Composers: Swurpledeewurpledeezeech!

Though neither his name nor his mu sic has ever appeared on any of the popularity polls, Eric Siday is one of the highest-paid and most frequently played composers in the world. No day goes by, in fact, that roughly 80% of the U.S. population does not hear at least one of his compositions. Among his most recent works is the one that goes bing, bong, boing, Swurpledeewurpledeezeech! That little masterpiece is played as the TV announcer says “CBS presents this program in color,” while CBS’s trademarked “eye” goes swurpling across the screen. And who can for get Siday’s burpy little tango, beedle-deedle-beep-bop, doo-beedle-beep-bop, which is scored to the rhythmic bubbling percolator in the Maxwell House coffee commercial.

Such “signature music” is based on the Madison Avenue conviction that the name of a product can root itself in the subconscious more readily if it is accompanied by an instantly identifiable musical trademark. Jingles are fine for the one-minute spiel, but for the short, hard pitch, signature music is the thing. Thus Siday’s eight-note bleeper, played above a sizzling, highballing beat, gets the message across even without the slogan, “You’re ahead in a Ford all the way”; his seven-note arrangement for the litany, “You can be sure, if it’s Westinghouse,” creates just the positive, forward-looking image that the company wants to project.

$5,000 Seconds. What makes Siday’s work unique is that he does not write solely for conventional musical instruments. Nearly all of his stuff is composed of electronically produced signals combined in varieties of ways and put on tape. And he does it all with $60,000 worth of space-age sound gear that he keeps in his Manhattan apartment.

“The ear of the world is satiated by conventional music,” explains Siday. “To grasp a listener today, you have to give him something new.” The whole trick lies in “the art of miniaturization —saying something that instantly stands for a corporation’s personality.” His instructions for the signature music for American Express were that it should say “America, business, travel.” The America part was easy; he simply recorded six notes of the national anthem, then added a dash of business and travel by “tricking the tape up a bit” with his machines. What these signatures say to Siday is money. None of them last longer than seven seconds, and he is paid at the average rate of $5,000 for each second.

Drizzle & Drench. With such lucrative fees available, Siday is exploring new ways to exploit the electronic hard sell. His latest creation is Identitones, Inc., a package of 50 “sound images,” which has already been snapped up by radio stations in Columbus and Cleve land, Baltimore and New York City. Because of the similarity of radio programming, explains Siday, “it is very important that the listener know what station he is listening to.” In addition to a six-note electronic theme that ham mers home the station’s call letters in a dozen variations, Siday’s package includes a kaleidoscope of sounds devised to orchestrate anything from sport news to traffic reports.

On rainy days, announcers give the weather forecast to the background refrains of electronic wind and rain, which comes in three intensities, drying up, drizzle and drench. Warm summer nights are depicted by impressionistic bullfrogs and nightingales, cold winter days by chilling quivers and twangs. The music for time checks ranges from “a snappy c’mon-get-out-of bed sound” to a “gentle good-night-and-sweet-dreams sound.” Says Siday: “It’s all subliminal. The imagination of the listener can run riot.”

Siday, 61, is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, first learned about mood music while playing the violin for silent movies. He moved to the U.S. in 1938, played and wrote the arrangements for Ray Noble’s orchestra and Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians. Later, with his friend, the late Austen Croom-Johnson, co-father of the singing commercial (“Pepsi-Cola hits the spot”), he wrote the signature themes for 26 radio stations. But, claims Siday, that is old stuff now. “You just can’t get a good drenching rain sound with an orchestra. If Tchaikovsky were around, he wouldn’t be writing for the celesta but for the sawtooth oscillator.”