Composing a Scary Film Score

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Jordan and today is Scary Day. We are going to compose music for a scary movie. I love composing scary music because I love to work with scary movie directors and realizing their vision. Sometimes all they want is something very calm and almost completely silent. Sometimes they want something extremely chaotic and quick. Something that is nearly silent and then suddenly goes crazy and then winds down again. Sometimes they want something that's consistently creepy and over the top all the time. Sometimes they want a pretty set 32nd loop that they can just use for the entire movie. It depends on who you're working with. Today, we're going to vary up a few different ways of doing it and come up with something somewhat universal for today's scary music. We are going to be exploring tropes of scary music, which includes subverting genre expectations. What that means is that we are going to take music that's intended for one thing and flip it and use it for horror. Because when it comes to horror and scary, whenever you take something that's meant to be sweet and you use it in a scary context, it changes its meaning, becomes a lot more unsettling, it becomes a lot more jarring when it's something comforting and normally happy. And it's used in a scary context. That's why scary music so often uses happy chords. The sound of children's laughter with a heavy reverb at an echo on it. Sometimes pitch corrected a few octaves higher, it's always something comforting that's twisted and made terrible. So we're going to use that in our music today. As an example, I'm going to be using some kids music for one and religious kids music for another. Because religion is something that's very comforting for people. And therefore, when used in this kind of context, it becomes quite jarring and upsetting and that's what you want. I think scary movies as a whole are upsetting to watch, which is why we love them. I don't know why that sounds so wrong and weird, but it's scary to watch. It's upsetting, It subverts so many ideas in so many ways. So that's what we're going to do today. I'm a composer and a producer, and I make music. I'm from Australia. I would encourage you to join me today and make some scary music with me. I'll be using Ableton Live 11 and I'll be using a few different plugins within this software that you can get and use for yourself if you would like. Join me. Let's make some scary music together. 2. Subverting Music Genre Expectations: All right, so I found a cool indie horror movie called The Crucifixion, and it looks sufficiently scary for our purposes. Oh, well, we're going to turn the sound off. I don't want to be affected by what the other composer, by what the real composer has chosen. All right, cool. I chose this horror movie because it's got religious implications. The fun thing about that is we can do one of my favorite tropes for horror movie composition, which is to use religious kids music in a horror context. Because stuff that's meant for kids is inadvertently creepy a lot of the time, and I've found the perfect track. It's a version of Jesus loves me, and it's creepy. Well, I interpret it as creepy, but have a listen to it. Jesus loves me. This, I know for the Bible tells me so to him. File. But he job anyway. Perfect for our uses. So I'm going to get that piano out of there and isolate the vocals, so I'm going to use my friends a wave for that kind of help. Here it is. Clarity. I'm going to put the plug in. Clarity on there. Clarity is about $60 Jesus loves me. This. I know for the Bible tells me so little to him say, but he is John. Yeah, Jesus loves me. This, I know for the Bible tells me so little to him, El. But he is John. Yeah, Jesus loves me. This, I know for the Bible tells me so little to him. Alright. That's not an easy one to isolate, I think because the singer's pitch and the pianos pitch are so similar. So that's a tough one. I'm going to put on some reverb as well. Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me. So talk to him, feel they are, but he is strong. Yeah, Jesus loves me. This, I know for the Bible. Alright, let's try just the first part. Jesus loves me. This, I know. I'm gonna put a bit of a reverb on there. Reverbs are gonna be our best friends for anything horror. Where did I put it? Jesus loves me. So did I not put it on? I did. It's just Sarve Soto, maybe a big one, way too big. My favorite Jesus loves me. So chess. Great. That's going to be very handy for our purposes. Okay, Whose? All right, Let's get ourselves a chord progression. Delete. Delete that. Let's get some Midi in here. All right? I'm going to want maybe 4 bars. I just want command shift to create that. Definitely going to need a minor key, something a bit scary. Let's go with minor. God reverb is going to be a friend in this, okay? A flat for our first degree, D, Let's jump up to the third degree. I'm trying to think of 123. What's the creepy way to have a chord progression go? That's unexpected. That's what I'm thinking. Jump up here, then let's repeat the first one button inversion. That's a trick that I like to do. Maybe the same chord, but an octave higher. And then inverted A, drag it down to the equivalent below. Again, drag it down to the equivalent. It's the same chord as before but freaky. Such a weird, oh my God, it should be an, I'm going to make sure I put like another base down here. It'll just rich in it. All of them should have an octave lower, which just makes for a richer sound. Just a stronger chord overall. Literally, all I'm thinking about is how do I make this and more unexpected, obviously. All right, let's put a piano under this. I'm going to use originals. Intimate, grand piano. That's a really beautiful piano. The whole originals line, a very inexpensive. That last chord is too final as though were wrapping up. But things are only just getting started in our scary movie. Great, let's repeat that and then change the last chord so that it does indeed sound more final. I actually like this chord a lot. Maybe I'll just invert this chord instead. It's a D, D, up here. I'm going to pull down the, then I'm going to pull down this A, Here, there we go. Hey, all right, cool. That's a progression. Okay, now I'm going to adapt that progression to suit the trailer's beats to make sure so it doesn't need to be, so even needs to go kind of in line with what's happening in the trailer. Okay, so the first part is okay, so now we just lengthen that second one a little bit and then the same for the third one. Still want to keep it, you know the music notes the right length, full values. I don't want to make the fractional values if I can help it, which just means I don't want to stop a note like here. If I can help it, I want to try to make notes that are only as smallest quarter notes, if I can. There's no real reason for that. It's just with a chord progression. A certain amount of tradition is expected, even in this kind of horror context, because of the uneven nature, we end up with a, a wild, teeny tiny chord. What I should have done is made one big eight bar thing for us to put these notes in. So I'm going to do that. Delete. You, put it over there. You know what I could have done, I'm now thinking is I could have just joined those together with the buttons command J. But what's done is done. How interesting is that little piano distortion sound as though it's a real piano, which I love. All right, let's put that here. Yeah. How long should that be? See, I've already broken my rule. Look where that then a note ends. Let's carry that on until the end. We're not going to keep it. Well, you could keep it you could keep it on the shots the entire time up to you. It's challenging to do it that way, shall I say? Challenging to say the least. Already did those too. So we're going to drag this all forward. There we go. Get that movie back up. Certainly not going to start the next one while it's in darkness, lines up. He is that once the trailer is a certain, once the trailer is a decent length in, I'll probably just put them even evenly spaced because at a certain point the music will have built up enough that no one will notice the chord progression moving to the shots anymore. It'll be like wasted time. I reckon we're reaching that point now. This will be the last one. Like I said, you could have a, you could have it cutting to the shot the entire time. But we are now 16 bars in at this point. There's no way anybody's noticing whether they're evenly stacked or not. Because like I said, the music will have built up quite a lot by that point. Now I'm literally just going to move everything and make it all nice and even then we can worry about what's next. 3. Layering the Chord Progression: All right, we have our progression. Now we want to create a Midi track. Here, we're just going to copy and paste. Now we want a base line running underneath for this type of track. I want to delete everything except for the bottom notes. Then what is that? To make one exactly an octave lower that lines up identically. This is going to be the baseline that runs underneath and gives us a richer sound. You'll remember that. What is it? Three? We want to do the same thing here, make sure it lines up. You'll remember that everything already has a base line. We've got the, and then we have a lower, everything has an extra note that's lower than the lowest note on the chord progression. Now we want to do that again. Even lower, as low as it will go. Then that way we get the fullest sound possible. What's that, 21? That was just a copy and paste. Okay, for this, I'm going to want a cello. My original. I'm going to, let's try Epic strings. If you are a music student, you can get these half price. I'm not compensated for recommending them. They it's just straight up strings, that's a shame. In that case, I will BBC. This one's a full orchestra. This is much more expensive than the originals, I got to say. But you get more instruments. I've got strings here. This is what I was looking for. Ell. Yeah. That's what I wanted. All right. Let's hear that together. Oh, my God, It's so loud. It's part of a reverb. Oh my God. There's going to be so much reverb in this by the time it's done. There we go, Softer, Jesus. Oh my God. That's scared the heck out of me. All right. We want to probably want to have this going on right from the beginning. Let's check it with the video. Jesus, it's fast, but if we whop it down, it's going to lower the pitch. It is too fast. Let's just see what happens. So what I'm doing right now is I'm holding down the shift button and just dragging it out. All right, so that's too slow design design. That piano is too strong design, we're not balanced. Maybe I want it even quieter. Okay. There's another plug in that I really enjoy using, that I mostly use when I make lo fi and that's retro color. Let's give it an old sound sign. There we go. I kind of want to muffle her. I'm going to put on an audio effects and filters eight, I'm going to muffle her on the top end sign. Maybe I want to turn down even further the piano sign. Let's turn them off sign. They're needed. But in what way? Ooh, that cello is good, but its reverb is too subtle. Let's give it sea beams. That might be too ambitious. E, All right. I like it that piano still may be useful at some point, or it may die on the cutting room floor, I'm not sure. But what I'm missing is a high violin. What I'm going to do is maybe I'll keep the top note as a violin and maybe I'll raise it higher. It's F two, right now, maybe three. How high can a violin go? I wonder, let's push it to its limit plug ins. Now for this, I'm going to use something that every composer should have, which is Contact. Contact. You can put a lot of things inside of and a lot of great free things, including the free orchestra, which I love, but I'm going to use Spitfires. Solo violin. God, I use them a lot. Okay. Let's see. Oh my God, It's a lot. Okay. This violin is in such desperate need of reverb also, I think it's too many notes. I'm going to have to cut those notes down. Maybe just the middle to the lead. Okay. Let's check with the video really needs the screams and the visceral sounds that come with the Foley. Okay. So I liked having those two notes be the violin. Let's continue that. What did I do last time I raised them up? This is two, let's make it three. Could I have raised it higher? I wonder. Let's give it a try. If we don't hear anything, we'll know. I'm going to turn on this earphones symbol and then we'll hear what we're doing. Flight four? Yes is the answer. All right. That's pretty cool. Just the middle notes. Why? Because it's unexpected and it's weird. F three, flat four. There we go. And the side is, well, wait, what did I do? Run one. There we go. Okay, cool. This song, we need the next part on. Is that less clear than the first part? Oh, 'cause I dragged the first part out, I think. Yes. Let's line it up with this cord here, looks over. Oh, creepy. Great. Let's grab the next part of the song. Put it here, great. And then one more part. Yeah, and we will definitely use the chorus at some point as well. What did I say? Oh yeah. Put it here with the violin. Give it a little bit of a stretch then I'm guessing this part will go nicely with the next instance of violin which is here and a stretch. That's my guess. We'll find out next. We want some very creepy, random sounds and screeches. I've got the perfect thing for that. 4. Enhancing Our Chords with Plugins: All right. I'm also going to put our retro color onto the violin and get it sounding old school as well, so it fits more nicely. I really want to mess it up. It's so weird now. Grace. Um, I wonder if it can be more messed up without it being too messed up. So we've got Rift as well which we can use. Rift is a weird one. I don't want to turning into an alien movie. No, no, no, no. That's too much. I think what we did was was the right balance, so cut that. Okay. Uh, now, I mentioned before contact Sam's free orchestra. It's great and it's going to come in handy right now for free. Oh my God. I can never fight, there it is, honestly. Okay. First let's copy these in. Okay. Sam's Free Orchestra. Let's get that loaded up. If you don't have contact, definitely get it. It's a no brainer. Okay. Check out these options. Um, maybe Ghostly cut clusters. I love that you never know, you never know what you're gonna get. Golly, just goes a bit long now. I like that, but I don't know if it matches or not. All right. It's quite good. Now I have that there for if I need to use it again. Let's put Sam's in again. See what else they got here? I always just like mess around with Sam's. See what I want. Oh, dystopian drones. That's what I was originally looking for. Get that creepy drone in there. Alright, let's do that. Oh my god, so distracting. Just those two are good. Stretch it out. All right, Delete that. This is an interesting one. It kind of like, the longer it goes, the bigger it gets. So what I'll do is. I'll copy that. And then I'll delete it. Make a huge one. There we go. And then I'll paste it in. Then I'll drag it across the full length key. Now if I need to, I can automate it. Oh, I've got it on repeat. I was like, what? All right. So no need to occur so frequently. That is frequent enough. These didn't feel stretched enough. Stretch it out. Stretch it out. It's all based on how do we feel. Let's get that chorus in there. That would be an amazing way to end the trailer. I wonder how far it needs to be stretched out. It's all too fast. Way too fast. Starting from here. Need to be half the speed. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to make one that's twice the size, drag these notes over and then double all of their length. I don't know. It's just a feeling that suddenly everything is too quick. It's not matching the pace of the movie anymore. The trick with this horror stuff is being careful not to overload everything. What I might have to do is scale back. I've got so many layers playing at once now that I may just totally overcrowd it. I think what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to treat this like a Lofi or an EDM track where I build everything up. I have 1 million layers and then I end up having to strip all those layers back and get them in order and have it build up. That's what I'm going to do. There we go. Let's get it all stripped back. 5. Arrangement & Final Thoughts: Okay, so all of the elements are here. They're just two on top of each other. I'm going to just click and drag and move everything back and then let it all come in one at a time. And starting with the essentials, I think the child's voice and that drone could be how it opens. Maybe I'll bring in the violin there. He, there no longer. I think one more note, but a much higher one would suit. Maybe a couple. Oh, I don't know how much higher it can go off the key there. I get that started earlier. All right, good. But this comes in a bit too late. Let's get that going again. Too early now. Oh, that's quite nice. Let's move those up. Maybe those should line up with the song. Maybe her face, I want it more full when that face is revealed. Like a more full sound. Ah, that's no good. That's no good. Let's get those violins back. Maybe we delay those vocals? Oh, we ran out of Jerome. It's like, man, I'm missing something. Yeah, I need that. I need those vocals to last until the title of the movie. Yeah, there we go. Why does that end Suddenly, Let's make sure that goes a little bit, little bit longer. That'd be a good place for the jure to end, right on the movie title. Where is it there? Oh, there, yeah. All right. That's creepy, badly, badly, Badly in need of Foley to fill out that sound? Gosh, badly. All right. But once the Foley's there, I think that that'll go nicely. Not too much Foley crashes, but not too much. With this type of score it's gonna keep, things really tends to ends which is the way I like my horror. Alright, let's see it all keep know. So cool. I think there's still some ways that you could change it. You could alter the chords so that they line up better with the children singing. That could be one way to do it. M, that would probably be the one change that I would consider a pretty good one, but you know, it's all stylistic. Whatever you think is good when chop off that ending so that so that it ends just on the title of the movie. Tell me that's not tense, man, I am freaked out but there you go, we did it. 6. Until Next Time: Well, there you have it. I hope you had a lot of fun making scary music with me. Wasn't it really funny how there were a couple of moments while making scary music that I actually got really scared. Like when I was playing the music and the kids singing suddenly started, I was not expecting that. I hope you had a great time. And if you're working on a scary project, I really hope that this class just gave you some ideas or gave you somewhere to start. Or maybe just inspired you to try some plug ins that you hadn't tried before or some methods that you hadn't thought of yet. If you are working on a project or even if you're not and you want to start a project, please whatever you make posted here on Skillshare in the project part of this class page. I would really love to see it. While you're there, start a discussion, ask me a question. Why not leave a review? If you have something to say about the class experience, I would really appreciate it a lot. Stick around. Some of you may have discerned that the music you're listening to now, right behind me is from my Moody Stock music class here on Skillshare, in which you can learn to make music that goes behind talking. Actually, all of the music that I use behind me while I'm talking in all of my classes is made by me using these techniques. So you can check that one out if you'd like. And I have one on music theory, so you can know more about how chord progressions are made and melodies and all of that, and tons more. So stick around, watch more classes and ask me a question and get chatting. Why not? I would love to hear from you. Thanks again for joining me. I hope you got something out of it. I sincerely do and I really look forward to seeing you at the next one. Thanks again for coming by.