Side note: I used to have relatively decent hooks into the music industry. A friend of mine is a well-known producer and while he was coming up in the 90's was

Side note: I used to have relatively decent hooks into the music industry. A friend of mine is a well-known producer and while he was coming up in the 90's was working with a lot of then-popular artists. I heard multiple stories about name brand artists calling him up and leaving a message on his voicemail that went like 'Hey Mike! This is [Foo] I had this idea for a melody... It goes do doot doooooot dododooooot toooodoooooo. Or something like that. Can you put that down on an instrumental track? Maybe add a little bit of, you know, like cool drums and a keyboard? k thanks bye' And then he would, and 6 months later you'd be hearing it on the radio or on an album. Of course, in between the phone call, his prototype track and the release would be HOURS (I've been in 15 hour studio sessions) of mixing, remixing, tweaking, etc. So, yeah, I'd guess Danny Elfman might write his 'pseudo-code' into a tape recorder that somebody then makes a first pass at. But that is not what you finally hear as the released song.