Attention-grabbing sound in extremely trite melody (5)

I believe the answer is:

theme

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'melody' is the definition.
(theme is a kind of melody)

'attention-grabbing sound in extremely trite' is the wordplay.
'attention-grabbing sound' becomes 'hem' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'extremely' suggests removing the centre (only the extremes of the word are used).
'trite' with its middle removed is 'te'.
'hem' inserted within 'te' is 'THEME'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for theme that I've seen before include "thing under discussion" , "Subject matter, topic" , "[(type of) PARK]" , "Subject matter, motif" , "Subject (of talk, text, etc)" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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