When writing music with a darker, more mysterious undertone, consider shifting your focus from traditional chord progressions to chordal intervals. This will allow you to break free from diatonic tonalities which can evoke a sense of darkness.
When you’re experimenting with chords and notes that lie outside the primary scale or key can can easily create a sense of unease. Diminished, augmented, and chromatic chords can add a haunting quality to your compositions.
To write dark music, don’t overlook standard major chords. Minor chords might be the most natural starting point, but the contrast of major chords can be very effective in making something feel haunting and narratively out-of-place.
This article explores techniques to enhance chord progressions using specific intervals that contribute to a darker, more eerie atmosphere. We'll delve into the flat five, chromatic mediants, chord extensions, and other strategies for achieving a haunting sound.
Dark chord progressions are not always about using “dark minor chords”. Creativity and context play a crucial role in creating a sense of darkness. Major chords, when used in contrast to darker harmonies, can evoke a haunting and unsettling atmosphere.
Think of all the horror movie tropes that combine innocence with something dark to make scary. A child’s music box is always playing in a haunted house. The sound of a swing from a playground at night is terrifying. Imagine a baby’s laughter in your house at night… when you don’t have a baby.
Take the Music Box for example. It's a child's toy and might evoke a sense of nostalgia. Place that in a large room and add some strings and a bassoon in the background and suddenly you’re in a horror movie.
The melody on the music box is in C major, which isn’t exactly known for its dark undertones. The point is that timber matters too when making something scary. It’s not only about the exact notes or chords.
When you hire a session musician they can help you create that feeling of unease by using guitar string noise or feedback, scraping cymbals, or other types of eerie sounds from violins or cello.
Let’s dive into how you can create your own scary and haunting chord progressions.
A simple trick to make something instantly feel dark is to alternate between a major and minor chord with the same root.
Here’s an example of how something so simple can sound in the context of a song:
While this works great as a standalone interval, like in an intro, it works great in the middle of a chord progression to really emphasize the minor chord. We’ll return to this in the section about augmented chords.
The Game of Thrones theme uses this trick, but in the opposite direction. It goes from minor to major and it creates a lift and adds some energy.
When you augment the fourth, or flatten the 5th, you play a tritone. The interval of I - b5 is particularly ominous and evil sounding. In fact, according to myth, the tritone was banned in the middle ages by the catholic church because it was known as the devil’s interval - Diabolus in Musica (or mi contra fa).
The tritone is particularly common in metal music.
Introducing the tritone unexpectedly in a melodic line is a great way to disrupt the established harmonic and diatonic flow in your music which can add a sense of unease and tension-filled dissonance.
Using tritones as passchord notes or chords is also a good way of adding ambiguity to the music and a subtle sense of darkness that doesn't overwhelm the overall composition.
The tritone performed by specific instruments, or combination of instruments for a dark timbre, can really evoke a sense of darkness in your music. Low strings, distorted guitars or erie synthesizers can really enhance the effect of the tritone.
Any time you move away from diatonic notes you explore something unexpected which is a great tool for creating suspense. Growing up with western music, our ears and brains can predict diatonic melodies, shapes and patterns pretty well.
Chromatic intervals can introduce a sense of unease and disorientation. Even a subtle deviation from the expected can create a dark and unsettling atmosphere. Imagine a slightly out-of-tune piano and how unsettling that can feel. Playing chromatic intervals is a powerful tool for subverting expectations and creating a sense of unease.
Film music, in particular the darker scores, tend to be full of chromatic intervals to add suspense.
Here are a few examples of music that uses chromatic intervals that make the music sound more haunting.
Below we’ll look at how you can incorporate chromatic intervals in chord progressions using augmented chords and chord extensions.
This is not necessarily a dark chord progression in the sense of “evil”, but it’s one with a lot of tension that toys with the listeners expectations. We’ll start on a major chord and chromatically move the top note upwards. Each step builds and adds tension with hints of resolution at times.
If we’re in A Major and move the fifth up chromatically we get A - A+ - A6 - A7.
This is progression based on major tonalities. The use of the augmented chord, major with a raised fifth, adds to the continuously increasing tension.
Next we’ll extend this chord progression and hear what a strong impact a minor chord can have after staying on major for some time.
This particular chord progression with ascending minor second intervals has been used in several popular songs. Below are examples of this exact progression, but in different key signatures.
This chord sequence subverts expectations by building tension within a single chord and tonality. Eventually, it resolves to a subdominant chord, which is bright and contrasting to the tonic. It quickly transitions into the minor submediant which feels particularly dark compared to the major tonality we’ve been in up until this point.
Chromatic mediants are a powerful tool for creating a sense of darkness and mystery. Danny Elfman is a master of this technique. These intervals effectively disrupt diatonic tonalities, creating a sense of unease and intrigue.
The mediant is the third scale degree, either a major or minor third above or below the tonic. The submediant, as its name suggests, is a third below the root.
Here’s how a simple I - biii chromatic mediant can sound like in the key of C major:
Keep in mind that it’s only a chromatic mediant if the mediant you arrive at contains at least one note that’s not diatonic. In the key of C major and you play a standard I - iii you end up playing E minor, which is the diatonic mediant. E major, however, contains G#, which makes I - III a chromatic mediant. And, per the example above, we went to the biii which is Eb, a chromatic chord in C major.
In total there are eight mediant chord intervals to choose from; six of them are chromatic. Here are the mediants in C Major:
Here’s the I - bvi - I - biii progression using both the mediant and submediant.
In C major the chords are C - Abm - C - Ebm.
Alternating between tonic and chromatic mediants is a good way of building tension.
Below is another example of simply going between the tonic, mediant and submediant to create a haunting and eerie chord progression.
If you ask one of our keys players to play this in arpeggios and your next song will take place in a haunted house.
Continuously raising chords by a minor third is a powerful technique for creating a sense of unease, suspense, and darkness in your music. This way you disrupt the tonal center, which can disorient the listener and evoke unsettling emotions.
Key features of this technique:
For example, if you’re in D minor and go in intervals of minor thirds you get the following chord progression:
Dm - Fm - Abm - Bm
Another dark chord progression is to take each chord tone from your tonic and play each note as a minor chord in succession. Starting on C minor, you can get these chord progressions.
Here are two examples of this haunting chord progression in C minor.
Playing a performance in reverse can instantly create a sense of creepiness. A simple technique is to start with your chord progression at the end and play it backward. Then, reverse the audio so the chords play in the correct order. This manipulation creates an eerie effect, as chords seem to fade in rather than fade out, creating a sweeping and unsettling sound.
Minor seconds are the smallest interval available in western music tradition. This small interval works really well to portray something dark, mysterious or outright evil. Howard Shore captures the history and mysticism of the One Ring with the help of a minor second interval.
The Jaws theme is perhaps the most famous minor second repetition in cinematic history.
Pitch bends can be used to create a sense of disorientation. This can be particularly effective in creating a dark and unsettling atmosphere. The "Joker’s theme" in “The Dark Knight” is a prime example, featuring slowly rising high strings that create a dissonant and unsettling noise. You can also apply pitch bends to melodies to create a slightly out-of-tune effect, adding to the overall unsettling vibe.
Defy expectations by leaving your musical phrases incomplete. In western music tradition, we’re conditioned to expect resolutions on the dominant or tonic, so disrupting this expectation can create a sense of unease for the listener.
This technique can keep the audience on edge, contributing to a darker and more unsettling musical atmosphere.
For a quick and easy way to create a creepy vibe, try playing random minor chords. You don't need to worry about complex musical theory like chromatic mediants. The combination of unrelated minor chords can be surprisingly effective.
Complement the random minor chords with a basic melodic motif. The "Halloween theme" demonstrates how this approach can create a creepy atmosphere.
Frequent key changes can disrupt the listener's sense of familiarity, which can cause a sense of instability which can add to a haunting atmosphere. Danny Elfman’s “This is Halloween” is a creative example of constant key changes and switching tonalities that makes the song feel creepy.
The casual listener won’t “detect” the key changes, but it certainly makes the song more difficult to predict.
Share your unique musical vision with our talented team of musicians and producers. During string recording sessions, you'll have the opportunity to provide specific instructions, such as emphasizing certain notes or playing techniques, to achieve a darker tonal quality.
Take a look at this video of Musiversal cellist Daniel Chouinard bringing a halloween-themed track to life.
Add depth to your tracks and hire a keyboardist to record subtle, slightly detuned synth parts that provide harmonic richness, cohesion and eeriness.
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