Hi Odyssey fans, I'm Bob, producer of the Odyssey Adventure Club.

And I'm Jesse, editor of Adventures in Odyssey Clubhouse Magazine.

Welcome to the official Adventures in Odyssey Podcast.

Today we're talking to the man behind the music on Adventures in Odyssey, John Campbell.

John has been composing for Odyssey since 1987.

His first composition for the show was the opening theme song.

Now he hasn't scored every episode, but he's done more than 500 episodes since then.

He's created music for everything from intense NovaCom episodes to goofy kids' radio stories,

to dramatic adventures in the imagination station. Let's chat with him now.

It's a real pleasure to welcome you back to the podcast, John. So thanks for being with us today.

Absolutely, I'm thrilled to be here.

Well, I know we had you on a previous podcast where we talked about how you got involved with Odyssey

and the creation of the theme song, but today we want to delve in more deeply into the process

of how you create music specifically for each episode. So first off, do you listen to an Odyssey show

before you compose the music for it? Or you just kind of work the cues that the sound guys give you?

That's a great question. And it has a number of answers.

I'll put the audio file up into an audio track and just listen to it, because it's really

important, especially musically, that I listen. If I don't know some of the characters,

it's really important that I listen to their voice. I want to be able to capture that musically.

But in terms of approaching a cue, I will not, and I have said this for years, I normally don't want

to read through the script, because I want to write music of what I'm feeling. It's the anticipation,

like, what's going to happen? I don't know. Let me write a piece like that that says, I don't know

...