In February, ABC News Live was rebranded for the first time in five years. The new graphics and music (which can be heard here) were in development for over a year, with delays caused by the exceptionally busy news cycle. Composer Matthew Kajcienski was given significant creative freedom: “I saw an opportunity to explore things I’d wanted to try in news music for a long time.”
The result is a theme that’s urgent, dark, and full of energy, grabbing your attention from the start. It incorporates pumping synths often associated with EDM music, adding to its intensity. The music is rich and colorful, achieved by combining various electronic and acoustic instruments, making it difficult to isolate any one individual sound. It’s a track that couldn’t possibly be performed live, featuring a staggering 165 instruments.
Combining six instruments
Kajcienski explains, “You may have a secondary motif in the background that arcs up, and you kind of wonder, oh, what if there’s some sort of bright, rhythmic sound that I can double with it? If something needs more depth, I’ll combine five or six different instruments to achieve exactly that.”
Despite Kajcienski’s previous use of over 25 brass instruments in his Olympics theme for ABC, this new theme avoids trumpets entirely and has just a few horn lines for support. The melody is carried by the viola, an often underappreciated instrument known for its warm, pleasing sound. He explains, “The driving melody was written in a specific range where, if played on violin, it would lack the power and gravity I wanted, and if played on the cello, it would have trouble being heard through the thick orchestration.”
The theme melody and branding mnemonic are derived from a musical cipher, a method that converts the alphabet into musical notes. In this case, each letter of A-B-C-N-E-W-S-L-I-V-E is mapped to a series of musical notes/pitches. The result held an unexpected coincidence: N-E-W-S and L-I-V-E share 3 of their 4 relative pitches in the same order, and when played, a pleasing, almost accidental melody could be heard.
Musical cipher
Condensing the cipher into a succinct melody presented a challenge, as the original 11-note melody was too long to be crafted into a mnemonic. By eliminating overlapping notes, such as the shared last pitch of A-B-C and the first pitch of N-E-W-S, the melody could be shortened. The same was done with the duplicate pitches in N-E-W-S and L-I-V-E. The three consecutive notes of A-B-C became a quick pick-up to the syncopated rhythm of the melody, giving it a feeling of urgency, and then ending with a bold, swift resolution to the downbeat.
Musical ciphers, though centuries old, offer a distinct approach to composition. Unlike traditional methods, where composers improvise until something feels right, this technique imbues the melody with hidden meaning.
After completing the primetime version of the theme and branding mnemonic, Kajcienski created a daytime adaptation that is lighter in tone. The key was raised, altering the timbres of the instruments, and the percussion was reworked. Kajcienski explains, “I stripped out a lot of the punchy, lower-end sounds, replacing them with alternate instruments and textures.” The new themes have successfully given ABC News Live its own identity within the broader ABC News brand.
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