“The closer the music sounds to animal screams, the greater the fear factor." — Adriana Barton The high-pitched scream of a violin under the frenzied see-saw of a furious bow. A murderous intent made manifest in melodic lines so sharp and jagged, a page of music looks like a threat. An ominous, low drone that grows bigger, louder, faster into an unrelenting sonic assault.
"The neat thing to me is that composers leverage the fear circuitry in our brains in various ways, and some of them are through learned associations, and some are through hardwired responses that we have to certain sounds. If we start with the hardwired part, listeners consistently associate low bass tones with dominance and power.
"There are intervals and harmonies like minor seconds and tritones — which are the augmented fourth — and minor ninths. And at a physics level, the dissonant sounds are more complex than consonant harmonies, such as perfect fourths, which gives them a cryptic unsettled quality, which is again perfect for raising anxiety in a film score.