The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel - Chris Tarry - Main Theme
The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called Mars Patel Season Three Main Title. It's the theme from a podcast I co-created called The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel. Today we'll break it down, get into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I Make Music, where audio drama composers get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song soundtrack or composition and take a trip into how it was made. My name is Chris Tarry. I'm a musician, composer, writer and podcast producer from New York City. And this is How I Make Music. Welcome back to How I Make Music Episode 92. Mars Patel Season Three Main Title, written by myself, Chris Tarry. Thanks for listening in. The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel is sort of like a Stranger Things-esque podcast about middle schoolers who start to go missing. And Mars Patel and his gang of friends try and get to the bottom of the mystery. 1:40 INFLUENCES I come from a real jazz background and I'm a jazz musician primarily. I came up with Weather Report, there's a great, you know, what's that one doo doo dah dah dah dah dah dah - Black Market! It's a great track. So I'm really big into like 80 synths and 80s pop music and all that sort of stuff. And that has a big influence kind of on the sound of the music from Mars Patel. Spacey, and so sort of like, retro a little bit, I guess I would say. A lot of jazz influences whatever I'm doing so so for me, it's all about melody and sort of vibe, you know. Tangerine Dream is very much an influence on this. The Risky Business soundtrack. And that individual track. You know, when they're on the subway, they're like making out on the subway. That Tangerine Dream track comes on. I hear so many influences and so much film music just based on that one track. Take a listen to it. I just brought it up to my wife. Like two nights ago we were watching a show I'm like "this is a ripoff of that Tangerine Dream track! Everybody's doing this!" And she's like "yeah, whatever, I'm going to bed." Return to Forever, that's another one. You know, when I was a kid just listening to tons of Return to Forever and, and just crazy fusion jazz guys. Stuff that nobody who ever had a girlfriend would listen to. I play in a lot of jazz groups, obviously here in New York. And we always - especially with the fusion stuff - we say everybody in the audience is just guys with ponytails who still live in their parents' basements.4:48 DIFFERENT VERSIONS So this theme, which is called Season Three Theme - I did a version for each each season and kept the same form and harmonic structure, but produced the song differently every time. Here, I'll play you all three versions of the theme in a crossfade. So you can hear the difference between season one, season two and season three. And hopefully you'll be able to hear the similarities in the melodies and the harmonies. What changes is the vibe or the production of of the tune. You know, if you listened to season one, it has a very sort of very, very indie kind of feel. And see some two uses a lot of the same instruments, my bassline. You can hear me singing the melody. I'm not a great singer. So there's a lot of auto tune on this! And then in season three, again, the same harmonic structure but a completely sort of rewrite and shift to a new kind of sound. This version took a lot a lot a lot longer. There's an arp that goes throughout. More synths. I played synth bass instead of my Fender P-bass. 6:47 DRUM PATTERNS The melody's in three. But in this version, the drums are in four. And a bunch of the arps are in four as well. So it has this weird sort of feel to it, where it like flows over on itself.7:49 VIOLIN I brought in my friend Zack Brock, who is a well known jazz violinist who just happens to live down the street from me and had him record the melody and the harmonSupport the show