The First Transformers Theme Was WILDLY Confusing

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[President_Starscream]

Humans will just never understand the intricacies of Cybertronian music.

[MinistryOfGamersMOG]

Still can't believe they left that bad edit in for an entire season.

[sentientblender]

Honestly I would've just chalked this up to having ONCE BEEN a piece with coherent timing that got butchered by the editors to fit some kind of time restraint. Even after breaking it down I have a hard time believing it was intentionally written to be this confusing.

[papisatanico]

I think it happened when they edited the theme for time.
After hearing how odd it sounded, the design team probably thought it made the theme sound more alien and kept it.

[NathanielJamesProd]

Hot take: Apparently, one of the dvd versions has fixed timing and this was an editing issue... but I kind of like this version better. I like that kind of off-beat timing that keeps you guessing. Music is full of happy accidents.

[brianlew]

Obviously, the theme song did its job.
It’s a song that more than meets the eye.

[Starlesslight]

Never thought twice about it as a kid. It just sounded cool and still does.

[Lowehart]

Mad respect for the original theme choosing to slam the 4 syllable word decepticons into a space where the melody only really had space for one.

[phillysphamous]

The song itself was transforming. Kids wasn’t ready for this genius

[Xemptuous]

Damn, as a composer, I must say the outro has one of the most addictive rhythmic changes and modulation into a major sequence progression i've ever heard from a tv show.

[atitagain]

As a kid, it sounded a lot like they cut the song twice to shorten it and never smoothed it out, but it's still one of my top favorite opening songs ever, I loved how well you walked us through the song, I learn new things each episode!

[reallyfurious]

I keep trying to tell people how incredible this theme music is.

[brunoschmitt]

The intro is actually pretty simple to explain: they wanted it to repeat before the melody started, but only had a recording going straight into the melody, which starts precisely on the 16th note right after the fourth beat. So they just sliced it right before the melody and you end up with 3 whole beats + one 16th note (13/16 in total for that bar).

[ErebosGR]

As a kid, I loved how almost all the '80s cartoon themes were steeped in fusion jazz, hard rock and power metal.
They were so fresh, cool and interesting.

[DStek]

Years ago, I worked with Anne Bryant who composed the original Transformers score. She had the foresight to negotiate a license fee as opposed to a fixed fee for her work. Really cool woman to work with.

[RealEpicWork]

That theme song was a masterpiece at the time for many of us who grew up with Transformers.

[hasmith]

Charles, welcome to the world of LINEAR video editing. As soon as I heard it I knew exactly what it was. I was that guy. I am not responsible for this particular episode but I have made 100s of edits just like that. I never worked on transformers but 25 years ago, I would edit TV shows down to the precise second using video tape, NOT COMPUTERS. There was no such thing as non-linear editing. I would edit those episodes based on story boards and studio notes and then end up long or short timewise by the end of the episode. I would usually use the credits to make up or add the time back. The alternative was to make up time back in the middle of the show but this was not considered good form because you would have to dub the episode over to another tape and make an insert edit and thus lose a generation. Losing a generation is bad news on 1" or 3/4" video tape even if was the "right" thing to do for music editing. It was considered the lesser of evils to just make a bad music edit instead in order to turn in the program at 22:30 or whatever the deliver requirements for run time were. There was also time crunch, I can't tell you how many times I would be up against a deadline editing as fast as I could, make the last tape, eject, and run it to over to broadcast and physically throw it in another deck and press play. Those were the day of big video cartridges and big buttons. Fun Times!

[andrewhuang]

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DECIPHER SOMETHING THAT HAS PUZZLED ME FOR ALMOST MY ENTIRE LIFE. WOW THIS IS SATISFYING

[matthiasplatz]

The music does start over in the outro. My guess is that the original cut was slightly too short for the credits, so the editor was probably told "just repeat the intro-the first two measures ". The problem is that the melody proper starts on the last beat of that second measure....so that got chopped out because I'm guessing that whomever was in charge decided having the melody start for a beat and disappear sounded worse. Thus the weird stuttering.

[MundaneBrain]

You have answered questions that we did not know needed answering.

You've got the touch.