How To Make Terrifying Horror Music

In this post, I share with you 21 amazing tips to help you make horror music that makes people want to 💩 themselves - metaphorically, of course, otherwise that would be very messy.

What Makes Music Scary?

Scary music is a broad topic, but the good thing is that what makes it scary is pretty universal.

These 10 things are pretty much guaranteed to make any music feel scary or tense:

1. Dissonance
2. Sudden noises
3. Low sounds
4. Screams & screeches
5. Dark pulses
6. Heartbeats and Clocks
7. Chromatic movements
8. Children’s Pianos (or similar)
9. Human Vocal Noises (including breathing)
10. Unusual chord progressions

One thing that helps me when writing horror music is to establish the mood of the music using words or scenes. Does the music feel alone or empty? Is there an unseen threat, etc? What is the music trying to portray?

By defining what you are trying to portray, it better prepares you for choosing the right sounds from the list above.

For example, if there was an unseen threat, you would use a low drone. This lets the viewer know that there is something ominous. Or, if there was a ghost of a child, you would use a children's toy piano put through effects to imply the child and also imply that something is not quite "right".

To understand why we find these sounds scary, we first need to understand how our brains perceive threats and danger.

The Science of Fear: How Our Brains Process Scary Sounds

There's a part of our brain called the amygdala that plays a crucial role in detecting acoustic threats.

It acts as an early warning system, instantly responding to unpredictable or familiar dangerous sounds—especially complex noises and certain frequencies.

What makes the amygdala particularly interesting is its ability to learn. A specific region within it stores fear-based memories and can associate different sounds with frightening experiences.

Over time, through countless films and cultural exposure, we've collectively learned to associate certain musical elements with horror.

When you combine this learned response with our brain's hardwired connection between unpredictable sounds and survival instincts, it's clear why horror music doesn't just sound scary—it actually makes us feel scared on a physiological level.

Horror composers have deliberately exploited these natural responses, which have given rise to several classic horror music techniques:

• Sudden hits and noise – Triggering our startle reflex
• Complex clusters of notes – Creating dissonance that the amygdala perceives as threatening
• Pitch risers – Building tension through unpredictable acoustic patterns

21 Ways To Make Your Music More Scary

I love a quick tip as much as the next composer. To make this post more actionable, I wanted to share all 21 tips I use to make music scary!

All of these 21 techniques fit into 8 core categories:

1. Dissonance and Discord

• Dissonant chords - min/maj7, augmented, suspended chords
• Moving clusters - Think Gyorgy Ligeti's micropolyphony. Closely related notes all played together and moving together. Very common in horror.
• Out of key notes - Breaking tonal expectations by playing a note that you would not expect.
• X-cell chords - Chromatic tetrachords. These are 4-note chords that are connected by semitones.
• Set Theory or 12-tone rows - Giving the 12 notes within an octave a number and then creating your 12-tone row using random number patterns. Bernard Hermann used this in the Psycho Prelude (pitches 0, 6, 7, 10, 11 using tritones, minor 2nds, major 7th)
• Bi-Tonality - The use of two keys simultaneously. This creates huge clashes of chords, filling the music with tension. For example, C major and F# major triads played simultaneously. The most famous example of this is in Stravinsky's Petrushka.
• Chromatic mediant modulations - This doesn't sound very easy, but it is simply playing chords a third apart. For example, C moving to E, or Cm moving to Em. When you do this they the chords share one note in common, so it sounds related but filled with tension.
• Avoid Melodies - Melodies, much like standard chord progressions, create natural resolutions. In horror music, we want to avoid things that create a resolution. Instead, we want tension, and lots of it.

2. Silence and Absence

Silence is as powerful a tool in horror music as any other instrument, perhaps even more powerful. It acts as the precursor to something terrible. It lets the audience begin to anticipate what is coming next.

This ultimately means that they are making themselves more scared and jumpy, so when you throw in an incredibly loud, sudden sound - BOOM - it works that much better.

• Sudden dynamic shifts - From silence to loud creates maximum impact; this is called a "Jump Scare" in horror.
• Strategic pauses - Let tension build in the gaps. The silence here sets the expectation that something is coming and really builds tension.

3. Uncanny and Unnatural Sounds

This is one of my favourite ways to create scary sounds by either using unusual instruments or playing an instrument in an unusual way.

The piano is a great one to explore unusual sounds on. Try

1. Striking piano strings with mallets or even a pencil
2. Sliding hands over strings, brushing them gently
3. Plucking strings by hand
4. Using Prepared piano techniques (inspired by John Cage's method of using bolts, screws, mutes, and rubber erasers on/between strings for otherworldly percussive effects)

My favourite 'otherworldly' instruments for horror music are:

• Children's instruments - Toy pianos, music boxes (familiar but wrong)
• Waterphone and bowed metals - Ethereal, otherworldly tones
• Theremin - The classic "ghost" sound
• Sounds like spiders - Using the string instrument articulation Col legno (bouncing the wood of the bow on strings)

You can also try doing things like running knives up and down guitar strings or taking a contact microphone and recording everyday objects being struck or bowed. This can yield some amazingly freaky sounds.

4. Repetition and Ostinato

With these, we are playing on a few things: those times when you are scared and you feel like you can actually hear the blood pumping in your ears, or when you hear the clock ticking when you are waiting for something you are dreading.

These pulses and repetitive patterns are emulating this feeling of waiting...

• Ticking clocks/pulses/heartbeats - Relentless, maddening repetition. Ticking clocks have associations with time passing, death, and waiting. All perfect for horror.
• Undulating pitches - Hypnotic patterns that never resolve. These are used to make the audience feel disorientated.

5. Extreme Registers and Timbres

• Low melodies - Low drones and bass frequencies. These act as a warning to the audience that something bad is either happening or about to happen.
• Screeching noises - High violin scratches, screams like the famous 'Psycho' violins.
• Harpsichord/Clavichord/Pipe organ - Think Addams Family darkness. These associations have come about because of the organ's link to churches and funerals.

6. Rhythm and Tempo Manipulation

The best and most popular example of this is John Carpenter's score to Halloween, where he uses patterns in 5/4 that don't feel like they resolve, holding the listener in a permanent state of tension.

• Odd time signatures - Creating disorientation because the rhythm doesn't feel "right". It doesn't seem to resolve.
• Accelerating tempos - Building panic as if it were the musical equivalent of being chased.

7. Cultural and Learned Associations

This is when you play on the listener's expectation of music. When they hear a certain chord sequence, they may expect certain chords, for example, or certain melodic notes.

You can make them feel unsettled by throwing in unexpected things to break those associations and leave them feeling unnerved.

• Unrelated minor chords - Unexpected harmonic shifts set the audience on edge.
• Unrelated major keys - Major chords in wrong contexts feel sinister
• Haunting melodies - Simple, memorable, and unsettling.

8. The Secret Weapon: Your Voice

If in doubt, use your voice! - Breathing, whispers, screams, and vocal textures are incredibly effective, and you always have them available.

I have sketched out entire albums using just my voice. I would take those samples of my voice and detune them with pitch shifters, reverse them, run them through many distortion plugins and filters until they sounded almost alien.

It works like a charm!

In this video, I use my voice to lay down the intro to a thriller/horror track.

You could even layer yourself singing many, many times to recreate a ghastly, out-of-tune choir.

I am very good at this 😂 (out of tune singing that is)

Bonus: Risers

• Pitch risers - The go-to technique for building unbearable tension

Horror Music Made Easy 😱

Start your next horror track with ease with this FREE Cinematic Horror Sample Pack

Get the FREE sample pack

You can watch me create this sample pack in this video.

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Last updated: 9/10/2025