My name is Charlie Bock. For 3 years, I was locked alone in my man cave with only one goal... complete my interpretation of the Arrow TV theme song...

As that whole bit is a tad overused, I'll continue by saying it's been a long journey since I started trying to follow up my take on the Flash TV theme with Arrow. It's a difficult song to work with compared to Flash as Flash had some awesome motifs to work around. The Arrow theme has... "bum bum bum bum bum bum BUM bum". Also, listening to the "full" composition of the theme song, the whole Arrow theme is basically (by design) one long build up. Plenty of little ideas to incorporate, but I had serious trouble trying to form a cohesive song versus just transposing the whole composition to guitars. 

After 3 years of sporadic work (and avoidance), I finally finished it thanks to the motivation from my friends at the Flash TV Talk Podcast (@FlashTVTalk). If not familiar with all the different parts of the the Arrow theme (like me before listening to it for my preparation to write/record this song), it may be hard to really recognize all the little details I threw in, but I still think it all fits into place well enough.

It's a dark and brooding song, which seems to fit the show. There is so much story the show hints at, so this song really had to tell a story, too. The beginning starts really slow, ominous, and thematic before breaking into the basic beginning of the theme song that more or less follows the song. The "bum bum..." rhythm (here on out referred to as the main rhythm to reduce the use of the word "bum") is so hard to make interesting since it's simply a string of equal length notes that repeat, so I had to modify the note pattern slightly to make it into a listenable moving riff when the heavy rhythm guitars come in. When they do come in, you should still be able to hear the inspiration from the original pattern of the main rhythm with a couple of hints that I snuck in right before it.

As the pace slows down, it starts to basically follow the original Arrow theme. It then changes to a really heavy take on the main rhythm with a few leads over increasing key changes to build up a lot of sense of conflict, of which the show is full. As this darker, escalating section builds up to a climax, I introduce an original piece of music to represent a sense of restoration/redemption. This section doesn't build off any of the theme song's existing motifs because I had to create the redemption the show never seems to give! It's so dark, haha!

The song ends by returning to the original straight pattern of the theme's main rhythm as it works better here towards the end of the song. The ending has a quick build up to the familiar high pitch screech that usually starts/ends the episode, but I bring it around full circle by bringing back the arpeggio pattern that began the song as the good ol' fashioned E power chords fade out. 

People seemed to like my take on the Flash theme, so hopefully they like this one. In my opinion it is less accessible than the Flash, but anyone into thematic music (especially heavy metal stuff) might understand this take on the Arrow theme better than those that don't. Again, I had to make some artistic changes, but hopefully it made the song more listenable. 

Successful, or should I have stayed on my hellish island? You be the judge.

Arrow TV Theme 2017

Just a guy who likes playing rock/metal guitar and writing a song here and there. I write instrumental songs because I can't sing or write lyrics. Mostly, I'm a big melody guy, and guitar melodies transfer through me better than vocal ones. Joe Satriani is my biggest influence and favorite guitar player.