You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. I would like to make it more popular in a movie based on one of the episodes. And from the debut, it's been one of my favorite podcasts. A while back, in 2015, I did a special edition of Song Exploder for Reply All about their theme song by Breakmaster Cylinder.
I'd heard the guys talk about the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder in the show's credits, but I didn't really know who or what that was and I wanted to find out more. So, in honor of the four year anniversary of Reply All's launch, I'm putting out this special crossover edition for the first time here on Song Exploder. It starts with the Reply All theme song, which goes like this.
By the way, I'm not sure how many of you know this, but before Reply All, Alex and PJ had another podcast about the internet called TLDR, and a lot of aspects of Reply All first manifest in that show, including having a theme song by Break Master Syllinder, so they've all been working together since September 2013.
When I wanted to find out how the Reply All theme was put together, I discovered a few surprising things, like the fact that PJ and Alex have never actually spoken to Break Master Syllinder, who prefers to remain anonymous. They've only ever emailed. So when the guys say the mysterious Break Master Syllinder in the credits, they really mean it. They don't even know if Break Master is a he or a she.
I interviewed Break Master Syllinder, but out of respect for his or her privacy and mystery, I had an actor replace Break Master Syllinder's voice. Or did I? I'm sworn to secrecy. I also discovered that before there was a theme for Reply All, before there was even a theme for TLDR, PJ and Alex first had to agree on whether or not their podcast should have a theme at all. Here's PJ. Alex wanted one and I didn't want one.
I think I remember feeling like it was not a good idea because you would end up having episodes that didn't totally fit the theme song. Do you remember that argument? Yes. I don't think that I had a particularly strong counterargument. So why did you win that? It's a weird question I never win any arguments. I wanted something kind of anthemic and break beady and just like really heavy. Isn't it an anthemic? Like an anthem instead of an antheme?
So many years ago, probably 2008 or 2009, I somehow stumbled upon a video that Break Master Syllinder made, which was a remix of Mr. Sandman by the Cordettes. It was this video that was just the most gruesome moments from every horror movie strung together to the tune of this sort of creepy distorted remix of Mr. Sandman. And I was like, well, this is someone I want to keep an eye on. So I started looking through Break Master Syllinder's other videos and I started following their music.
And then what came time to do a theme song, I was like, who is just weird enough to work with us and make this thing? My name is Break Master Syllinder and I first wrote a theme song for PJ and Alex for a TLDR. The first theme was received relatively well and was sort of the sound of the show. In retrospect, it feels more childish, I guess. It's sort of goofier.
I think that initially we were enamored of the idea of doing a show about the internet that was very internet-y and our first theme song was all synthesizers and it was all synthesized. One of the things that we really realized making TLDR is yes, it's a show about the internet but it's mostly a show about just your environment and where you are and who you're talking to and how you're talking to them. So they wanted to do something a little more refined maybe.
The tone of the new show was going to distance themselves from what that theme sounded like, which was to, you know, a little kid-like. I am reading an old email from Alex Goldman to myself in November of 2014 and he says, if I had to describe what I wanted in terms of emotion, I try to describe our show, which at its best moments is both irreverent and earnest. I had some weird thing where I was just obsessed with Bach, prelude and C is basically what the reply all theme is.
Yeah, it follows the same chord structure. It's the first four measures but instead of playing each individual sixteenth note, you bring it all into one chord. So what you can do is you can take one measure and you can block it into one chord so it's this. And the second measure is this and third and fourth and then it goes the first four measures and then it goes measures 12 through 15. And you land back on the tonic and it's nice. You can't possibly do a better than Bach would have done it.
It's got those nice diminished sevens, it's really good. This piano in this room is not really good enough to record most of the time. That is a fake E piano sound though, which is a little unfortunate but I kind of tried to dirty it up in the EQs. I totally cannot play drums so I just recorded every drum hit individually. I bought some brushes because they're awesome. That is layered with a trap kit. This theme song is just like layering all my favorite shit ever, I guess.
It's a coin being spun on a table but it's pitched up like exponentially along a curved line so it starts low and it gets higher quickly so hopefully it sounds like it warps into whatever sound comes next. Those are two different sounds. That is a mason jar being rolled across a table and then the other sound is a small glass being shattered with a hammer.
In addition to these organic elements, break master cylinder also made parts of the music digitally, programming notes with MIDI software on a laptop. This bass line, I wrote a MIDI line and then exported it to five different bass noises. Then throughout the track I have them all layered at the same time and then I mute all of them except for one and just switch between them when it sounded right.
It switches between them quickly so you get some sort of bee boops and some rumbley or dubstep basses and some sort of warm midrange out of all the same bass melody. After a few rounds of drafts and revisions went back and forth between break master and PJ N' Alex, the theme settled into its final form. I asked PJ N' Alex if the theme song had a title. It doesn't really but it's called reply all intro four, frankenfuck one and three, beep boops lower down, dot wave.
It's called frankenfucked because we combined the beginning of one in the end of another and then it says beep boops lower down because I said I wanted lower down beep boops because we turned down the beeps and the boops and the mix. TLDR is a great show but reply all has a lot more depth than TLDR did. They'll be talking about one just general branch of the internet and then they suddenly zoom in on one human story.
I don't know if the theme does that exactly but I think it does balance the organic with the electronic, you know, Bach and machine bass, like the human component on the internet which their show does really well.
I think our show feels a lot like both of our personalities which is like cheerful with like a depressed streak and like a little bit manic but I think that mostly it's a pretty optimistic show and I think the theme song is an optimistic theme song and I like the feeling it starts us out with every week. Normally in reply all episodes what we hear is a condensed version of the theme song but it's actually a longer piece of music.
So here's the fully assembled full length version of the reply all theme by Break Master Cylinder. To learn more about reply all and the mysterious Break Master Cylinder, visit songexploder.net. Reply all's website is replyall.limo. Thanks to everyone who made this episode possible. PJ vote Alex Goldman, Fia Benin, Tim Howard and Farrellet Young. Next time on songexploder for the 150th episode Fleetwood Mac. Songexploder is produced by me along with Christian Coons.
Carlos Lerma does original illustrations for the show. Songexploder is a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can find songexploder on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at songexploder. My name is Rishi Keish Hereway. Thanks for listening. Radio Topia from PRX.