Composing the soundtrack
Jonny Gunton talks about creating the series music
I was very excited to get the commission to compose the music for World’s Weirdest Events. An eight part series of weirdness, brilliant right up my street, I love creating interesting and weird music. Having met Aaron, the series producer, I think the combination of my TV commissions, sound design and being one half of the band Drøm nailed me the commission.
Some of my first attempts with the music box were even a little too weird for WWE!Jonny Gunton
After our meeting I viewed some lovely stylised sequences with Chris Packham in the desert. Aaron requested no guitars as he felt it would be a bit of a cliché, a bit Ry Cooder! Aaron mentioned a music box, all of a sudden I had an earworm land, the title music from “Tales of the Unexpected” a series written by Roald Dahl from the 70s & 80s. Some of my first attempts with the music box were even a little too weird for WWE!
I experimented with instruments like; xylophones, marimbas, Jews harp, percussive sounds and analogue synthesizers. I recorded many sounds and used samples from my library to create the rhythms. It was great fun using sounds like a typewriter and an old grandfather clock ticking. I experimented and adapted the sounds to create the right atmosphere, altering the pitch, time stretching sometimes giving me weird rhythms that became the backbone of some of the tracks.
I mixed all the new sounds in with my specially composed music and came up with the final tracks used in the series.
A very enjoyable and inspiring series to work on.
Listen to the music from the series
