Why 'Psycho' soundtrack is frightening

[Maurice]

Daily Telegraph:



The soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is frightening because it mimics animal distress calls, claim scientists.



Researchers found that sound distortion and sudden changes in pitch and harmony, used for dramatic tension in films, mimic the alarm calls of marmots.



Researchers say animals' "non-linear vocal attributes" are used by soundtrack composers, such as the crash of drums or high-pitched strings in PSYCHO.



Prof Daniel Blumstein, who led the research at California University, said:

"Noise is associated with horror and fear. It taps into our primal fear which is shared with other mammals."

[Edward G]

And here's my thinking it was just those screeching violins!

[ShirlGirl]

Here's an interesting account:



Sound in Psycho

[Steve Crook]

name='Maurice']Daily Telegraph:



The soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is frightening because it mimics animal distress calls, claim scientists.



Researchers found that sound distortion and sudden changes in pitch and harmony, used for dramatic tension in films, mimic the alarm calls of marmots.



Researchers say animals' "non-linear vocal attributes" are used by soundtrack composers, such as the crash of drums or high-pitched strings in PSYCHO.



Prof Daniel Blumstein, who led the research at California University, said:

"Noise is associated with horror and fear. It taps into our primal fear which is shared with other mammals."

Why 'Daily Telegraph' is frightening



Because they'll print any old nonsense by someone with an academic title like Doctor or Professor without bothering to check which subject the author is really a specialist in.



Is Prof Blumstein an expert in film? In film music? Or even just in music in general? Or maybe he's an expert in psychology and the understanding of what makes people fearful.



No, none of those. He's an evolutionary ecologist! So this connection to the music in Psycho is completely outside his area of expertise and it may as well be a report from "some bloke I met down the pub"



Steve

[Mark O]

I like the Pyscho music myself, very dramatic, an eerie sounding soundtrack is that from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey, some of the of tracks can give you the shivers listening alone on a dark night, a feeling of 'Is there anyone there?'

[Santonix]

I think part of the success of this brilliant Bernard Hermann score was the exclusive use of strings throughout.

[Steve Crook]

name='Santonix']I think part of the success of this brilliant Bernard Hermann score was the exclusive use of strings throughout.

Interesting comparison here



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81qweiWqyTU]YouTube - Psycho - The Shower Scene With And Without Music[/ame]



Steve

[charliekane]

name='Steve Crook']Interesting comparison here



YouTube - Psycho - The Shower Scene With And Without Music



Steve

Particularly interesting as Hitchcock originally didn't want any music for that scene and it was Bernard Herrmann who went ahead and wrote and recorded it anyway, with Hitchcock finally accepting that he was wrong - in a totally reversed situation, Hitchcock wanted music for the crop-duster scene in North by Northwest but Herrmann told him it would work better without, by creating a sense of Cary Grant's isolation.

The score to Psycho is a gem, though - quite apart from the screeching violins mimicking the scremas and the stabbing of the knife, the rest of the score is fantastic - the urgent main theme, the melancholy and slightly morbid 'love' themes. Herrmann was a true genius in my opinion - listen to his scores for On Dangerous Ground, Vertigo, Jason and the Argonauts, The Ghost and Mrs Muir and, needless to say, Citizen Kane.

[vincenzo]

Herrmann's use of the screeching violins can also be heard a few years earlier in his equally excellent 7th Voyage Of Sinbad score.



Jaws and Alien are two other genuinely creepy film scores.

[zettel45]

I remember seeing a documentary (sorry, can't recall which one) where Herman described how he wrote the shower scene score. He wanted the most discordant sound possible, so he took a note, coupled it with the next semi-tone up and repeated the process until he had a huge chord made entirely of dissonance.



On a related subject, I was watching The Shining a while back and was struck by how many scenes the film has where nothing remotely frightening is happening, but Kubrick manages to make it seem tense by plastering discordant music all over it. Couldn't quite decide whether this was clever film-making or a cheap, lazy trick.

[Freddie Freeloader]

name='Steve Crook']



...any old nonsense by someone with an academic title like Doctor or Professor without bothering to check which subject the author is really a specialist in.



Is Prof Blumstein an expert in film? In film music? Or even just in music in general? Or maybe he's an expert in psychology and the understanding of what makes people fearful.



No, none of those. He's an evolutionary ecologist! So this connection to the music in Psycho is completely outside his area of expertise and it may as well be a report from "some bloke I met down the pub"

Hello Steve...



I'm disappointed to read your undermining of the Good Doctors theory based on his being an evolutionary ecologist.



For all I (or you) know the chap may have acres of expertise in the work of Bernard Herrmann and Brian Easdale.



I don't find his theory nonsense (or, for that matter,particularly original).



The atonal music-concrete of Herrmann's string clusters do approximate the sound that most humans and animals would express when confronted with horror and violence and imminent death.

I also hear the slow chords at the end of the scene as resembling the last slow gasps of the lungs as the breath of life leaves her body.



On the other hand, as if to prove Henry Mancini's view that anything fits anything,

I'd be equally spooked if the slaughter was accompanied by Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah..



Very Kubrick, no ?



Regards

Fred

[Steve Crook]

name='Freddie Freeloader']Hello Steve...



I'm disappointed to read your undermining of the Good Doctors theory based on his being an evolutionary ecologist.



For all I (or you) know the chap may have acres of expertise in the work of Bernard Herrmann and Brian Easdale.



I don't find his theory nonsense (or, for that matter,particularly original).



The atonal music-concrete of Herrmann's string clusters do approximate the sound that most humans and animals would express when confronted with horror and violence and imminent death.

I also hear the slow chords at the end of the scene as resembling the last slow gasps of the lungs as the breath of life leaves her body.



On the other hand, as if to prove Henry Mancini's view that anything fits anything,

I'd be equally spooked if the slaughter was accompanied by Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah..



Very Kubrick, no ?



Regards

Fred

He may have, but please don't partially and selectively quote me to distort the meaning of what I said. It was the Telegraph I accused of printing nonsense, not Prof Blumstein of spouting nonsense.



I wasn't undermining any theory. I specifically said that I didn't know what qualifications he had and the article didn't mention any. That's why it's only as valid as what someone down the pub heard someone say. Again, I'm talking about the article, not the Prof's theory.



If he does have any expertise then that should have been mentioned in the article. If he doesn't, then there's no point to the article



Steve

[Freddie Freeloader]

Steve

It was the Telegraph I accused of printing nonsense, not Prof Blumstein of spouting nonsense.

But the "nonsense" they printed is the "nonsense" of Prof Blumstein !



Here's the Telegraph article ...



Researchers say that the score for popular movies tap into our basic animalistic brain to evoke all kinds of feelings from sadness, to fear, to excitement.

They believe that "non-linear vocal attributes", the rasping and distortion of voices used by mammals in times of duress, are used by film soundtrack composers.



This technique included the overblowing of brass and wind instruments and the metallic rasp of a French horn when a hand is placed in the bell.

They also employed feedback loops from electric guitars and the crash and bang of drums and cymbals.

Professor Daniel Blumstein, the lead author at the University of California, compared a number of soundtracks from Hollywood blockbusters to the distress calls of marmots.

He found that the deliberate distortion of sound and sudden pitch and harmony changes at times of dramatic tension and mimicked the alarm calls given out by the marmots at times of duress.

"Noise is associated with horror and fear," said Prof Blumstein who reported his findings in Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"Abrupt frequency shifts are associated with sad dramatic scenes. Noise is associated with horror and fear. I would say it taps into our primal fear which is shared with other mammals and birds.

"It scares us, but it also scares other animals."







In response to you not undermining his theory...

having read your initial post numerous times, if the last few lines don't question the validity of the Prof's Pronouncements then I'm guilty of the most catastrophic mis-reading of any post I've ever read on this forum.



A profound irony considering my respect and affinity to (with certain very

obvious exceptions !) your way of thinking.*



Regards

Fred







*Don't be too alarmed by that expression of comradeship,Steve !

[HUGHJAMPTON]

Bird Gard PRO distress call sound demo.



He has got a point, to my ears, anyway.

[will.15]

Discordant harmony may be similar to animal distress calls. but that's not why we find it disturbing. It's because it's anti-melody, which we find unpleasant and combined properly with disturbing images will makes us jump, just as animals will react adversely to discordant sounds in their environment. That old line, "The rooster crowed and the sun came out. Therefore, the rooster made the sun came out." That's what the Professor is doing. The one on Gilligan's Island had more sense.

[Aaryk Noctivagus]

name='Maurice' date='26 May 2010 - 09:53 PM' timestamp='1274907224' post='431832']

The soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is frightening because it mimics animal distress calls, claim scientists.

I note that this is talking about the Murder Motif from 'Psycho' rather than the score as a whole. Herrmann was the master of unresolved hanging chord (as in 'Psycho')... leaving music unresolved produces an anxious and suspensful subconscious effect. Whilst the Murder Motif is perhaps the most well-known musical motif in cinema history, the whole 'Psycho' score is a masterclass in disturbing music - with its repetative unresolved broken chord.



As for the Murder Motif itself... I can see how it can be thought to mimic animal distress calls, however, to me, it is more like the tearing of a knife through a shower curtain... a ripping sound. Its combination with the earlier anxious music of the score is what makes it so frightening. In isolation, without the anxious music leading up to it, it loses some but not all of its power. Its an orchestral shock which is simply the climax of the disturbing first half of the score.



More interesting is a focus on the use of music during Marion's car drive to Bates Motel... that's what makes the score so frightening, that unresolving broken chord repeating over and over again anxiously.

[Marky B]

It is the best thing about the film .

Ta Ta

Marky B

[jaycad]

The scene in 'the woman in black' in which the lights go off in the nursery has a very similar soundtrack to the 'psycho' theme,they're both suggestive of panic and claustophobia and work so much better than the loud sudden bangs that seem popular in todays productions.