Want to Enjoy Your Favorite TV Show Even More?

Creativity Secret for Guitar #14

What is your favorite television show?

Who is your favorite character on the show?

Why are they your favorite character?

What about the character is so attractive to you?

I first became aware of movie characters having their own musical themes during the “Lethal Weapon” series of movies. Briggs always had the dirty, electric blues guitar playing in the background when the camera was on him. Murtaugh had the smoky, jazz sax backing him up.

It added greater depth to the characters.

Apparently, this has been a common practice in Hollywood for decades.

You can take your creativity to greater heights by writing a musical theme that emphasizes the character’s personality or main character trait, or even their main character flaw (think Walter White in Breaking Bad. His offended pride was the whole point of the show).

How would you express this in ONE MUSICAL PHRASE?

Once you’ve written the theme for your favorite character, you can move on to the rest of the cast.

Why You Should Do This

Writing themes for your favorite TV characters is going to do 3 Things for you:

1. You are going to get much better at creating and/or expressing specific emotions with music. (the reason we like or dislike a character is because of the emotions they stir within us)

2. You are going to stretch yourself in new directions musically because you are going to have to think differently about how you create music in the first place.

3. You will develop more subtlety in how you write because characters are boring when they are straight forward and one dimensional. Boring doesn’t last long on television. So, TV writers have begun writing nuanced characters. Your themes will have to be equally as nuanced to match them well.

Granted, this is an advanced technique, but even beginners can benefit from practicing it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until the day they click my lights out:

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly — at first.

Begin writing musical themes for your favorite TV characters today. If nothing else, it will deepen your enjoyment of your favorite show.

When you’ve written themes you are happy with, email me:

Dean@PeakPerformanceGuitar.com

I’ll help you take the next step.

Have Fun & Make Music.

Dean