What music is scary?

I understand that a standard response may be "DISSONANCE" or "ATONALITY" or "TRITONES AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH" but atonality and/or dissonance does not necessarily make music scary. How many people today would consider Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to be particularly scary or dark? Not many, I would think. In fact, the music is fairly light-hearted, at least in my opinion. I am not sure if particular scales, intervals, and tones are what scare people, ranging from person. Without a doubt this is highly subjective, but generally people - people who are not weird like me - tend to shy away from lower tempos and lower pitches. Higher tempos and pitches tend to predominately appear in pop songs, and happy Yoshi Island themes. For example, Koji Kondo's "Flower Garden" theme from the mentioned game is at the standard tempo of 120 bpm and it also features pleasing upbeat music. At the same time the Haunted Mansion theme from Super Mario 64, also by Kondo, is an upbeat track, but it is slightly lower in tone, and...therefore creepier? The theme also betrays our expectations for a haunted house - those types of themes tend to be slower - though we cannot simply assume that such a betrayal is scary.

From my observations, songs that are darker in sound are scarier than slower songs, but generally dark-sounding songs are also slow, hence my note about the Haunted Mansion theme. To provide another example, consider the "Laura Palmer" theme from Twin Peaks, which consists mainly of a synthesizer buried in the low register, playing slowly, but still making a clear melody; this piece is still scary to an extent, but the sense of melody gives it emotion to the reader, preventing it from simply being a bizarre, impossible-to-understand atonal mess. As the piano enters the piece seems less dark, transgressing that label and becoming emotional. A detectable melody, if not completely tonal, is comforting and gives a sense of connection with even very dark in sound pieces. This suggests a fairly universal standard for a "not-scary" piece.

Sad music is not the same as dark music, generally, unless visuals add to a sad feeling, generally. Music deep in the low register is generally not perceived as sad, rather it is seen as emotionless. A seeming wall of noise or lack of musical melody is the scariest aspect, not the low tempo or the low pitch. These are contributing factors generally, but not the primary reason.

Orchestration plays another role: the electric guitar and piano are seen as being less apt for scary music, simply disjunct music. Weirdness certainly plays a role in being scary, but synthesizer and strings seem to simply have the greatest capacity for making that kind of music. Percussion can also create an unsettling feel, yet the lack thereof is also unsettling.

On a final note, is "weird" equivalent to unsettling or scary? To me, eerie is not quite scary, and is rather weird in an elegant manner. Gyorgy Ligeti's piece is high pitched, but also slow, though I see people finding it scary due to the focus on singing in a substandard way; the bunching of notes and voices makes it all the more bizarre and hard to accept. Taking the piece apart and examining what makes it alien is hard, even though on the surface it is a very unique piece. I mean, Stanley Kubrick put it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but can we just use something that came out afterwards to explain the piece. Where a music is played can certainly add to its scariness, but the tracks that truly scare people are not simply situational. I think that music that is truly scary (in the eyes of the beholder, obviously) transgresses situation.

But I don't know everything. What do you guys think about this?

An Analysis of "Jesus Christ" by Brand New (incomplete)

The topic of religion – in particular Christianity – permeates the American society, dating back to the nation’s founding. At the same time, however, religiosity of Americans seems to have abated, and a societal norm of agnosticism and religious apathy seems to also have arisen. Modern popular music – defined as music charting on many of Billboard’s music charts, especially the Top 40s chart – reflects this trend, tending to not convey religious symbols and meanings. In 2006, against this backdrop, the song “Jesus Christ” by Brand New came out. Despite seeming like a country song, “Jesus Christ” made an impact with the alternative rock fanbase; it became the band’s most popular song and charted highly on the Alternative Songs chart, a haven for alternative music. The song breaks expectations through its unique and poignant lyrics and instrumentation, utilizing effective rhetorical devices in a sincere yet intimate fashion.

Brand New’s platform for this message is through their instrumentation and recorded music, an environment where instruments speak as loudly as lyrics in many cases. In a written document the tone comes from the words and sequence of words used, but in a song this element comes from the voice, the lyrics, and the instruments. In this song an intimate atmosphere pertinent to the lyrics is maintained through steady yet soft instrumentation. A lead guitar complements this atmosphere, holding firm a structure for the song’s music and lyrics. Though a good song often matches these two parts, “Jesus Christ” provides a close place for the scene to take place. Simultaneously the music remains dynamic, slowly then suddenly culminating in a display of passion as the singer raises his voice over the guitars. Jesse Lacey, the lead singer, has a vocal delivery style that presents the song’s narrator with strength and clarity. Four minutes into the track, the vocals fade out and the instruments repeat, returning the song to its beginning while suggesting a new meaning.

In “Jesus Christ” the narrator discusses his fear of death, in particular what comes after. Lacey sings, “And I will die all all alone./And when I arrive, I won't know anyone.” Death, to him, is a solitary act, but its aftermath is even more solitary and isolating: he is simultaneously paralyzed by fear and uplifted by talking with Jesus. Though some art has a definite goal of brainwashing, this particular piece exists to subjectively inform the audience of the character’s apprehension in the face of a saint-like figure. This purpose extends its influence past the mental barriers maintained by those who are less inclined to religion. Despite the religious name – a name that would likely sit well with country’s relatively religious fans – “Jesus Christ” is popular with alternative rock listeners, who tend to be younger and more agnostic. The alternative rock movement, which started in the 1980s with groups such as The Smiths, Pixies, and the Cure, is a recent development, mostly becoming popular with Generations X and Y. These generations seem to be considerably less religious than previous ones. In particular, during the Cold War the United States prided itself on being Christian and fighting the “godless” Soviet Union. The audience with which the song is primarily situated grew up in spite of a lack of religiosity. Alternative fans can be considered one aspect of the audience, but in the song the narrator is talking to Jesus in an intimate manner; the primary audience is the people who listen to the song, despite the seemingly closed-off title.

Ethos plays a small but significant role in the lyrics. Jesus Christ is an iconic figure, someone known and ever-present, so his credibility itself brings meaning to the piece. Brand New’s act of naming the song after Jesus gives it a meaning in terms of him; essentially his ethos in part carries the song. The narrator concedes, “Well Jesus Christ, I'm alone again./So what did you do those three days you were dead?” He admits his painful apprehensions – ones that are hard to express to someone who does not come across as credible – to Jesus Christ, the one who he thinks he can trust. The narrator confers a high degree of respect and inherent trust to Jesus, while denying his own ethos. Jesse Lacey, Brand New’s lead singer, sings, “I know you think that I'm someone you can trust/But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up.” This song manages to reverse expectations again by switching its focus to the narrator’s credibility; this examination reveals his emotional instability and indecisiveness in an indirect but concise and powerful way. Lacey utters, “I know you’ll come for the people like me,” ultimately reinstating the narrator’s ethos and bringing the song full circle; he fights his fears by looking to Jesus Christ for help. Ultimately though this song contains such a religious idea – accepting divine assistance – its rhetoric enables its appeal to many different types of people.

Academia has a self-important conduct to which it adheres that is not entirely applicable to this song. “Jesus Christ” was not written as something political, but instead something organic, and not necessarily rooted in the Logos that is prided in academic culture. Logic holds an important place in rhetoric, but this song works at a fundamental, psychological level that bypasses concrete logic. Applying many rules to determine why the song is effective becomes pointless after a while; “Jesus Christ” as a song works because of its capacity to talk directly to the listener. The narrator asks, ”Do you believe you're missing out/And everything good is happening somewhere else?“ This existentialist rut extends beyond the grasp of argumentation logic and requires a different approach entirely to analyze.