Bill Nye The Science Guy Theme Remix

[Clide Birkner]

BillNye the Science Guy began airing on PBS Kids on September 10th, 1993, hosted by American educator Bill Nye.[3] and was designed to teach science to children in an entertaining manner. The original theme was written by composer Mike Green[2], who used a hip hop beat with a sampled vocal track repeatedly shouting "Bill" throughout the song. Though clips from the song were used in YTMND sites as early as May 2004[5], the first full-length remix of the song didn't emerge until on January 7th, 2006[4], which infused hardcore techno beats into the theme. The song was later reuploaded to YouTube by several different users.

In 2007, a Spongebob remix appeared on Google Videos.[6] In 2008, more remixes appeared on Newgrounds[7] and on YouTube.[8] In October 2009, Symphony of Science released an auto-tune remix music video featuring footage of Carl Sagan and Bill Nye.

In March 2012, Texas remix artist Rodrigo Diaz, known online as Ynfynyt Scroll, did an interview with local newspaper the Observer[11] about his Bill Nye remix song, but the article (or the song? ambig. use of "it") has since been taken offline. As of July 2012, there are more than 200 tracks tagged Bill Nye[9] on SoundCloud and 390 remix videos on YouTube.[12] Additional videos have appeared on the Tumblr tag "Bill Nye."[10]

The Symphony of Science is a music project created by Washington-based electronic musician John D. Boswell. The project seeks to "spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes." Boswell uses pitch-corrected audio and video samples from television programs featuring popular educators and scientists. The audio and video clips are mixed into digital mashups and scored with Boswell's original compositions. Two of Boswell's music videos, "A Glorious Dawn" and "We are All Connected", feature appearances from Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Stephen Hawking. The audio and video is sampled from popular science television shows including Cosmos, The Universe, The Eyes of Nye, The Elegant Universe, and Stephen Hawking's Universe.

Unruly Media, a video tracking service, first charted "A Glorious Dawn" on September 21, 2009. A month later, the video had received more than a million views and was ranked in the music category on YouTube as one of the top-rated videos of all time.[citation needed] On November 9, 2009, Third Man Records released a 7-inch single of "A Glorious Dawn" for the 75th anniversary of the birth of Carl Sagan.[1] According to Discogs.com, there were a total of 5 different vinyl records produced, including a limited edition 8-inch single given out only at South by Southwest 2010.[2][3]

Born in Idaho, John Boswell attended Gonzaga Preparatory School[4] and graduated from Western Washington University in 2008 with a degree in economics.[5][6] Soon after, Boswell started Colorpulse, an electronica music project, and began to focus on production.[7]

Boswell had been experimenting with sampling and remixing for some time before creating his first YouTube videos. Boswell had worked with Auto-Tune in the past and thought people might be interested in hearing American astronomer Carl Sagan sing. He first saw Cosmos in 2004 and soon after bought the set of DVDs. Boswell looked through these episodes for "profound quotes" that lacked music in the background. Once he found these quotes, Boswell Auto-Tuned Sagan's voice and picked from the best ones. After completing what became "A Glorious Dawn", Boswell posted the video on YouTube in September 2009 and to his surprise, the video went viral within a week.[8][4][9] To date, the video has received nearly ten million views and is ranked as one of the top rated videos of all time in the music category.[10]

He released an album in 2010, titled Escaping the Tangle, which included some of these productions.[11] His music project Symphony of Science "aims to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes"[12] and to "deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form".[13] In addition to Symphony of Science, Boswell is also working on a project called Remixes for the Soul, as well as scientific-based films, most notably Timelapse of the Future, under the moniker Melodysheep.[14]

Boswell's first video in the Symphony of Science series is 3 minutes, 34 seconds long and features Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. Samples include clips from Cosmos (1980) and Stephen Hawking's Universe (1997).[13] On September 21, 2009, Unruly Media, a viral video tracking service, began to chart the popularity of the video.[15] At the end of the first week of October, the video had received 800,000 views[4] and, by the end of the month, more than a million. By the end of 2010, the video had surpassed 5 million views.

Third Man Records released a 7-inch recording of "A Glorious Dawn" on November 9, 2009, in honor of the 75th anniversary of the birth of Carl Sagan.[16] The one-sided single was created by United Record Pressing in a unique "Cosmos Colored Vinyl", limited pressing of 150 copies; it was then re-pressed on regular vinyl in a larger run. The flipside is etched with a copy of the diagram found on the Voyager Golden Record.[16]

The second video in the series is 4 minutes, 12 seconds in length and features Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye. It was released on October 19, 2009. Audio and video samples are taken from The History Channel's Universe series, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, interviews with Richard Feynman in 1983, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's The Eyes of Nye series. Additional visuals come from NOVA's The Elegant Universe, Stephen Hawking's Universe, and Cosmos, among others. On January 23, 2010, the video was shown at the South Nassau Unitarian Universalist Church in Long Island NY, as part of a youth-directed service. The video has been used in other churches and classrooms.

The fourth video in the series is 4 minutes in length and was released on January 6, 2010. "The Unbroken Thread" is themed around biology and evolution rather than the cosmos, and features Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and Jane Goodall.

The fifth installment uses clips from various prominent scientists and speakers - including Jacob Bronowski, Sagan, Feynman, Dawkins, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, PZ Myers, Lawrence Krauss, Michael Shermer, and deGrasse Tyson - to explain and promote science, its process, and its benefits. The video was released on February 25, 2010. It uses clips from many sources, including Cosmos and The Genius of Charles Darwin.The chorus in this piece is sung by Dawkins and Sagan.

The seventh installment, released on November 23, 2010, is about reasoning and skepticism. It features Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, and James Randi. It is intended to promote scientific reasoning and skepticism in the face of growing amounts of pseudoscientific pursuits, such as Astrology and Homeopathy, and also to "promote the scientific worldview as equally enlightening as religion."[18] The chorus is sung by Dawkins, except for the last line which is Phil Plait's:

"The Big Beginning" is the eighth installment in the Symphony of Science music video series, released on January 20, 2011. It deals with the origins of our universe, covering the Big Bang theory, expansion and cooling of the universe, formation of galaxies, the interplay between matter and anti-matter, and cosmic radiation. The music video features Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Tara Shears, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Videos sampled for this installment include Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking; God, the Universe, and Everything Else; The Universe on The History Channel; NOVA scienceNOW; interviews with Richard Dawkins and Tara Shears; and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. There is no clear chorus, but two quotes from Hawking and Dawkins come back several times.

"Ode to the Brain" is the ninth episode in the Symphony of Science series about the brain including its evolution, folding, and neuron networks. It features Carl Sagan, Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye and Oliver Sacks. It features clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, BBC's The Human Body, Discovery Channel's Human Body: Pushing the Limits and various TED Talks. It was released on March 23, 2011.The chorus is sung by Taylor:

"Children of Africa" is the tenth installment of the Symphony of Science series, released on July 6, 2011. It deals with the cultural evolution of humans from their origins in Africa, through the conquest of Europe from the Neanderthals to the space age. It features Alice Roberts, Jacob Bronowski, Carolyn Porco, Jane Goodall, Robert Sapolsky, Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Attenborough. Programs sampled for this installment include Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, Alice Roberts' The Incredible Human Journey, along with BBC documentaries Life of Mammals, Walking With Cavemen, and Human Planet. The refrain is from the speech, Science In Hollywood,[19] by Carolyn Porco.

"The Quantum World" is the eleventh installment of the Symphony of Science series, released on September 6, 2011. It deals with the bizarre discoveries made in the field of quantum mechanics, through "a musical investigation into the nature of atoms and subatomic particles." It features Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close. Programs sampled for this instalment include Richard Feynman's Fun to Imagine, Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole, Brian Cox's TED Talk, along with BBC documentaries Visions of the Future, What Time is it, Wonders of the Universe, and What Is Reality. The refrain is sung by Cox.

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