This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

People who make horror movies know that if you want to scare someone, use scary music.

And when we want to explore the design of music, we call Rishikash Hurway, from the podcast Song Exploder.

So here are two fundamental ways to make something sound scary, according to evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein.

The first way is to use lots of screechy irregular tones.

Well, the animals, when they're scared, are blowing a lot of air across their vocal

cords or across their serings if they're a bird.

And the sounds of screams are something that is

arousing and makes people feel negative.

It's biological.

Your lizard brain hears Bernard Herman's knife stabbing music and psycho and says,

Something terrible is happening right now.

The second way sounds can make you feel uneasy is to go the other way make really low grumbling sounds with lots of bass

Another biological cube that might lead to fear and anxiety is hearing low frequencies.

The lowest frequency a species can produce

is a function of its body size.

So low frequency probably should scare you.

It might mean that something big is around mix those

both together and you're on your way to creating classic scary music for scary

movies But horror movies aren't just meant to be horrifying. They're also meant to be exciting and fun, so it's sometimes nice to have a driving beat. The music from the movie Halloween by a composer John Carpenter will always creep me me out and also get me kind of excited.

In terms of horror movies, I certainly know that I respond to sound and horror movies in ways that are complex.

You know, junk Hop into those soundtracks are, you know, good example,

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