Art by Zach Christy
This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling .
No bass for you!! In 1987, TV composer Jonathan Wolff was still trying to make a name for himself in Hollywood. Then one day, he got a call from Jerry Seinfeld, who needed music for his new sitcom. This is the story behind the unforgettable music of Seinfeld, and how Jonathan Wolff’s unique approach helped make Seinfeld a TV classic.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Bit Rio by Sound of Picture
Slotcar by Sound of Picture
Reddit by Sound of Picture
Sunny Day (Instrumental) by Kylie Odetta
Swing It by Joseph William Morgan
Our World (Instrumental) by Sonny Cleveland
Nocturne in E flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2 by Will Herrington
If It Ain't Broke (Instrumental) by Sonny Cleveland
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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View Transcript ▶︎
[SFX: Seinfeld intro shaker]
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[SFX: Seinfeld theme song]
Seinfeld is one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. During the nine years that it ran, Sienfeld had millions of viewers. It won ten Emmys, three Golden Globes, and its cast have become superstars.
Seinfeld ended over twenty years ago, but it’s still very much alive. It has a huge, obsessive fanbase, and still gets referenced all the time. It’s theme song, that we’re hearing now, was unlike any theme song that came before it, or has come after. And there’s a crazy backstory behind that wacky slap bass.
[SFX: Seinfeld theme song out]
But before we get into it, I need to tell you about my friend Steve.
[music in]
Steve: My name is Steve Lack and I am a post-production audio mixer and sound designer.
Steve and I worked together years ago when we were both sound designers at the Discovery Channel.
Steve: I consider Dallas one of my best friends. I really love Dallas.
Steve: We were both the night shift guys and we'd both come in around 6:00.
Steve: Night shift is generally unsupervised. You come in, you get your assignments, you work on your mixes, you work on your work, and then when you feel like taking a break, you take a break.
To give you a picture of what Steve’s like, he’s the type of guy who’s lived 100 different lives. Like the time he was a circus drummer and got into a fist fight with a clown. Or the time when he dropped everything moved to Trinidad. Or the time he was doing things he should’ve have been doing in a parking garage that collapsed hours later in the Northridge earthquake... yeah, Steve is easily one of my favorite people in the world.
Steve: I would wander over to his suite or he would wander over to my suite and we would talk politics or the events of the day or sound design or whatever. But we got to be pretty good friends because we had several hours of quiet time at night where we could just hang out and chat.
During one of those random late nights, Steve told me about the time he worked on Seinfeld.
[music out]
[SFX: record scratch]
Wait, what?! So apparently in the late 80s and early 90s, he’d been an assistant to a TV composer named Jonathan Wolff.
[music in]
Jonathan: When I first moved to LA, I was 17 years old.
...and that’s Jonathan. He’s composed the music for 75 TV shows, including Will & Grace, Married With Children and Who’s the Boss. But no one becomes a major TV composer overnight. Jonathan spent his first decade in LA doing musical odd jobs and making connections.
Jonathan: The studios were happy to have me, they treated me like a Swiss Army multi-purpose utility tool for musical chores, because I had good training in a wide range of fields.
But after ten years, Jonathan was ready for a change.
Jonathan: I decided that I no longer wanted to continue having the telephone dictate to me where I was going to work each day, and what I was going to do when I got there. So, I declared myself a composer.
Jonathan wrote letters to all of his Hollywood contacts. He thanked them for their support, but asked them to stop sending him these low-level musical jobs. Instead, he wanted to compose original music. This was a huge risk. It’s like an actor who’s only ever had bit parts deciding that he’ll only accept lead roles from now on. Jonathan knew he might regret it, but he mailed those letters anyway.
Jonathan: Then, I held my breath.
[music pause]
Jonathan: I may have just nuked the last 10 years of my life.
[music resume]
Jonathan: But, when those letters started arriving at their destinations, all over Hollywood, people just shrugged and said, "Well, that's too bad. He's a good utility guy." And then, they started throwing me little writing assignments, song writing assignments for their movies, and scoring assignments and that is how my composing career began.
[music out]
This is around the time that Steve got hooked up with Jonathan.
Steve: He landed Who's The Boss and he was doing some other afterschool specials and starting to really take off as a TV composer. And so he was looking for somebody to help out with MIDI tech, engineering, some orchestration and transcriptions, setting up gear and all that stuff. I wore many hats.
Gradually, more and more jobs started coming in.
Steve: We were doing Who's The Boss.
[SFX: Who’s the Boss Theme]
Steve: We did some Who's The Boss spin off shows. Some other sitcoms.
But getting connected with Jerry Seinfeld happened almost by chance.
Jonathan: It turns out, in real life, Jerry has a best friend named George. It's George Wallace, the comedian.
[George Wallace Clip: You know what makes me sick - people saying stupid stuff. I got off the airplane today, a man said to me, “My wife gonna die when I tell her I saw you.” I said, “Well don’t tell her.”]
Jonathan: George Wallace and I have been buddies for a long, long time. When Jerry Seinfeld confided to his best friend George Wallace that he was having trouble with the music for his new show, Wallace said, "Hey, call my buddy Wolff.” So, I got a phone call from Jerry Seinfeld.
Jonathan: He described to me a sound design issue. He told me that the music for his new show, which, at the time, was called, The Seinfeld Chronicles, the opening credits for that show would be Jerry, standing in front of an audience. He tells jokes…
[Standup Clip: Oscar Meyer is expanding his little area. It’s not little anymore, is it? Oscar Meyer is now a huge, monstrous place. That area, that whole section there keeps getting bigger. And for him it’s not easy to come up with new products. You realize for Oscar Meyer to come up with a new product, he has to invent meat. Folks, there is no olive loaf animal, as far as I know.]
Jonathan: People laugh.
Jonathan: That's the opening credits. And, he wanted music to go with it. I told him right away, that sounds like an audio conflict, because what we really need to hear is you telling jokes and people laughing.
Ya see, TV theme music leading into Seinfeld were these epic belting lyrical odes. Like the Golden Girls [SFX], A-Team, Family Ties, Dukes of Hazzard, or my personal favorite as an 80’s kid - Transformers [SFX]. All of these songs were designed to play in the clear, not as a device to prop up dialogue.
Jonathan: Theme music in the late eighties on TV was melodic. There was a lot of sassy saxophones…
[SFX: Facts of Life Theme: "When you’re learning the facts of life."]
Jonathan: And silly lyrics.
[SFX: Charles in Charge Theme: "Charles in charge of our days and our nights."]
Jonathan: I'm guilty of creating a lot of that kind of music, but it was not going to work in this case.
So Jonathan pitched a crazy idea: Instead of making a traditional theme song with verses and a catchy chorus, he would build music around Jerry’s standup bits.
Jonathan: So I pitched to Jerry, "How about this? How about we treat your human voice as the melody of the Seinfeld theme? Every time you do a different monologue will be a variation on the theme. My job, Jerry, will be to accompany you in a way that works well with your human voice, but does not interfere with the audio of you telling jokes."
Jonathan: “For example the human, organic nature of your human voice might go well with the human, organic nature of my human lips, tongue, finger snaps. Like this [SFX: finger snaps, mouth/tongue movements in a rhythmic way]." I had his attention, because that was music from Mars in the late eighties. Sampling was in its infancy. He said, "How's that work?"
Jonathan: And I said, "Come on over."
Jonathan had to prove he could make music that was memorable and fun, but didn’t distract from Jerry’s standup.
Jonathan: I threw it up against one of his monologues.
Jonathan: He liked what I showed him. He held the phone up to the speakers so that Larry David could hear it over the phone [SFX]. Larry liked it. That was, at that time, the entire approval process for the Seinfeld theme.
[music in]
Unfortunately, the network was less impressed.
Jonathan: There was a meeting, where they laid out some conditions. And the first thing on the list was music.
The network executives had some major concerns.
Jonathan: "What's up with the music? What is that sound? What's with the popping? What instrument is that? Can we not afford real music? It's distracting, it's weird, it's annoying."
Jonathan: When he said “annoying,” Larry David perked up. Larry, as you may know, likes to be annoying. So, I turned to our boss and huddled with him, and Larry, and Jerry and said, "Look, guys, I'll change the music, it's not a big deal.”
Jonathan: Larry David would have none of it. He just started yelling at me. He says, "What do you mean? What do mean, Wolff? Get out! You're done here. Out!" and I left the meeting because Larry David had thrown me out for suggesting that maybe we would change the music. Obviously, Larry hung tight on the music, and the music stayed in the picture. He's the hero of that story.
[music out]
So what made up this so-called “annoying” music? Let’s break it down to it’s essential parts. First up is that iconic slap bass.
[SFX: Bass fill 1]
Jonathan: At the time, slap bass was an element of funk music, buried in the mix. It had not yet enjoyed celebrity status as a solo instrument. I brought it forward, illuminated it, put it hot in the mix. It sounded kind of quirky.
[SFX: Bass fill 2]
Interestingly, these bass lines weren’t played on a real bass. Jonathan actually played them on a keyboard controller that could trigger different samples, including bass sounds.
Jonathan: It was about at that time that sampling was becoming really usable and I used Seinfeld as a proving ground for that bleeding edge technology.
To get the sound for the original Seinfeld bass, Jonathan and Steve took bass patches from two different devices and blended them together.
Steve: The actual original bass sound was a Roland D550 Popper and… a Korg M1 Slap Bass.
Steve: I think he started out with the M1 [SFX] and felt like it wasn't cutting enough, so then we added that D550 Popper in there [SFX], which had kind of more of an edge to it. And what I would do is, I would kind of get a balance between these 2 synths, while he was playing. Until we kind of just nailed exactly the right sound.
Jonathan: The bass line of Seinfeld [SFX: Seinfeld bass ling], the actual music of it, so basic, so simple, It did not require four beats to a bar, it did not require meter at all to hold water. I could stop and start the bass to make allowance for the timings of his jokes, and his punchlines, and the people laughing.
Then there are those “organic” sounds that Jonathan mentioned.
[SFX: Mouth Sounds]
Jonathan recorded these noises himself using his fingers and mouth, and mapped them to his keyboard so he could play them on the fly. Combine that with a simple shaker...
[SFX: Shaker]
These noises served as the rhythmic backbone of the Seinfeld theme. Even the tempo was set around Jerry’s comedic timing.
Jonathan: I watched Jerry's standup comedy. I noticed that he has a lyric sensibility about the way he delivers his lines. The way he moves, his choreography, his facial expressions move. There was a meter to it, that I put different clocks on. Finally, I settled in on [SFX: snaps] about 110.
[SFX: Jerry: I don’t think people think of their office as a workplace, I think they think of it as a stationary store with Danish. You know what I mean? You wanna get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee and you go home.]
Jonathan: And that seemed to work well with the metrics of Jerry's comedy. So, that became the tempo of the Seinfeld theme, in general.
A few other musical elements were used to emphasize punchlines and other key moments.
Jonathan: There was some horns... [SFX]. In Vaudeville, when someone told a joke, there'd be a rim shot [SFX]. Well, my music served the aural space of that. So, the horns would accentuate the end of jokes, and the end of the monologue itself.
Let’s listen to the opening monologue from the episode “The Mango.” Notice how the musical elements ebb and flow to match Jerry’s delivery.
[SFX: “The Mango” monologue.]
Jonathan: The idea of having to recreate a recording of the theme every episode was a new concept. I treated it like Lego music. These were elements that could be modularly manipulated to fit the individual timings and the overall length of each monologue. I knew that if this show went anywhere, I was going to have to recreate music bespoke for each monologue.
And so he did. To score an episode, Jonathan would watch and rewatch every scene, playing along on his keyboard to what was happening on screen.
Jonathan: They had to be done to picture so that the timings would be right. And so that I could maybe use some of his choreography, sometimes he would do things with his hands or his head that would give me musical instruction.
The music wasn’t just customized for the monologues, but also for the unique transitions between scenes. Like going from the terminal to the plane in the episode called “The Airport”:
[SFX: Transition 1]
Or from the cafe to Jerry’s apartment in “The Gum”:
[SFX: Transition 2]
Or when the gang ends up in a sleepy Massachusetts town in “The Finale”:
[SFX: Jazzy version]
This level of customization was completely unheard of in Hollywood.
[music in]
Most shows have one main theme song and a handful of filler tracks that get reused over and over. But on Seinfeld, every single episode is unique. It would have saved tons of time and effort to do things the normal way. But that perfectionism is exactly what makes Seinfeld feel so polished, even today.
But the main theme only scratches the surface of Jonathan’s work on Seinfeld. As the show progressed, Jonathan got to play around with a wide range of musical genres and tropes. These unique tracks underscored some of Seinfeld’s most hilarious and memorable scenes. That’s coming up, after the break.
[music out]
[MIDROLL]
[music in]
When creating the music of Seinfeld, composer Jonathan Wolff took a revolutionary approach: For each episode, he built the music around Jerry’s opening and closing monologues, and added unique transitions between scenes. This means that no two episodes are alike. Even the bass sound itself changed over the course of the show.
[music out]
Jonathan: The Seinfeld bass progressed, it evolved. In fact, there were multiple Seinfeld basses throughout the show. It became a thing around my office for my staff, to leave me gift bass samples to weave into Seinfeld cues [SFX].
It made it more fun and, for Seinfeld connoisseurs... they note how the Seinfeld bass sound changed from season to season, and from episode to episode sometimes.
As for the actual melodies, the early season transition music tends to stay a lot closer to the melody of the main theme song. Like this.
[SFX: Early Transition]
In the later seasons, the bass fills get a lot wackier:
[SFX: Later Transition]
There were also plenty of opportunities to branch out from the main theme, depending on what the script called for.
[music in]
Jonathan: About a week before an episode begins shooting, each production department receives a script, so they can prepare. Wardrobes, props, set dressing. My music editor would read the script, and database a to-do list of music pieces, and/or on-stage music assistance that this episode might need. Sometimes it's necessary to pre-produce music before they shoot the scenes. For example, when there's on-camera singing or dancing, I would need to create the music recording far enough in advance so the other departments, the actors, dancers, choreographer, director, camera crew, had time to prepare for the shoot.
[music out]
Jonathan: For example, I had to create the instrumental tracks for Jason singing “Believe It or Not, George Isn't At Home” in advance for playback during the audience shoot.
[SFX: Answering Machine]
Jonathan: Kramer's head-banging metal.
[SFX: Car song]
Jonathan: Rochelle, Rochelle: The Musical.
[SFX: Rochelle Rochelle song]
Jonathan: And Kramer's photoshoot of semi-naked George.
[SFX: Photoshoot song]
Jonathan: Also, in post is the time to create underscore music that heightens a dramatic or emotional scene, or serves as a comedic device.
Jonathan: In “The Hot Tub” episode, Elaine wanders the cold night streets, upset about her writer's block. The music is, at first, worried. Then, at the end, triumphant as she solves her Himalayan walking shoes assignment.
[Seinfeld Clip: Elaine: My back aches, my heart aches, but my feet… my feet are resilient. Thank God I took off my heels and put on my Himalayan walking shoes!]
Or the sentimental music that plays when George, and later Jerry, watch happy couples on the pier and decide to get married.
[SFX: Pier music]
Jonathan: On Seinfeld, cinematic action music with chase scenes became a thing. Jerry chasing Newman, the cable guy chasing Kramer, the geriatric bike gang chasing George, and the German tourist chasing Kramer. And that became a recurring Seinfeld comedy tradition. I always scored the Seinfeld chases in post as if they were serious, dramatic chases.
[SFX: Chase Music]
Jonathan: Same with, you know, Jerry's dream sequence, Tarantino-esque death scene in “The Baby Shower.”
[SFX: Shootout music]
Jonathan: Or, in “The Frogger,” when Jerry runs from The Lopper.
[SFX: Lopper music]
Jonathan: You get the idea. There's these moments for me to go over the top, silly, movie underscore.
[music in]
Jonathan: So, there was music in pre-production, there was music in post-production, and sometimes my duties were on set.
Because of the fast-paced filming schedule, Jonathan typically had just a single day to complete each episode.
Jonathan: In general, for a normal episode, I liked one full calendar day between receiving an episode and delivering finished music.
It was a hectic schedule, but all that hard work paid off. Seinfeld became a smash hit, and stayed that way all the way through it’s final season. The 1998 finale had 76 million viewers, making it the third most-watched finale of all time.
[music out]
Steve: It’s just such an interesting point in television history.
Steve: It's like working on Mary Tyler Moore.
[SFX: Mary Tyler Moore Theme: “You’re gonna make it after all”]
Steve: Or going back, if you worked on The Lucy Show.
[SFX: The Lucy Show Theme]
When a TV show captures a wide enough audience, it becomes a shared memory for a whole generation. A show’s theme song can be a huge part of that.
Jonathan: Often, the theme not only reflects the show's sensibilities, but also welcomes the audience by bridging the gap between the show's set and the viewer's living room.
Jonathan: I didn't write it, but the Cheers theme does that so well.
[SFX: Cheers Theme: “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.”]
Jonathan: You really feel welcome to that show, because of the theme.
Jonathan: A TV theme like no other production element, transports you into the world of the show itself [SFX: Cheers theme]. TV themes are woven into the fabric of our personal experiences, like the soundtrack of our lives. Familiar themes, like Seinfeld, serve as pop cultural touchstones, marking times and places in our lives.
Jonathan: For me, those lifeline markers include themes like Mission Impossible…
[SFX: Mission Impossible Theme]
Jonathan: Pink Panther…
[SFX: Pink Panther theme]
Jonathan: Beverly Hillbillies…
[SFX: Beverly Hillbillies Theme: “So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is.”]
Jonathan: For my kids, it's probably the Friends theme song.
[SFX: Friends Theme: I’ll be there for you, as you’re there for me too.]
Jonathan: People hold warm, fuzzy connections to the TV themes in their memories.
[music in]
For the millions of Seinfeld fans out there, the show’s music will always hold a special place in their hearts. So what was it like to work on something monumental?
Steve: Oh, it was great. I mean, the thing with Jonathan was, he had been in the business five or six years longer than me. I was a young guy. I was looking to break in and learn the ropes and he was just so helpful. He started many careers. Everybody who worked for him after me and at the same time I was there has gone on to big Hollywood careers… and it's all because of his mentorship and his guidance. He was really a giving person. He wasn't jealous of the success. He shared it.
Jonathan: I'm happy that the Seinfeld music became a unique identifying signature for the show. It became Seinfeld’s sonic brand. That satisfies me a lot, that even apart from the show, even when there's no picture to go with it, they recognize it as being the Seinfeld theme.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound - a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound incredible. Find out more at defactosound.com.
This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling, and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound edited by Soren Begin. It was sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger and Colin DeVarney.
Special thanks to our guests Jonathan Wollf and Steve Lack. Jonathan says he loves hearing from fans.
Jonathan: The fans find me on my Instagram or Facebook. It's easy to find me. My handle is “SeinfeldMusicGuy.” If you're listening to this, and you want to reach out to me, please do. I'll respond.
You can get in touch with Steve through his website, stevelack.com.
Finally, I also love your feedback! You can reach out to me and the rest of the team over through Facebook, Twitter, or by writing hi@20k.org. Also, if you haven’t checked out our website, you’re really missing out. Be sure to check it out at 20k dot org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
