Cue the Music!
If there's one form of music that's constantly heard, and almost as regularly dismissed, it's TV music. TV themes are usually a minute or less in length, and the viewer is distracted by flashy graphics and pretty pictures. And yet, writing for TV is a skill which is both rare and extremely specialised.
Occasionally, a hit TV series will introduce theme music which is strong enough to stand on its own - the Post/Carpenter classic theme for Hill Street Blues or Jan Hammer's Miami Vice for example. The music then creeps into the charts, and gets a little airplay in its own right.
But, the music for most series is lost forever once the series ends. The internet has become a huge repository for some of this music. It's not important, it's often not even particularly good music - but it has the ability to stir up memories of good times spent watching TV with friends and family. The music for The Mary Tyler Moore Show will, for some reason, always remind me of my grandparents (probably because it was with them that I watched it). I hear the music, I get a warm glow.
The Search for "That Tune"
One fascinating example of a fan's dedication to tracking down the music for a series is, where Larry Hall explains how he tracked down the original scoring of the music for the cult TV series The Prisoner. Click on the section marked "The Theme" under "Prisoner music" on the navigation bar. He explains very well the difference between commercially recorded versions of the theme, and the version that was used on TV. Better still, he managed to do some detective work and track down the original score, written by Ron Grainer, with its original orchestration. There is nearly too much information, as you delve further into the site.
The Music Makers
The people who write TV music set themselves a difficult task. The tune has to be memorable enough to remind people about the programme... but not so memorable it detracts from it. The four notes from the beginning of the Star Trek theme must be among the most famous four notes in history - and as soon as you hear them (F, C, D#, G, if you must know) you know exactly what's going to happen next. That's not bad for four notes. Alexander Courage was a clever man (though he later fell out with the series' creator, Gene Roddenberry, after the latter insisted on writing words to the theme tune which were never sung - but still made sure he got half the royalties for the music).
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