At this spookiest time of year, I thought that I’d write about scary music, and what it is that makes some music send a shiver down your spine.

Sometimes it’s just about context; a nursery rhyme can be sung gently to soothe a baby to sleep, but played on a toy piano in an abandoned old house it becomes the soundtrack to nightmares!

Sometimes it’s about the instrument itself; an organ can either fill a cathedral with anthemic majesty and religious awe, or can evoke the atmosphere of a truly terrifying gothic horror. Many “scary” sounds are created by misusing certain instruments; sound designers and Foley artists (a person who reproduces everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos and other media in post-production) know that adding screws and metal plates to create a “prepared piano” in the style of John Cage, or running a cello bow along the edge of a cymbal are great ways to manufacture otherworldly sounds that instantly put you on edge.

Aside from context and scary sounding instruments, however, there are some musical devices and tricks that can be used to instil a sense of dread and terror in an audience. Tools such as evoking the medieval Latin sequence “Dies Irae”, which describes the Last Judgement where the trumpet calls all souls before the throne of God to be either redeemed or damned for eternity. Hearing “Dies Irae, Dies Illa” or “day of wrath and doom impending” is certainly a way to speak to an ancient sense of fear, even if just subconsciously.

With regards to religious music, the chant has been used in liturgy for centuries, with it’s simple plainchant melody providing the foundation for some of the greatest works of music ever written. Possibly the two most famous works entitled “Dies Irae” are those written by Mozart and Verdi in their respective Requiem masses. If you don’t know the pieces, have a listen to them and you’ll more than likely either get a sense of the terror that I’m referring to, or even just recognise them as “those dramatic religious pieces I’ve heard on tv”.

Harmony itself can be used to create feelings of discomfort or unease as well; not to get too into the weeds of music theory, but essentially there are notes that sound good when played together, and there are notes that do not. For instance, the two “perfect” intervals between notes of a 4th and a 5th will always compliment each other, and sound pleasant.

If, however, you play the note one semitone above a perfect fourth/below a perfect fifth with the same root note as before, it is jarring and instantly sounds “wrong”. My piano students will occasionally come across such a chord in a piece that we are learning and look at the keys they are playing with a frown on their faces, often remarking how it “doesn’t sound right”. This interval is called a tritone (or an augmented 4th or diminished 5th) and was once considered to be “Diabolus in Musica”, or “Devil In Music” because of its dissonant nature. You can hear many examples of it used in modern music, with one famous example being the opening riff of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, putting you on edge and evoking the rebellious nature of rock and roll.

The place that we tend to find most “scary” music these days is in media such as film, television, or video games. One would expect the music in a horror film or video game to be scary, as the score of such media is designed to inform the audience how they should be feeling at that particular moment. But a great example of how context, instrumentation and musical references can be used to create suspense in even the most comforting of media is in Hans Zimmer’s score for The Lion King. During the traumatic and dramatic moments of the film, Zimmer uses high-pitched strings playing a variation of the “Dies Irae” to create tension in the audience, and it really works to create a sense of dread and horror in the audience (just ask any millennial about Mufasa’s death and see if they remember!).

So if you’re watching a scary movie this Halloween, going to a Haunted House, playing a horror game or even just listening to your usual music, listen out for how the music stirs your emotions and whether it takes a sinister turn…it could be the devil in the music!

Enjoy your Halloween,
Ben 

 

...Here’s just one example of the science and art behind scary music in filmmaking…