When I first saw this assignment description, I was excited because I thought I could get creative with my very own theme song. For the assignment, I would have to create my own theme song using an instrumental from a song and adding sound effects. I was thinking of all sorts of ideas for my theme until I realized I had not done any assignments that was related to my created character; so I had to change my thinking to be a bit more specific on which song to use as a western instrumental. I couldn’t think of any songs that I could use until my dad gave me an idea from a song that was playing on his iPhone. He had heard the song in the movie “The Last Boy Scout” which starred Bruce Willis and had liked the lyrics. The song that he had put on his iPhone was “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” by Boys Don’t Cry. The background sounds of the song actually sounded like it would relate to what I picture a Cowboy might listen to while riding and looking at his surrounding landscapes. The lyrics to the song sounded really goofy, but for this assignment I didn’t need the lyrics; so I planned on his the instrumental to this song. 

The next thing that I did was find the song’s instrumental version on Youtube and convert it to MP3 so that it could be run in Audacity. I cut down the instrumental to be around a minute, so it could be a quick listen. All the best theme songs I ever heard are usually around this length, so I figured a theme song I would create would be about the same length. 

After I had cut down the instrumental to one minute, I went online to find different sound effects that would work with a Western cowboy. Using the link given in the assignment description of SoundBible; I figured the best sounds for my western character dealt with guns/rifles being fired and a horse. After downloading the sound effects, I carefully placed them into the song by making audio judgments where I thought the best place to have the sound effects were. I tried to spread them out so that the musical instrumental wouldn’t get drowned out by the sound effects. The part that I really wanted to preserve was the guitar at the end, because putting sound effects along with that would just ruin the theme song. Some of the sound effects I used was shotgun fire, a horse neighing, and a pistol gun fight that goes on later to coincide with the faster pace of the song.

Hope you enjoy listening to the theme song I created for my created western character of the “Fastest Gun in the West”.