Thanks for posting this Phil. I can’t wait to show my little time lord when he gets home from school.

To satisfy the human need to constantly rate things in lists:
The best incarnation of Dr Who theme is by Orbital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVD-1Cov4ro

(Whilst getting that link i found a live version from Glastonbury actually featuring the Doctor, pretty cool – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhXyjEjmnA )

@32. Calli Arcale : January 9th, 2012 at 11:53 am

Minos: “The Doctor Who title theme is one of the main things that makes me want to build a Theremin.”
Oddly enough, as far as I know, none of the “official” arrangements have ever included a theremin. (I’d be shocked if no unofficial ones did. Somebody’s got to have played it on a theremin by now. Heck, it’s been played on the Tesla coil, so why not?)

Yep.

See :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwWn4mGLAXs

For piano & theremin combo.

&

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix_Yu7bA4Qw

For wii theremin. There’s at least one other one – & the tesla coil version on Youtube too.

Tangentially relevant here – whilst talking Dr Who is this :

http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/01/09/what-i-think-of-when-i-listen-to-the-doctor-who-theme/

via Kylie Sturgess’es ‘Token Skeptic : Bending Misconceptions with her mind’ blog.

Indeed, Miss Derbyshire is the great unsung hero (see what I did there?) of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and Electronic Music in general. The woman was cutting edge, in all senses of the word. (Tape loops running far down the halls of the BBC when creating the Dr. Who theme).

“You humans have got such limited, little minds. I don’t know why I like you so much.”

The Doctor Who title theme is one of the main things that makes me want to build a Theremin.

Oddly enough, as far as I know, none of the “official” arrangements have ever included a theremin. (I’d be shocked if no unofficial ones did. Somebody’s got to have played it on a theremin by now. Heck, it’s been played on the Tesla coil, so why not?)

The original arrangement, used through the 60s and into the beginning of Jon Pertwee’s tenure, was played on assortment of normal, accoustic instruments and some electronic effects — and then heavily processed by the BBC Radiophonics Workshop. Though the theme has always been attributed to its composer, Ron Grainer (who also gave us such lovely themes as that used on The Prisoner), the strange sound comes from the uncredited work of unsung genius Delia Derbyshire, who did things with electronics that nobody else was doing. Most of it was actually performed backwards and then played back the other way around. There was also a lot of work with loops and tape noise and other clever things. The same team also came up with many of the original sound effects, including the TARDIS dematerialization, which was a combination of various samples, clever electronic tricks, and scraping a metal ruler across the strings of a piano.

The BBC obtained a Moog synthesizer, and commissioned a rearrangement of the Dr Who theme in the early 70s. It lasted one season before the old arrangement (minus some of the sound effects) was reinstated along with a new opening credit sequence created using the laborious “slit scan” technique pioneered in 1967 by “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

The theme remained unchanged from there until the 1980s and Tom Baker’s final season, when Peter Howell arranged it for synthesizer; the MIDI revolution had reached the BBC. This synthesized arrangement, with a rock-and-roll flavor courtesy of synthesized electric guitars, stuck through two more Doctors. Then it went on hiatus. When it returned, they had a new Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, and commissioned a new theme. This was also synthesized, but more “spacey” and had a slightly garish late-80s quality to it (just as its predecessor had an early-80s flavor to it). This lasted until the series was cancelled in 1989.

In 1996, a made-for-TV movie (intended as a backdoor pilot, though it failed in that) was produced and broadcast. Starring Paul McGann as the Doctor, this one had American money and attempted to be more filmic. Indeed, the entire thing was actually recorded on film and converted to video, probably the first time that had happened in the series’ history (excluding the two Dalek movies). To go with this, a new arrangement was called for, one that was itself more filmic, which meant going orchestral. Performed by a chamber orchestra, this version drove the beat much harder than previous versions and put the emphasis on the second theme of the piece, where the tune shifts into a major key, deemphasizing the traditional haunting, wailing opening. This arrangement would only ultimately get to play once, because the series was not picked up by the American broadcasters who had bankrolled it.

In 2005, of course, the series returned. Although it was not yet clear whether the Paul McGann story was canon, it clearly influenced the new series. The theme got another arrangement, and it was orchestral. The opening sequence was also influenced by the movie. They’ve stayed orchestral ever since, though the most recent arrangement (introduced along with Steven Moffatt’s producership and Matt Smith as the Doctor) has reintroduced some of the sounds of the original arrangement. So though I’ve met a lot of people who can’t stand the current version of the theme, I love that it brings a bit of Delia Derbyshire back into it.

7-time is my favourite time signature, the best!

The middle section of this is in 4-time, so it switches from 7 to 4 then back to 7.

To be a bit picky: Phil’s comment about “most music” having 2, 3 or 4 beats per measure might be better phrased in terms of “most western music”. There are plenty of countries and regions where time signatures like 5, 7, 9 and 10 are more like the norm than 3 or 4.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmk5frp6-3Q&feature=related

Holst’s Mars from The Planets Suite? Love that one too.

Similar structure or something to this one also :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNv5sPu0C1E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hq4QC-7S7A&feature=related

perhaps? Not a music expert – but love listening to it!

Apparently “Anakin’s theme” from the SW : episode I – Phantom Menace is or includes the Vader Imperial march reworked or backwards or something too if memory serves.

For a long time Star Wars music = the movies for me.

It’s depressing how small the pool of movie composers is for films with a decent budget is. Williams, Elfman, Desplat, Zimmer, Giacchino, Newman, Newton-Howard, a handful of others. It’s a not-so-vicious cycle: they get hired because they can work quickly, in a recognizable style, but filmakers/producers go to them because they don’t really know music, they just know that their big action-adventure movie needs something that sounds like “Star Wars” or whatever, so they hire Williams, Elfman et al. to get that type of music.

BTW, Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross’s scores for “The Social Network” and especially the fantastic “The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo” are incredible.

And not to take away from that awesome piano rendition, but the full “I am the Doctor (every star, every planet)” in its full, nearly 7 minute orchestral glory is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk5O82ozO2U

“Victory of the Daleks” has become a theme for whenever the bad guys seem to get the upper hand on whatever show I’m watching. Likewise “Words Win Wars” is the sense that the good guys have won through again.

“Doctor Who XI” and “I am the Doctor” are just plain stirring, no matter what. I keep half expecting a blue box to materialize when I hear them….

@Minos – not a theremin, but classic analogue synth and tapes.

There’s a fanatastic documentary called “What the future sounded like” that has some great insights into how stuff was done back before there was even reliable multitrack tape machines.