#079 Wooden Overcoats - James Whittle - Wooden Overcoats Main Theme
The piece of music we're listening to in the background is the main theme from podcast sitcom Wooden Overcoats. Today, we'll break it down and look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I Make Music, where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and get into the insights into how it was made. My name is James Whittle, composer, performer and conductor from the UK, and this is How I Make Music.00:46 About Wooden OvercoatsWooden Overcoats is a podcast sitcom about two rival funeral directors. On the one hand, there's Rudyard and Antigone Funn, siblings who rival themselves at times! And then newcomer to the island Eric Chapman, who has a fantastic presence and everyone falls in love with him. They compete for funeral business and a lot more on the island of Piffling. It's kind of satire comedy of small island and village mentality. But also a very nostalgic and affectionate take on rural living and community. And lots of lovable characters too.02:15 LeitmotifThe Wooden Overcoats Main Theme appears at the beginning and end of every episode. We hear the motifs from the theme throughout the show soundtrack to represent siblings Rudyard and Antigone. I had quite a lot of fun with the little jingle dum-dah-dum. It's often there, even under the surface. You might not always notice it. 02:44 Influence: Trevor WishartOne of the influences on Wooden Overcoats Main Theme is a piece by composer Trevor Wishart called Beach Singularity that was written in 1977. The piece is actually a live performance that takes place on a beach with brass ensembles and electronic recordings all at the same time. Victorian musical songs all combined with brass playing at the same time. Quite a noisy, almost absurd sound, which I love. I was drawing on these leftfield, avant-garde experimental compositions to try and get that sense of the absurd of satire. Of something a bit off kilter. We have in Wishart's piece, even dogs barking! So there's a lot of humor. There's a lot of chaos in this piece.04:08 Inifluence: ‘Allo! ‘Allo! British sitcomWooden Overcoats is set on a fictional Channel island. So one of the key musical influences was the theme tune from a British sitcom 'Allo! 'Allo! which is set in France and features lots of very bad accents. Very tongue in cheek, take a listen. The feeding tune has this dadadada rising fifth. Wooden Overcoats does a little quote of that.04:48 Large melodic jumpsThe Wooden Overcoats theme moves up and down in quite large jumps. It's that stuff which for me harks back to 1920s operetta, which is very expressive with these big jumps up and down. Here's an example from the 1920s operetta The Student Prince by Sigmund Romberg. Sounds very romantic. I kinda wanted to add a little bit of that kind of nostalgic feel in the tune.05:44 Live performance recordingThe Wooden Overcoats main theme was recorded live with a group of four musicians plus a conductor. And part of the challenge for me in writing the soundtrack is to get the most out of the minimal means. So even with just four musicians, how could we have, you know, a bass and some harmony and a melody, and make it all sound engaging? We wanted to work with live musicians, we wanted that raw sound that you get from live instruments. That's really the joy of music making for me is working with other people. It might not be a perfect sound. The drums are quite rough and ready. And that's maybe partly to do with how we recorded it anyway. But for me that makes the piece represent the show better. Because the Funn twins are not the most organized or necessarily straightforward of characters. 06:35 Odd ensembleThe ensemble for this piece is not your average, you don't often combine Support the show