Video: Mike Post Discusses the Making of "Dun Dun" | NBC’s Law & Order

I guess the most played piece of music is the notes that sound when you turn on a Windows computer. How many computers a day turn on and make that bit of music? Anyway, it's gotta be up there with "music that everybody knows;" like the opening notes to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the Happy Birthday song, a couple of Christmas carols .... But right up there is the music from the long-running Law and Order TV series. But not that catchy theme music by the great Mike Post. No. Not that. It's the DUN-DUN sound as the show moves from one scene to another. That was composed by Post and it heard something like eight, ten, twelve times in each episode? And then there are spin-offs. I mean, here's a list of the original series and its spin-offs:

LAW AND ORDER 1990 - 2010; 2022 - present - 501 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT 1999 - present - 551 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME 2021 - present - 65 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT 2001 - 2011 - 195 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY 2005 - 2006 - 13 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: LA 2010 - 2011 - 22 episodes

LAW AND ORDER: TRUE CRIME 2017 - 8 episodes

So, I would put forward that Mike Post's DUN-DUN music may be, by now that the series has been on over thirty years, one of the most recognizable compositions of music out there since John William's JAWS theme. Here's Mike Post himself talking about the origin of the theme and the DUN-DUN!