Spooky Science: The Sounds of Halloween
Summary
Introduction
Do you enjoy watching scary movies at Halloween, or going to haunted houses? However you may want to have a thrilling experience this time of year, spooky sounds and music will likely play an important part. Part of what makes a haunted house or a mysterious movie perfectly eerie is the soundtrack that goes along with it – all the noises orchestrated to raise the hair on your arms, make you shiver, and leave you with little doubt that there are things unknown lurking about. In this science activity, you’ll investigate what goes into the composition of a perfect creepy soundtrack.
Background
Music is a big part of a movie, or theatrical, experience. Music adds layers of richness to the visual experience of a movie, and it enhances the storytelling by increasing emotions or tension in a scene. Scary things feel scarier with the right music. For example, by intensifying emotions, the music makes it so that you don’t just jump when that hairy spider comes around the corner; you scream!
There are several different aspects of music that can make it feel eerie or convey a different emotion to us. The musical instruments involved can play a key role. For example, percussion instruments (such as drums or cymbals) make a very different sound than string instruments (such as violins or cellos) or horns (such as trumpets). The pitch of the melody – whether it is high-pitched (like the songs of birds) or low-pitched and deep sounding – and if it is generally increasing or decreasing also affects how we feel about the music. The music’s key (such as if it is minor or major), tempo (or speed of the music) and volume are other musical components that can each convey different messages to the listener.
Materials
- Age-appropriate children’s Halloween movie, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Coraline, Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie, Harry Potter, Hocus Pocus, Labyrinth, Casper, The Witches, and Corpse Bride
- Alternatively, instead of a movie you could use creepy classical and/or movie tracks (from a CD or available online), such as Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem Mass,” or movie soundtracks by Danny Elfman or John Williams
- Timer or stopwatch (optional). This is for determining the tempo of the music.
Preparation
- Get your Halloween movie ready to watch. If you have time, you could plan on watching the entire movie, or you could find a few favorite scenes to watch. To do this activity, you will want to listen to at least 20 seconds from at least three different eerie or scary scenes in the movie.
- Alternatively, if you are using song tracks instead of a movie, get the music ready to play your favorite songs. You will want to listen to at least three songs.
Instructions
- Watch each eerie or scary movie scene (or listen to each song track) that you picked while paying close attention to how the music sounds. The following steps will help you analyze the music. You may need to listen to the music a few times.
- Try to figure out which main musical instruments are being used. Do you hear mostly percussion instruments (such as the banging of drums or clash of cymbals), string instruments (such as violins or cellos), horns (such as big brassy trumpets) or people singing?
- Focus on the melody. Is the melody high-pitched (like the songs of birds) or low-pitched and deep sounding? Are there rising or falling scales? (A rising scale is like the sequence “do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do” and a falling scale is the reverse.)
- Try to listen to the key of the music. Note that a minor key might sound sadder or more serious to you, while a major key might sound more cheerful. (An example of a minor-key song is “My Favorite Things” from the movie The Sound of Music, while “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is an example of a song typically sung in a major key.) Is the music in a minor or major key?
- Now count the beats per minute (bpm), or tempo, of the music. If you want, you can tap or clap out the beats yourself for ten seconds and then multiple by six to get bpm. A slow tempo may be less than 70 bpm, while a fast tempo may be greater than 110 bpm. Does the music have a relatively fast tempo or a slow one? If you are watching a movie, how does the tempo correlate with what’s happening in the movie?
- Also pay attention to the volume of the music. Is it quiet or loud? If you’re watching a movie, how does the volume correlate with what’s happening?
- Overall, what do varied examples of eerie or scary music have in common? How are they different?
Extra: Repeat this activity but this time use several different movies (and at least five scenes from each movie) to investigate whether certain musical aspects typically accompany specific types of scenes, such as action, happy or sad scenes. Do action scenes usually have the same type of tempo? What about happy and sad scenes – how does the music change with the different types of scenes?
Extra: Get some volunteers and play short segments of music from different types of movie scenes for the volunteers (without letting them see the actual movie scene). Ask the volunteers what type of scene they think the music accompanies. How accurate are the volunteers? Is there overlap between types of scenes? For example, did some of your volunteers think music from a happy scene belonged in an action scene, or that music from a sad scene belonged to a scary scene?
Observations and Results
Was the eerie or scary music typically played in a minor key, with a relatively high-pitch melody? Did it build up tension by going from being quiet and slow to becoming louder and fast?
There is a lot of variation in what makes up “eerie” or “scary” music, but there are some common themes in movie soundtracks and classical music. The music is typically played in a minor key. For music to sound eerie or spooky, it might also be relatively quiet and slow, which can build up unsettling tension in the listener. Then, at a scary or intense moment, the music may become much louder, faster and increase in pitch, possibly with a rising scale. Higher-pitched melodies and musical instruments, such as strings and children singing (without using distinct words), are often used for these scary scenes, but other instruments, such as horns and pianos, are sometimes employed too.
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Additional Resources
- Glossary for Music Appreciation, from City College of San Francisco
- Movie Music, from Science Buddies
- Sounds Like Halloween, from Science Buddies
- Does a minor key give everyone the blues?, from Nature
