Glad to hear that that TOS theme is a bit tricky, as I did struggle with understanding what was happening musically. I'm going to take another look and see if time has made it less cryptic.[br] [br]You may very well know this, but if not you may find it interesting. Roddenberry, without the knowledge or approval of composer Alexander Courage, wrote lyrics to that theme. I don't believe that anyone has heard them as I don't believe they were ever recorded. Apparently, he wrote them so that he would be officially listed as a co-writer and therefore be entitled to half of the performance royalties. From Wikipedia - "Although there was never any litigation, Courage later commented that he considered Roddenberry's conduct unethical. Roddenberry was quoted as responding, "Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I'm sure not gonna get it out of the profits of Star Trek."[br] [br]Something else I found amusing was that there was some sort of contractual agreement with the musicians union (or some such organziation) that scene music music (like the stuff they would play during climatic battle scenes, or humourous interludes like tribbles falling out of the storage compartment all over Kirk's head or whatever) could be re-cycled at will, across episodes, during the season in which it was recorded, but only during that season. If they wanted to use the same music for an episod during a subsequent season, it had to be re-recorded. The point was to provide additional revenue for the musicians. Perhaps that is commonplace but I found it kind of interesting.

Originally Posted by: ChristopherSchlegel[quote=dlwalke]

I'm a big ST fan! The theme from TOS is genius. I figured out the melody a long time ago as a kid, but it took me forever to figure out & understand the chords & the harmonic motion. :)

There are quite a few modulations & reharmonizations going on underneath that melody that put it very much in jazz territory. I finally bought the sheet music to a piano arrangement of it to find out what treasures were hiding in there. Amazing structure.