The Science Of Scary: 10 Reasons Why You Love Being Scared
8. Why Is Scary Music, Er, Scary?
Screams are one thing, but the thing that really makes a scary movie utterly terrifying is a good score.
Composing the perfect scary music is a science as well as an art and has a surprising amount to do with the yellow-bellied marmot.
How's that for a twist?
Daniel Blumstein, an expert on animal distress calls, found that baby yellow-bellied marmots would scream when they were being caught. We have covered why these screams, classed as "non-linear chaotic noise" in the science world, are frightening, but Blumstein wondered whether this could also be behind the scariest scores.
In a study he found that people found music with more non-linear chaotic characteristics more frightening. He also found that the music was more likely to be disturbing if it went up in pitch as opposed to down, something that he was able to link to his expertise in animal calls, as the baby marmot's scream gets higher the more frightened it is.
Basically, the reason why the Jaws soundtrack is a work of genius is because it awakens the Mama Marmot in us all.