument gave the music an unexpected quirky sound.

Thanks for asking!