Halloween is my favorite holiday. I use it as an excuse to watch a bajillion horror movies, and also to listen to my favorite kind of movie music - horror movie music.
Halloween is also a good opportunity for me to use a new virtual instrument library to write a creepy outro for the popular screenwriting podcast, Scriptnotes.
This year, I used the amazing string samples included in Orchestral Tools’ Metropolis Ark to create a strident outro in the style of Bernard Herrman’s score for Psycho. There’s an aggressive quality to the strings in the prelude for the movie that is very hard to emulate, and I think this instrument library did a great job of reproducing that harsh-yet-intimate sound.
As I was writing this piece, I spent some time to look back at other Halloween outros I’ve written for the podcast, and I realized I’ve composed six short pieces in one creepy style or another. So come with me down this dark and spooky memory lane into Halloweens past.
John August’s Scriptnotes theme is simple.
Just five notes on a synth - it’s cool to see how many variations have been created using this as a theme.
Waaaaaay back in 2013, I wrote my first outro for a Halloween Scriptnotes episode. This was done in the style of James Newton Howard’s scores for M. Night Shyamalan films like The Sixth Sense and Signs. These scores are incredibly listenable and melodic while still being unnerving. They walk a fine line, and I wanted to use this as a chance to echo his use of piano and strings to subtly get under your skin. This, surprisingly was all done in Garageband - the free composing software that comes with most Macs.
The next year, in 2014, I decided to go for two sounds: Hans Zimmer’s score for The Ring, and a typewriter. I imagined a film in which a horror writer clacks away on an old manual typewriter while every terrifying thing she writes starts to come true. Eerie!
In 2015, a listener made a crack about the Scriptnotes podcast being “like a cult,” and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use that as inspiration for a new outro. I wrote this Satanic Mass piece using Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen as a jumping-off point, using a church organ and deep male vocals to create an ominous feeling as the piece builds and builds.
Around Halloween in 2017, I decided to write a piece that was…well…creepy. With no particular soundtrack or composer as an inspiration. And somehow, left to my own devices, I still wrote something similar to James Newton Howard’s work with Shyamalan. I guess this was like a 2013 2.0 attempt at my first Halloween outro track. In this case I was able to utilize some virtual instruments from Sonokinetic’s Sotto library to help the piece feel more organic with string lines performed by a live orchestra.
Then finally, last Halloween saw a surge in retro synth sounds used in horror films and TV (from Stranger Things to the Halloween film reboot). Hearing this, I was excited to dive into some synth instruments I’ve only used sparingly. As a composer, I definitely lean more toward a full orchestral sound in soundtrack music, but synth instruments offer up unique and unsettling sounds that you simply can’t accomplish with an orchestra. In this case, I used Output’s libraries like Analog Brass and Strings, and Analog Strings. I really enjoyed using these new synth instruments which straddle the line between retro and current musical aesthetics.
It’s been a blast writing these six creepy outros over the years, and I look forward to many more Halloweens and many more horror soundtrack styles.
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Thanks for reading!
- Matthew