What makes music scary? Instrumentation, composition and your imagination

Just two notes are all it takes for John Williams to build tension in his famous composition for the film “Jaws.”

“We don't see the shark at the beginning, but we know there's something there,” said Daniel Goldmark, head of popular music studies at Case Western Reserve University. “It all just comes down to this very, very tiny little paring of sounds that turns into something really, well, monstrous.”

Repetition is another musical technique that comes up often in soundtracks for scary movies. Other commonalities include minor keys and held-out dissonances, where the notes seem to disagree.

“You can think about the music for a lot of really signature scary films, ‘Psycho,’ ‘Halloween,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ often they involve repetition and getting into this space where you're kind of being lulled into, ‘Oh, everything's okay.’ And that's where something terrible can happen,” Goldmark said.

He and a couple of other Ohio music experts weighed in on the familiar tunes that send chills down spines, particularly around Halloween.

“Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach was used a lot in silent films back in the day,” said Michael Farraguto, head librarian for the Cleveland Orchestra.

Instruments, like the pipe organ used to score those films, also play a role in creating spooky moods in music.

“We think a lot of vampires and the Phantom of the Opera with the pipe organ,” Farraguto said. “It's got this massive sound. It is also associated with this gothic architecture, spookiness.”

Farraguto said he particularly enjoys the use of instruments in the final movement of “Symphonie Fantastique” by Hector Berlioz, influenced by the story that goes with it.

“There's an E-flat clarinet solo that sounds like a kind of cackling, insane witch. And beneath that are these bubbling bassoons that I kind of always imagine as a kind of a cauldron,” he said.

The opening theme of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining” also adapted a selection of “Symphonie Fantastique,” which plays as a car navigates to a remote hotel in the mountains.

Stories and what’s on screen heavily influence what is considered scary in music.

For instance, Darth Vader’s theme from “Star Wars,” also composed by John Williams, flips the script musically speaking, according to Sammy Gardner, associate professor of music theory at Oberlin College & Conservatory.

“It’s like a major triad … this chord that we think of as like prototypical happy,” Gardner said.

Songs not currently considered scary in culture could be if they were paired with a frightening visual, Gardner suggested. He gave as an example “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, which is frequently played to build excitement at sporting events.

“It’s really easy to imagine how this … pump-up anthem can become really, really scary if you were to imagine, say, like Freddy Krueger or Darth Vader, like over top of this thing,” Gardner said.

Haunting music often doesn’t turn people away in terror but instead draws them in.

“Music and art in general provide a safe space to kind of explore those emotions,” Gardner said.

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