Composing spooky music
Understanding how sound can be used to make your audience feel uncomfortable is a great tool available to the composer. If done correctly, music can simultaneously terrify your audience while keeping them thoroughly engaged and invested in the story. Before we can scare our audience, we need to understand what fear is.
What is fear?
Fear is a psychological response to the uncertainty of potential danger. From a biological perspective, fear helps you avoid situations that could harm you.
Let's think about your distant ancestors roaming around in the wild outdoors, back when they were hunting and foraging for food. In the darkness of forests or jungles, they couldn't see what was going on around them. Their ears were listening closely for sounds of creatures that could harm them.
The unknown is dangerous. Over thousands of years, our ears have become sensitive, distinguishing familiar sounds from the unfamiliar. Anything our ears interpret...