Welcome to a World of Horror Music

The tritone can be defined as an augmented fourth or diminished fifth chord. It was called the ‘devil in music’ (‘diabolus in musica’) (Guilford, 2019) by clergymen and was considered evil in medieval times for it is the most unsettling dissonant chord. The tritone contains three whole steps from F-B on a C major scale and it is six semitones away from the tonic. Minor and dissonant chords are used to create an uneasy feeling in the listener. The tritone or Devil's interval is a dissonant chord that sounds very unpleasant, hence it is associated with evil and widely used in horror music.
Research by Bullerjahn and Güldenring suggests that music has a great impact on emotional perception of moving image, as it effects certain parts of the brain depending on the type of music. The dissonance of the tritone is greatly disturbing for the listener and suggests the coming of horrible events.
Horror music composers apply the use of tritone, and this compositional technique influences the audience’s emotional response, where the main purpose is to make the audience feel unbalanced, at unease, and implying the coming of something sinister.

High, screeching sounds or low, menacing voices are very effective. High-pitched voices evoke alertness for it gives the impression of a human or animal being in distress. While deeper, pressed voices create the feeling of aggression.

'Thematically, horror sound design moves along a wide aesthetic spectrum ranging from the primal to the ethereal. […] sound effects design of early 1970s horror adopted the codes and stylistic tendencies of documentary and cinema verité, and as a result, the soundtracks can be defined as somewhat “raw”. This style went into remission as big-budget films like Poltergeist and An American Werewolf in London (1981) supplanted these approaches with highly refined soundtracks and led to a series of big budget horror remakes from John Carpenter’s The Thing to David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986)'. (Benshoff, 2017)
Sound effects keep changing over the time. Technology evolves and the aesthetics of horror sounds do as well. There are no standardized strategies, but it is common practice to take inspiration from past film sounds. There is a big impact on its evolution through the cycles of the genre, when big blockbuster films are being remade or referenced and therefore brings the need for similar sounds in a slightly modernised or manipulated version.
Sound effects can be created in numerous ways, they can come from a natural source or they can be synthesised by a computer.
Horror films apply sound effects from the “raw” to the “refined” to place the viewer in between the fear of mortality and the fear of the natural and supernatural, in order to challenge perception and question rationality. The intention is to “paint” a soundscape of the unknown filled with fear, primal terrors and anxiety, and to assimilate to this through the ever changing “rules” of horror and sound.

Startle reflex has a very close connection to visual effects and occurs when a disturbing sound appears like a sudden sound of a bump or an unexpected outburst of noise, states G. Neil Martin in his article, ‘(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films’.
Startle reflex is an emotional reaction to danger anticipated by the hearer, which is higher when dialogue containing threat is heard. The startle reflex is an engraved reaction for potential danger. The key of its effectiveness is that it is unpredictable and unexpected, therefore evokes a quick physical response. The startle response is higher to a negative stimulus such as fear, but considerably lower for neutral or positive stimulus.
Jump scare techniques are widely used in horror films. The sudden change in frequency, volume or pitch after a prolonged period of silence make the audience jump. Neuroscientist, Seth Horowitz states “a sudden loud noise activates a very specialized circuit from your ear to spinal neurons. It’s the ‘Startle Circuit.’ If you suddenly hear a noise, within 50 milliseconds your body jumps and begins to release adrenaline, with no consciousness involved. It’s five neurons” (Horowitz, 2019). The suspense building up in a piece then followed by a short silence and a very sudden loud noise can trigger the same response a mamma marmot feels when hearing her babies in distress, it is an engraved evolutionary reaction (Blumstein, Daviatan and Kaye, 2019).

Silence creates a feeling of unease, discomfort because of the modern world we live in. Our brain is conditioned to crave distraction in the form of music, noise or background TV chatter, to derail the thoughts that bothering us.
As Michel Chion, the author of the book Audio-vision: Sound on screen, states “… the impression of silence in a film scene does not simply come from an absence of noise. It can only be produced as a result of context and preparation. The simplest of cases consists in preceding it with a noise-filled sequence. So, silence is never a neutral emptiness. It is the negative of sound we’ve heard beforehand or imagined; it is the product of a contrast.”
Silence is a great tool for films, especially for horror films. Whenever it occurs, the audience expect something to happen, therefore it also allows a surprising unexpected event to rise. It creates an uncomfortable feeling, puts the viewer in suspense. Silence is discomforting and sets the mind into a state of unease. The brain needs constant stimulation to function, and focus on the storyline, even in silence there is always some sort of ambient sound or noise present.
Silence can be expressed through added noises. Sound engineers take recordings of a room or space in silence to use it in the postproduction process for the silent scenes, as absolute silence rarely happens.