Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm guessing some time in the mid-60s. For instance, Days of Our Lives came on the air in 1965, and I don't recall it using organ music. The theme music - written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and Charles Albertine (Bandstand Boogie, and themes from Bewitched and Hazel) - was fully orchestrated.
Here's a 1963 episode of Search for Tomorrow that uses organ music - such drama!
There obviously isn't a definitive day or year when it switched...it was a gradual shift, with some shows making the decision to switch while others may have stuck with the more traditional organ/instrumentals until pressured to switch by the changing tastes of viewers years or even decades later.
The overwhelming majority of soaps had been performing episodes live since they started, and the organ music was performed with it as it was broadcast to the country. Though Dark Shadows filmed their episodes "live-to-tape" when it began in 1966, it was only because a lot of their special effects had to be done via film editing tricks. Another World was the first soap to transition to taping episodes rather than performing live (in 1967) simply for convenience, though it likely retained a lot of the organ music because it was regarded as one of the "old guard" shows developed by Irna Phillips, the woman who basically invented daytime soap operas for the radio (and transitioned to TV). "Her" shows (of which there were many, including AW) seemed to hold down the traditional (some would say "dowdy") methods of storytelling, including organ-centric incidental music. But it was likely recorded after a while.
The organ music was a part of the "mood" of older soaps, so when a new show came along trying to exhibit a more youthful approach (like Love Is A Many Splendored Thing and A World Apart in the late 1960s/early 1970s) they likely avoided the organ music in favor of "modern" music just to set themselves apart and say "this isn't your granny's soap opera". As soaps became much more appealing to teens and college kids in the 1970s and 1980s, the oldest shows were the last to make changes in their format, including their incidental music. But change they did. I'd say the last organ music (recorded, not performed live obviously) left the soaps by 1978 or 1979, as General Hospital's famous rise to the top was aided by modern, top-40 music licensed as "themes" for various characters and couples. The other soaps were forced (by their networks) to try to copy their success.
One of the most jarring switches occurred on Phillips's Guiding Light. One minute, they're playing gentle, sweet tunes like this: https://youtu.be/Iu_l1cW1Ank
The individual soaps chose to transition from live broadcasts to videotaping mostly because networks realized that they could create a better looking product when allowed to do multiple takes. The last show to regularly perform their episodes live transitioned to tape in late 1975 (The Edge of Night). By then, the organist had been retired, as had the signature "announcer" that most soaps had that introduced the episodes. Both lost favor for the same reason: tape allowed the shows to provide more uniform music, and recaps could be done via clips from the previous episode rather than some disembodied announcer telling the viewer what had happened. A lot of money could be saved by production companies by re-using their canned background music over and over (and even share it with other shows).
I've been watching soaps for decades, and never heard that organ music. I know what the OP's referring to, because I've heard clips of even older soaps. But I never heard that music on any of my favorites.
The organ music was easily controlled, volume-wise, which was helpful when dealing with a live broadcast depending heavily on dialogue. It was also easier for an organ player to depict the sort of emotion that was playing out on screen (and build that feeling in a home viewer) more than other instruments. I think the organ music was a holdover from radio soaps, something to make the viewer's transition from radio to TV easier. Radio listeners were accustomed to more music interspersed in their programs. Soaps were on a shoestring budget for a long time back then, so incidental music was minimal and only used to "sweeten" dramatic moments, not a major component of the show because they could not afford much more than an organ player.
There were a lot of dramatic pauses with the organ player holding one note, usually in the moments prior to commercial. This led to the so-called "pregnant pause" stage direction which soaps made famous, which dictated characters stop talking and just stare at one another as the scene faded to black, then resume talking after the commercial. The pregnant pause was actually just the actors waiting for the network to cut to commercial, but the organ player holding that one note gave the last line a sort of "punctuation mark" going into commercial. Today it just screams "melodrama," but back then it was a necessary evil of producing live television. This pause (minus the organ, obviously) seemed harder to lose even in the videotape era, because The Young and the Restless still employed it well into the 2000s, and I occasionally catch The Bold and the Beautiful still doing it today!
I did read that on soaps when theres a say party scene and people are dancing , there's no music , the. Music is put in later on ,so there dancing to nothing , I think it was Kelly Rippa that said that .
Trying to play the music and do the scene at the same time would be problematic because the music would likely drown out the actors reciting lines. The only alternative would be to play the music really low...but that would make the final product look silly since viewers know nightclubs play their music loudly, and the sounds of people dancing (jostling and moving around noises, like shoes on a hard floor) would get picked up by the microphones instead.
The Carol Burnett show would spoof Soap Operas in their skits and would use organ music.
I can remember when the soaps came on TV live and sometimes, just like in the theater, the announcer would say at the beginning of the show "the part of ____ will be played by ____." They had understudies when the actors would get sick or go on vacation. Soap operas had new episodes almost every weekday during the year-no summer breaks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
