Musical instrument in the Twilight Zone theme?

[Bytegeist]

Greetings.

So I watched an irresponsible portion of the “Twilight Zone” marathon on the Sci-Fi channel last week. After hearing the opening theme about ten times in a row – and for the thousandth time in my life probably – I became haunted by a question that has never occured to me before…

Hey, what instrument is that?

I mean of course the musical instrument playing those four notorious notes, that “dee dee DEE dee” motif. Oh, you know the one I’m talking about. It goes like this:

http://www.thetzsite.com/sounds/theme/intro2.wav

Someone of my close acquaintance thinks it was played on the high keys of a piano, but I don’t agree. Not that I have any better ideas. To me it sounds like a plucked string instrument (a violin with its strings stretched awfully tight?) or possibly a percussion instrument like a xylophone.

Also, each “note” sounds like it might really be two notes played in dissonance. Do you hear that too?

I’ve googled and googled on this subject for an entire five minutes and can’t find answers to these questions. Perhaps someone with a good musical ear – or six minutes of spare time – can help?

Thankee kindly.

[bordelond]

It’s just two guitars. You are correct the notes being played in dissonance on separate instruments:

In 1960, CBS Music Director Lud Gluskin was asked to find a
new Main Title/End Credits THEME for the second season of
the series, to replace the original THEME written by veteran
radio/TV/film composer Bernard Herrmann. The problem was thought
to be that the Herrmann theme was considered “too down” according
to music supervisor Don B. Ray, quoted in the book “TV’s Biggest
Hits” by Jon Burlingame. However new visuals had been created,
with some bizzare items floating around in the style of a
Salvador Dali abstract painting, so that required a new
scoring approach…if for no other reason;

 So several new THEMEs were commissioned and recorded for CBS
 including two new THEMEs submitted by Bernard Herrmann,
 one by Jerry Goldsmith, another by Leith Stevens, and a 
 few other composers familiar to CBS; but none of these was
 deemed suitable...(they were eventually incorporated into the
 CBS Cue Library and used to score episodes of "Twilight Zone"
 and other shows...)

 Finally in desperation, Lud Gluskin tried splicing together two
 short cues written by a French Avant-Garde classical composer
 Marius Constant -- who had composed them for CBS to use
 as backgrounds for episodes of "The Twilight Zone", and then 
 recycled in the network cue library ...

 The cues which Gluskin spliced together were originally named
 "Etrange 3 (Strange No. 3)" and "Milieu 2 (Middle No. 2)". They
 were so fragmentary and unusual that they had not been used much.
 These were two of the six short dramatic cues Constant wrote
 and recorded with a small ensemble featuring a **two guitars**,
 percussion including bongo drums, a saxophone and French horns.

 They had never been designed to be a Main Title or End Credits 
 THEME. Spliced together by Gluskin, their unique qualities
 appealed to Serling, who was looking for something different.
 So TV history was changed when they became the new "Twilight Zone" 
 THEME from the 2nd season on...and now the most recognized by
 the atonal guitar motif which opens "Etrange 3."

[NoCoolUserName]

Yep, two guitars. Even cooler is the new Twilight Zone, with Jerry’s guitar–so smooth!