“I think as modern people, we’ve been trained to understand when things get quiet, it’s because something’s going to be loud,” explains composer Jason Graves, whose horror scores include the Dead Space games, Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology. By the very fact we’re aware we’re playing in the genre, we have a certain expectation of what’s to come – so for games to manage to terrify us even in their moments of downtime, it’s a true achievement. So much of our time in horror games are actually the moments in between.
#Resident evil soundtrack series#
They’re really simplistic in the fact that they tend to be a few notes played on a bass guitar or played on a synth – maybe even just beaten on a series of tuned drums – and just slowly rolling away, giving you that sense of your heart beating as you’re being chased by whoever the guy with a machete is.”īut we’re not always being chased. I think it’s the bass lines in a lot of those old horror movies that they’re all meant to mimic the repetition of the human heartbeat. It’s just that same run of notes again and again. “If you think about John Carpenter’s own music for his movies, in particular, the Halloween theme. Brewer, the man behind the joyously schlocky synthy score of VHS B-movie throwback Zombie Army 4: Dead War. “I tend to like the simpler side of horror soundtracks, I think they work better if they’re not too complicated,” explains composer Nick D. And they all have their favourite ways to leave us a quivering wreck… including something as simple as tapping into our own physiology. One thing is clear, though: game composers masterfully tap into a part of our brains in a way that’s impossible to fight. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to building terror, and the genre is bursting gorily with different types of fear. Switch from movies to video games and horror music is no less vital for our favourite scary experiences. It’s not a spoiler to say he sorted it with one of the most infamous horror scores of all time. And, most importantly, she wasn’t afraid.
Halloween director and composer John Carpenter famously showed an early cut of his 1978 classic without music to a 20th Century Fox executive. Horror would be nothing without a soundtrack to match.