I'm one of those people who needs a creative outlet or I start to go insane. When I'm not pounding out posts about TV on this blog, I'm usually writing something else, or drawing, or playing around with my four-track recorder. My love of music and the creative process attracted me to the video below, which runs about eight minutes and gives a rather detailed account of how the theme to the old Doctor Who series was both composed and performed. I have never seen a single episode of any incarnation of Doctor Who, but that really doesn't matter, I was just fascinated by how all this equipment, most of which is now completely obsolete, was used to create the futuristic theme for the show.

If you're a Doctor Who fan, check it out. If you're a fan of electronic music, check it out. If you're neither of those things, then I have nothing for you. Try checking back later.

[via Brad Sucks]

Most people recognize the name Duke Ellington, but very few know the name Billy Strayhorn. The documentary Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life, which will be featured tonight on the PBS series Independent Lens at 10:00 p.m., hopes to change that. Strayhorn composed many of Ellington's hits, but his quiet demeanor kept him in Ellington's shadow. Also, he was an openly gay black man living in the '40s, a time when most remained closeted for fear of violence or worse.

Typically when someone in the field of animation passes away myself and many of the cartoon/animation site pick up on it long before the mainstream media does, if the mainstream media cares at all, so I feel kinda bad for not reporting this sooner. Anyway, composer Shirley Walker, who wrote music for cartoon series including Batman: the Animated Series, The Zeta Project and Spawn, as well as the Final Destination film franchise, died of a brain aneurysm on November 29 at the unfortunately early age of 61. Walker wrote scores for both television and film since the late 1970s, including popular primetime soap Falcon Crest and the goofy 1980s Gremlins rip-off, Ghoulies. She was working on the direct-to-video DC: The New Frontier when she passed away.

[via Toon Zone]