A Gloomy Night in Leiden - (horror attempt)

Heyo! Last night I was coming home late in the evening and I wondered what would happen if I had to write a spooky theme for a horror movie/game/story. I found really difficult to be scary without being cheesy (augmented and diminished chords, anyone?), so it became a study of how much dissonance I can fill it with, while making it pleasant to listen to. I feel like I'm becoming better at controlling the consonance/dissonance balance, and that I have a better sense of how much I can stretch in my pieces; so, yay for that!

Regarding the title: I currently live in Leiden, which is a small beautiful town in the Netherlands, full of canals and interesting historical architecture. What if I try to convey a sense of menace in such a pretty scenario?

This was conceived in less than 2 hours, and my go-to ensemble when I'm feeling lazy is definitely strings playing lush chords. I'm quite happy of the harmonic language that came out of it. It's easy and short, but I thought it might be interesting to post it here.

Score: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y741ylc9dchn67w/a gloomy night - Full Score.pdf?dl=0



... pan the camera to a view of the full moon in a cloudy sky. Cue music. Credits are rolling. Main titles appear on the screen with the musical climax.

Would you guys watch that movie?

 

Thank you for listening to it!

I have to be honest, I have almost no knowledge of that kind of musical language, so this composition is anything but an informed attempt. It's an impression of the vague generic concept I have when thinking of "spooky" soundtracks.

It's funny that you feel this way, the harmony is similar on both passages and the melodic idea is the same. I underestimated how much the instruments' ranges and the arrangement affect the perception of the emotion attached to the idea. Also the dynamics: the second time around it's definitely "menacing" and more aggressive, so maybe that's part of the "spook" of it. Man, writing abstract music is definitely way easier than writing music to match a particular vibe! The line between mournful, mysterious, scary, (...) is very blurred, and it is much easier to paint an abstract musical scenario on a blank canvas!

Might definitely be the case, and I have to blame the fact I didn't have a lot of time to write music yesterday and I really wanted to do it. On the flipside, I also wouldn't really know how to use woodwinds and brass instruments (belonging to the treble range) in this context. A clear case of limited vocabulary

I definitely don't have enough context to make a legit scary theme, but I'm glad that you at least like the ideas! Thank you so much, always very helpful!

 

Hey, thank you for listening to the piece!

I didn't think about the idea of leaving the middle register out, and it is indeed interesting. I think I can recall it being the case in a lot of examples for spooky movies. However, I don't agree with your second point, philosophically speaking: there are countless ways to alienate your audience, and while I might wanna make them feel like there is some "mysterious threat approaching" (or whatever it is), I wanna leave them longing for more. In other words, my goal is always to make them want to listen to the music multiple times (which translates into them wanting to relieve the experience/drama multiple times), and to make them wanna know more about the story. I'm really not a fan of the horror film genre, and jumpscares seem like a gimmick to me; having a jumpscare in music without a scene is a big no-no, that's the fastest way to lose the attention and interest of people. Same with un-rhythmic ideas, it would leave them feeling dumb most of the time, which would result in them not liking my music.

My goal is ultimately to tell a story about scary shit (in this case) with music that people like to listen to, not to push away my audience with music that is unpleasant and difficult to digest. I do understand the psychoacustic phenomena of some of those devices, but they don't belong to a "main title" kind of sequence, which is what I was aiming for here.

I've been taught my Christopher Young on 2 separates occasions (he's arguably one of the go-to guys for horror movies, he's done so many of them!) and it's really great to see how many of his main titles are very melodic and easy to grasp and remember. Drag Me to Hell comes to mind. Menacing and scary, but never hard to follow.

 

Yeah that's also why I wanted to clarify.

Thank you for the example and for your input, you're probably correct. The only function the intro has here is to set the mood "harmonically", but I understand that I also introduce a pace that is probably too slow for my goal. Changing harmonies over a root note has a very specific effect, and I definitely need to experiment with it and explore it more.

I don't generally pat myself on the back, but I'm really proud of the moments after 1:00. I'm think that the Db minor/C minor in bar 21 works so well that I need to share how happy I am about it. It's the little things, but I love when very dissonant harmonies work seamlessly in context.

Thanks again for the feedback, I'm gonna reflect on the points that were brought up here.

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Big digression: after getting feedback by multiple people on this piece of music, I thought of something that is kind of interesting: I don't try to limit myself with ensembles and I mostly write music out of abstract lines and ideas. However, whenever people listen to my music they immediately jump on the "this sounds like film music!" bandwagon immediately. They obviously said it of this piece. Hell, they said it of a SATB a cappella piece I wrote for chamber choir (I hope to record it one day and share it here with you guys).
While some of my influences in the film world are pretty clear, I also have a background of 10 years studying classical music. And in a way, progressive metal music has a very strong influence on my writing, since I've listened to it and played it for ~5 years.
It is flattering, on one hand, to have such a distinct sound and style for the people that listen to it (I take like a good thing when people say "it sounds like the other thing you wrote, but different"); but I do wonder what triggers it.

This piece is very short, and has the most basic kind of developmental elements (basically Intro-A-B-A-B). I imagine it's a mixture of the harmonic language and the structure; probably the average film cue develops much faster than the average symphonic movement. But man, there is a big consensus on it among the people that I know, and I really can't put my finger on it. This is the only way I can write music, which apparently all sounds like "film music".

I wonder if you guys also experienced this, and I'm curious about what you think of it.