How the music of MasterChef cooks up more drama than the contestants
You’ve never met him —but his work is in every episode of MasterChef. Love it or hate it, fans are obsessed about how it changes the show.
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You can imagine what deep fried might sound like as a musical composition.
The pop of the food as it hits the oil, heated to between 180C and 185C, as advised in the MasterChef canon of cooking tips. Then you get the low rumble of crackle, rising in volume and pitch as the oil climbs back to optimum temperature to transform the frying food into crunchy carboliciousness.
But what does apple sound like? Or cherry on top? Or pepper?
These are the challenges conquered by the composers and editors who have conjured the soundtrack of MasterChef over its 12 seasons.
The music of MasterChef has generated its own cult following over the years, with fans either celebrating its orchestral, emotionally charged drama or imbuing the interludes with hidden meanings.
“Playing smiley music while the judges explain why Brendan is probably going home made this hurt even more,” posted ‘queen t’ in June.
While fan Victoria noted: “I fear Brendan is going. They are playing the funeral music.”
Other members of the MasterChef viewers’ club are less enamoured of its omnipresence in the action and have complained about the volume of the rousing orchestral soundtrack over the years.
“Hard to concentrate on all the tasting with the music so overpowering,” opined Tamara Payne on Twitter.
The MasterChef music has become as much a character of the long-running cooking show as the contestants and judges.
Thousands of pieces have been composed for the series over the years by The DA’s Office, a music and sound design production house whose television and film credits also include Lego Masters and Gogglebox.
The DA’s Office founders, respected musicians Adam Gock and Dinesh Wicks, have worked on MasterChef since it kicked off, with creative director Mitch Stewart now at the helm of the team who create the show’s various themes.
While the program has its set pieces — intro shots of Melbourne and MasterChef headquarters, the arrival of contestants, mystery box unveilings, pressure test cloche reveals, frenetic cooking sessions, tastings and eliminations — the music evolves with up to 300 scores added to its repertoire each year.
They have wonderfully MasterChef-y names including Deepfried, Apple, Cherry On Top, and Pepper as well as Happychef, Honeyglaze, Caramelise, Dulce, Soup and Pickled Grapes.
It would be fabulous to discover there is a piece nicknamed The Omen for the ominous choral music which ushers in the guest chefs with their tortuous pressure test dishes.
The music pieces are taken by executive producer Adam Fergusson, who oversees the show’s post-production, to be matched with the visuals by the editors.
While Hot And Cold by pop superstar Katy Perry — who made a scene-stealing special guest appearance in May — has been the official theme since the beginning, Gock said the intro music before they roll into the pop song played a dominant early role in establishing the MasterChef brand.
“One thing Dinesh noticed in season one was he was at a pub with some friends as the MasterChef music started and everyone turned around to watch the television,” he said. “The only prompt you could hear in this really crowded pub was the music.”
Many fans will single out similarities between the MasterChef pieces and beloved movie scores by the legends of film composition including John Williams and Hans Zimmer. There have been many to note this year’s new musical works sound very Game of Thrones-esque, which surprised the MasterChef team.
Stewart, who was still studying music at university when MasterChef kicked off in Australia in 2009, said this season’s soundtrack is still orchestral but with a “rock’n’roll attitude”, reflecting both the characters of the new judges Melissa Leong, Jock Zonfrillo and Andy Allen and the returning all-stars.
“The questions we asked when we started to refresh the music this year were about what is the sound of these new judges, who are young and fresh, have tatts and are super energetic and encouraging, and how could we define the sound for the returning contestants who are the best of the best?” Stewart said. “They are all personalities in their own right, have their own restaurants or cookbooks.
“For us, as a series that’s looking to the future, we looked at bringing in some future bass, which is a genre of music that’s super contemporary and has an edginess to it, playing around with a beat or a synth sound.”
Alongside techniques and trends such as the hibachi or liquid nitrogen, a looming inspiration for the composers and editors has been the precision of this year’s contestants, particularly Reynold.
While Fergusson and The DA’s Office writers insist there are no customised themes for the individual judges or contestants, fans have regularly suggested throughout the 2020 season the calm or crazy cooks of Reynold and Poh have their own scores.
“This year’s contestants are refined and sophisticated, there’s so much precision in what they do with their blowtorch or tweezers, and the music you think of for those scenes is chamber strings,” Stewart said.
Fergusson said the music has also been instrumental in substituting for taste and smell.
“The audience can’t taste the food like the judges so the music has to convey that sense, how it smells in the room and those feelings you get when you eat the dish,” he said.
Originally published as How the music of MasterChef cooks up more drama than the contestants