The Price Is Right Background Information
- Composers: Edward Kalehoff (v7), Shiela Cole (v6), Robert Arnold Israel (v6), and Turk Warwick(v5).
The first concept I want to draw your attention to is the Call and Response section of the theme.
Call and response is a great technique that started in Africa with tribal songs make a music verse that left room for the rest of the tribe to mimic the main singer's words with the same melody. Sometimes the reponse would be slightly modified or harmonized. Here is an example of this in action.
I don't understand what they are singing, but there is an of screen female leader singing the call and the children respond. I love how they organically start dancing too.
In The Price Is Right, we can hear this as well.
In my video, the call is from 0:01 to 0:02. The response is during the third second. Whenever the melody leaves a space the trumpet section responds.
There are a total of four core motifs in the melody. I will ignore any motif variations where one note is changed.
Before I get into those motifs, I want to step back and explain the types of notes I'm using in the sheet music. This composer seems to love sixteenth notes.
Whole notes are played once per measure (big fat note on the left).
Half notes are played twice per measure (second from the left).
Quarter notes are played four times per measure (third from the left).
Eighth notes are played 8 times per measure (fourth from the left).
Sixteenth notes are played 16 times per measure (highlighted in blue).
Melody Motif 1
Melody Motif 2:
Melody Motif 3:
Melody Motif 4:
All Four Motifs:
All Four Motifs (Up two octaves):
Here is the full theme song.
- Image is from unsplash.com
- I listened to this piece a ton of times and there are things I left out like the bass line, more responses, and the alternate motif. I will come back and update the post when I have more time.