Music Research

When finding music for our trailer, we want to find a number of royalty free tracks that create both suspense and a sense of accelerating drama as the trailer progresses. We need to have multiple tracks so that the music does not become boring for the audience, and also to show the change in pace from the beginning to the end. Some options for music are:




Straight away this piece opens with an eery sound to set an ominous tone. The lack of time signature, as well as creative use of silence and diminuendo on the sound effects in the first 5 seconds is quite disorientating for the listener. This is then punctuated by the entrance of the drums, which follows a driving rhythm that continuously builds throughout the piece, until we eventually reach the climax point when the cymbals enter. This progressive development increases the tension and excitement felt by the audience as the piece goes on, which may make it useful to use towards the climax of our own trailer.



The melodic motif heard at the beginning of the piece is based loosely on a minor triad, which sets quite a dark tone to the piece. The introduction of the drums could be used in our trailer to represent the violence in our plot.



The use of fast quaver rhythms almost immediately, coupled with the crescendo and addition of more instruments heard for the first 50 seconds of the music makes this section of the piece appear to be where the drama builds. We could use this part of the music after the exposition of our trailer, where the pace of the plot will begin to quicken.


The piece uses a lot of supernatural noises which create a sense of foreboding. It is also atonal, so there is no sense of the music settling or being defined by key which is both disorientating and disconcerting for the listener. Although it is unclear where, having this somewhere in our trailer would help to establish the horror genre.



The vocal part of this piece sounds quite hymn-like, which is an aural representation of the religious aspects of our plot. The use of semitones in the melody helps to establish the minor key, and the build from a solo to choral vocal part also helps to build the tension created by dissonance via suspensions in the accompanying choir part.


The lyrics "Darkness is coming" represent the genre of horror well because darkness is often used to show the presence of evil. The choir arrangement of this piece adds to the religious representations that we need to put in our trailer.