Music
Father-and-son composer team Keith Strachan and Matthew Strachan wrote the Millionaire franchise's original musical score. Brought in after the initial pilot with a brief instructing them to create music providing mood and tension, they decided to approach the project like a film score with music playing almost throughout the entire show, a unique approach for a game show at the time. After almost completing the task they came up with the idea of taking the pitch up a semi-tone for each subsequent question in order to increase tension as the game progressed. The music has received numerous ASCAP awards.
When the U.S. version of Millionaire was honored by GSN on its Gameshow Hall of Fame special, the narrator described the show's original music tracks as "mimicking the sound of a beating heart," and stated that as the contestant works their way up the money ladder, the music is "perfectly in tune with their ever-increasing pulse." Although most international versions of the show still continue to use the Strachan score, in 2010 the U.S. version retired it altogether in favor of a new musical score, with cues composed by Jeff Lippencott and Mark T. Williams.
A soundtrack album was released, featuring most of the musical stages, but not all of them.
Read more about this topic: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? New Zealand
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