John Carpenter
Simple and Effective: The Work of a Great Carpenter
Hollywood has a long history of great soundtracks that become as famous as the movies themselves, from the simple two-note motif from Jaws to Prince’s musical masterwork, Purple Rain. The horror genre has also had its share of great musical moments, with one of the most famous and fear-inducing being John Carpenter’s music from 1978’s Halloween.
Fear Can Be Simple
When looking at the Halloween theme (henceforth abbreviated to “TTH”), we need to consider the music that influenced Carpenter’s compositional approach. Broadly, he named Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann as two influences on his film music. Morricone is best known for the music of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood, and for using more untraditional instruments in orchestral scores (electric guitars, harmonicas, etc.).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjjDOdaFZg0
Bernard Herrmann is one of the great film composers of all time, best known for scoring many Alfred Hitchcock films, including the famous themes from Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAGSdAxZlw0
Herrmann wrote short, simple motifs that conveyed fear or dread. In Vertigo, he used a series of arpeggios to represent the main character’s fear of heights, while the famous repeated, stacked notes imitated the stabbing in Psycho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5_pmtj7dvc
In writing the TTH, as well as the rest of the movie’s score, two other influences are apparent. First, we hear music from 1973’s The Exorcist, with its famous use of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6jIvKiYOs
We hear a high piano playing a repeated ostinato that suits the film’s dark themes. We also hear odd time signatures, with the main phrase alternating between 7/8 and 4/4 (or 8/8, for simplicity).
Another sonic influence on Carpenter’s work is the soundtrack to the 1977 Italian horror film Suspiria, written by the band Goblin. The soundtrack itself can add such a sense of tension with its sparseness: “what impressed me was the quality of the soundtrack from Suspiria...[was] its absolute simplicity, but its effectiveness; in other words, had it been more complicated, had it been the John Williams Mickey Mouse kind of score that you hear all the time today, that wouldn't have been half as scary.” (Source: YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUBqxsiJ-s
Like “Tubular Bells,” the soundtrack's main theme features a high, melodic, rhythmic ostinato that plays well against the ghostly vocals and instrumentation. Very sparse, but also very effective.
These notions of simplicity formed the foundation of Carpenter’s approach to the score, along with his own limitations: “It has to be [simple] because I’m playing it. I have minimal chops as a musician.” (Source: Rolling Stone) He may not have been the best musician in the room, but he knew how to take what he could do and turn it into something scary.
Simplicity is a powerful tool, but it isn’t the only one.
Time as a Stressor
One distinctive aspect of the TTH is Carpenter’s use of 5/4 time. When he was 13, Carpenter’s father, University of Southern California Music Professor Howard Carpenter, famously taught him how to count in 5/4 time on a set of bongos. He described the pattern as two groupings of three, followed by two groupings of two.
If we use the Gamala Taki concept we discussed in a previous blog post on breaking down odd time signatures, the TTH pattern, played as eighth notes, would sound like “Gamala-Gamala-Taki-Taki,” or “123, 123, 12, 12,” for a total of ten eighth notes.
Much like the alternating times in “Tubular Bells,” this repeated rhythmic ostinato was one of the tools that Carpenter used to create tension: “It was simple, repetitive and...causes tension in the audience. They're waiting for something to change...It puts you in a little bit of discomfort emotionally. Why is this not evolving and changing? It's repeating over and over and over again.” (Source: npr.org)
Relentless Melody and Harmony
Beyond the rhythmic ostinato, the melody in TTH is just as relentless. It's based on two intervals: a perfect fifth and a minor sixth. The piece itself does have some stable tonal centres. While the melody and accompanying bass pattern sit well in a particular key (all minor keys in this case), the jarring comes from the chromatic transpositions. Here is a breakdown of the piece for our look at the harmonic things happening:
Bar 1 of the example presents the main theme in F# minor, with the melodic ostinato creating a melody using perfect fifth and minor sixth intervals. This continues until bar 5, where the chromatic transposition shifts down a semitone. This pattern of semitone descent continues (though each phrase is repeated twice) until bar 11.
What also adds to the jarring nature is our expectation through decades of listening to Western tonal music. If we follow the bass line, which goes from F# (the tonic) in bar 3 to A (the minor third) in bar 4, we expect to hear a B, the perfect fourth in F# minor, which is a “stable” and “predictable” way to go in bar 5.
What Carpenter does subverts some expectations. In bar 5, the melody and bass move to the new key of F minor, chromatically down one semitone. The bass note (Bb) is the perfect fourth in the new key, but to our ears, it only moves up a semitone, sending our ears and brains into a loop and adding more subconscious tension.
Carpenter continues this pattern of semitone descent and rise until bar 11, finally dropping a major third and settling on B minor for the final phrases of the piece, staying completely diatonic in that key and giving our ears a sense of relief before doing it all over again!
The Final Curtain
Through odd times, tense harmonic moves, and a simplicity born of limitation, Carpenter’s theme to Halloween is a masterwork of soundtrack work. The fact that it stays with you long after the movie ends is further proof of its effectiveness. The next time you watch the film, pay attention to how the music makes you feel; you may be in the sonic clutches of a master.
Just don’t turn around.
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Kevin Daoust is a guitarist, guitar educator and writer based in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. When he's not tracking guitars for artists around the world or writing music-related articles online, he can be seen on stage with Accordion-Funk legends Hey, Wow; the acoustic duo Chanté et Kev; rock n’ rollers Travelling South; and as a hired-gun guitarist across Quebec and Ontario. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Guitar Performance from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
