SEATTLE — There’s a lot more going on in the new Evening theme than you might ever realize. Composer Tom McGurk of Bad Animals says he only has 15 seconds to get a message across to viewers.
“It should be anticipation, joy, excitement and making you go ‘Oh! I want to see what's going on!’” he says.
McGurk has won 4 Emmys for his sound design on Bill Nye the Science Guy and helped out around Studio X when R.E.M, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were recording there.
We gave McGurk some songs we felt represented the feel of our show. (among them, Imagine Dragons’ “Whatever It Takes”, Little Big Town’s “Day Drinking”, Coldplay’s “Lovers in Japan”).
After listening to the song and watching our show, McGurk came up with a simple four-chord progression that gives the sense of moving forward. This is the building block. More than 100 instrumental tracks have been added to give the theme a modern pop sound.
“Usually for this kind of track, I will work with the drums first to get the groove really tight,” McGurk says.
We can’t count how many drum tracks are involved, but we hear all kinds of sound effects (“Those are just something building excitement to the next transition”) string sections and vocals.
“The thing is the human voice brings a massive amount of emotion,” says McGurk. “So adding something on top of it really brings a human element to it and it makes it something relatable.”
McGurk isn’t tired of hearing his theme and neither are we. The next time you watch Evening, listen closely to the new sound that goes hand in hand with our new look (or listen to the full track below).
KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.