The song I chose to analyze in this blog is “The Game is On,” the theme song for the BBC TV series Sherlock, composed by David Arnold and Michael Price. This song has an overall jumpy and active sound to it, expressed through the unique sound of the hammered dulcimer. At first, I thought that the instrument playing the predominant melody in the first part of this song was some kind of harpsichord, so I was not aware of the existence of this instrument until I started researching for this assignment! I really enjoyed the “zingy” sound of it the past, and it brought me great satisfaction to discover this interesting instrument.

This instrument really takes over the timbre for this song, adding a “sparkle” to it with a sound that sounds like a fusion of the harpsichord and guitar. At first, the song starts out with the signature, straightforward melody of the theme, played by the dulcimer and accentuated by a two-time rhythm by the double bass. This first part is quiet, a “shadow” of the main melody, then there is a quiet and “light” transition that leads into the mid-volume main melody, which is repeated, the second time louder. After that, there is a stretch of time where violins are played rapidly and quietly to build up the suspense, followed by a variation of the theme melody played quietly. The brass instruments usher in a long stretch of the dulcimer being lightly played and violins playing very distant sound in the background, and the music slowly, little by little, swells in volume. This ushers in the mid-volume stringed instruments playing notes in rapid, five-stroke bursts, and the strings get louder in volume until they taper off when the song finishes.

I feel the times that the music slowly “swells” and grows louder to be the most suspenseful, since it seems to indicate that something is going to happen at the climax.

The timbre changes multiple times throughout this song, with areas where the brass instruments, dulcimer, and the string instruments take over. I feel that when the brass instruments play the main melody, there is more of an element of humor. When the dulcimer takes over, there is a more “baroque,” delicate, and mysterious sound. I feel the stringed instruments come into the scene as a “filler” and are almost always in the background, and they add drama to the overall tone.