What makes music scary? Your imagination plays a role

Just two notes are enough for John Williams to build tension in his famous composition for the film ‘Jaws’.

“We don’t see the shark at first, but we know something is there,” said Daniel Goldmark, director of popular music studies at Case Western Reserve University. “It all comes down to this very, very small bit of noise that turns into something very, well, monstrous.”

Repetition is another musical technique often found in scary movie soundtracks. Other similarities include minor keys and sustained dissonance, where the notes seem to disagree with each other.

“You can think of the music for a lot of really signature scary movies, ‘Psycho’, ‘Halloween’, ‘The Exorcist’, often it’s about repetition and getting into a space where you’re kind of lulled to sleep:’ Oh, everything’s fine.’ And that’s where something terrible can happen,” Goldmark said.

He and a few other Ohio music experts discussed the familiar tunes that send shivers down the spine, especially around Halloween.

“Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor were once widely used in silent films,” says Michael Ferraguto, chief librarian of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Instruments, such as the pipe organ used to score the films, also play a role in creating eerie moods in the music.

“We think of a lot of vampires and the Phantom of the Opera with the pipe organ,” Ferraguto said. “It has a huge sound. It is also associated with this Gothic architecture, spookiness.”

Ferraguto said he particularly enjoys the use of instruments in the final movement of Hector Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique,” ​​influenced by the story that accompanies it.

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

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

Stories and what’s on screen have a big influence on what’s considered scary in music.

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

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

Songs that aren’t currently considered scary in the culture could be if they were paired with a terrifying image, Gardner suggested. As an example, he gave Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” which is often played to build excitement at sporting events.

“It’s very easy to imagine how this… uplifting anthem could become very, very scary if, for example, like Freddy Krueger or Darth Vader, you were to imagine something like this about this thing,” Gardner said.

Captivating music often does not scare people away, but rather draws them in.

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