Hector Vs The Future - Odinn Orn Hilmarsson - Theme From Hector Vs The Future
The piece of music we're listening to in the background is the theme tune to Hector Vs The Future, a comedy podcast about a cantankerous museum owner's battle against technology and obsolescence. Today, we'll break it down and get 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 share some of the musical insights into how it was made. My name is Óðinn Örn Hilmarsson. I'm a composer and sound designer living in London, and this is How I Make Music.00:52 About the showWelcome back to How I Make Music episode number 83. Hector Vs The Future by me, Óðinn Örn Hilmarsson. Now, this episode of How I Make Music features some stronger than usual language and our tech overlords demand that we label it explicit. You have been warned. Enjoy. Hector Vs The Future mostly follows Hector, a cranky old curmudgeon who curates a museum called the Obsoleteum, where all obsolete technology is collected for pointless posterity. Across the road is another museum in many ways its exact opposite the Uptodateum, run by Biz and her half-robot half-hologram assistant Phil. The show is about Hector's struggle to keep old tech alive in a world that is constantly updating itself. He himself has a clockwork pacemaker, that he constantly has to wind up with a turnkey sticking out of his chest. And we have planned obsolescence in the tech that we use. Even though Hector is this sort of kook, it's absolutely something that feels very real to now.02:33 SID chipsI was definitely deeply influenced by what the 70s and 80s thought the future would sound like. In particular, old game sound generators, Commodore computers, SID chips. Arguably for Hector, even that is too modern for him. There's one synth, which is specifically a chiptune sound. And I knew that that would translate the tensions of old versus new in a musical way for the audience listening in. Hector is this bitter and combative character. He's always in conflict with the modern age. And it's Hector versus the future. So I knew that I wanted to approach the theme tune with this sort of battle music. Giving a boss battle where Hector is the unlikely hero.03:41 Clockwork rhythmSo the time signature of the piece I felt had to be in an odd time signature. For me that has a lot of urgency. That was sort of my first building block and I built up from there. We have two drum layers. One sounds quite static and is mostly hitting all the straight notes. And then there's another track which has a more traditional modern action drum feel to it. And that was meant to sort of give a lot of power and a lot of oomph to the whole proceedings. And underpinning the rhythm section the sort of more traditional drum sounds is the rhythm of Hector's windup pacemaker. The pacemaker actually starts the piece as well it winds up and starts the whole episode. And I knew that once we were into the main section of the piece, the pacemaker should be there as a rhythmic element as well. I added a little noise gate to just add a bit of stuttering effect to actually make it feel like the ratchet was quite creaky and a bit worn05:33 Rick and MortyFunnily enough, Rick and Morty was very popular at the time and I do think there are quite a few similarities between the sort of dramaticness of Hector Vs The Future and the Rick and Morty one. Feels like it's aping Doctor Who a little bit. Doctor Who has that sort of theremin sound with the gliding synth.06:03 Musical abacusThe kalimba is a sort of very old tech instrument in terms of music making. It's just metal prongs stuck to a resonant wooden box. It feels like a an old tech instrument. Hector would be very admirable of or admiring of. It's a musical Abacus. Yeah, exactly.06:42 LiSupport the show