Rent a popular horror movie and you will instantly realize music has the power to create the feeling of dread, insecurity and hopelessness. It has to do with the mind’s need to complete patterns …When music is introduced which does not follow a “natural” harmonic pattern, the music literally throws the mind into a state of panic …Especially if the listener has little or no previous experience with that type of music.

The discordant style of music featured in a typical horror movie can be lumped under a “stylistic umbrella” called “atonal music”. This is music that does not follow a “natural” harmonic pattern …Like the music of Mozart which follows the natural harmonics of the 12 tone music system. All Western music is based on just 12 notes…

What is a natural harmonic?

When two different tones are heard at the same time one of two things takes place in your mind…The anticipation of completion or the feeling of completion. Believe it or not, Western cultural music is comprised of these two things going on …Every melody line and chord progression is based upon this simple principle.

On the other hand, “world music” tends to be based on the continuous drone and/or a re-occurring rhythm …Which is a single note or group of notes that create the feeling of completion, along with a repetitive hypnotic beat.

Discordant or atonal music is the kind of music that leaves you hanging…

Waiting for the next step of the musical pattern which never comes …This translates into a feeling of confusion because your mind expects this next step …Couple this feeling with a visual experience associating the discordant musical segment with the fear, uncertainty and doubt (which is the hallmark of any good horror flick) and you have successfully created the feeling that your “worst fear” is about to happen.

Popular music has for the most part always employed the anticipation, completion technique …In other words, you didn’t feel like something was missing or you were left hanging when the song was over. Whatever the song was, it felt like a completed story had taken place by the time the song finished …This was pretty much the rule of thumb for pop music until recently…

In the last few years popular music become inundated with a peculiar mix of what I call “dread and drone” music …A mix of atonal elements with a re-occurring rhythm presented as a drone based type of groove. What’s interesting about this is that the music generates and supports a feeling of dread and hopelessness using the rhythm and drone elements normally associated with world music …Then a staccato rhythmic verbal barrage (which acts as the visuals in a horror flick) is thrown in to further cement the feeling of dread and hopelessness…

Locking in dread and hopelessness is not a bad thing as long as you complete the process by uplifting the listener to hope and safety …My concern is that we have a generation of individuals who dwell in the “anger zone” and have no way to constructively climb out of that place. The zone has become it’s own lifestyle rather than a passing phase of life which those of us who have evolved from adolescence to adulthood are all too familiar with.

Exploiting the natural fear, uncertainty and doubt which comes with adolescence has been the hallmark of pop music for a long time …Keeping people in a suspended state of personal development and calling it a lifestyle is a relatively new and cynical departure …And no longer serves as a healthy venting of the emotional confusion which is brought on by young persons’ dealing with the realities of life.

The beauty of the “blues” for example, is that it focuses on the hopelessness of a situation while simultaneously lifting you into a joyful resolution …Which gives “blues” music its uncanny healing properties.

Today’s urban pop culture is failing it’s audience by not providing a way out of the dread and hopelessness it continues to serve up. It is pure exploitation to keep an audience stuck in a stage of evolution where you actively prevent the realization that an individual does indeed have the power to change his or her life and live one’s dreams.

Hey, I was raised on the Detroit side of 8 Mile Road. You could see Pershing High School from the front of my house. I understand urban music only too well. I was once part of the culture that created it.

-Bob Baran