dead score

[7734]

ever since watching Dawn of the Dead so stoned and so many years ago, in that darkened living room facing a darkened alley, I have just been drooling over Goblin's italian proggish rock title track, L'alba dei Morti Viventi. I always thought eeire electrified guitars made good horror movie scores, and one of the great parts of Yawn04 was the Sickness at the end (all zombie movies should have a superheavy closing theme!). But I gather many of you don't like the rockity roll. So, as potential filmmakers, how would you score your zombie masterpiece? and how does it compare to what you would like to hear in that darkened room or theatre as a fan?

[Mutineer]

I concur My iPOD is filled with scores from modern (and not so modern) film from Godfather and Blade Runner to Jaws and Retrun of the Living Dead but you can be sure I have my little section of Goblin (Suspira, Dawn ...)

[Danny]

id probably try something a bit different myself, course you cant beat a bit o slow guitar but id like to try and fit some classical in somewere or something, i aint a fan of that kind of music but it does go well in some areas.

[capncnut]

You cant beat atmospherics and (in my opinion) that is best achieved via a solo instrument. An acoustic guitar or piano can be very effective. The music to the videogame/movie Silent Hill is a fantastic example of this. One day, I was folding up a sofa bed and the 'twang' of the metal spring when tapped lightly sounded disturbing. Immediately I thought of a zombie attack sequence with just that noise being tapped every few seconds. Damn effective.

[Danny]

yeah somewere between resident evil 3 and silent hill 2 is perfect.

[Cereval]

Atmosphere and that good 'ol fashioned 70s and 80s sensibility from the likes of John Carpenter and Zombi. My CTD tracks tended to be more melodic and moody. While my Broken Road tracks where straight up John Harrison. On the contrary, there's sickly ambient stuff like what Deadman_Deluxe does. I think if it lends well to the imagery, then it is appropriate.

[MinionZombie]

For IAZM2 it's gonna be a slice of atmospheric, get some keyboardyness in there somewhere, there's gonna be guitars - I'm going for a gritty sound for that slice. It's hard to describe, but it's gonna suit the material - and no, it's none of that death metal or wannabe-death-metal crap like at the end of Yawn04, f*ck that sh*t. My aural style is to just keep adding layers and layers and layers of effects to warp sounds into something completely weird and creepy, yet on a simple plane of existence (I'm not exactly the musical type, ha!) Not explaining myself well here ... ach, you'll all see when IAZM2 comes out.

[coma]

I also love John Carpenter and Goblin. Escape from NY is great. My prefernce is for 70s proto electronic scores. When I score I mix Electronic Moogy stuff, all varieties of Guitars, Piano, strings and orchestral stuff. You can use anything including found sounds like the bedspring (which sounds like its pretty cool) Often a simplistic Kick drum and bass throb with a dark simple melody on top is really effective. Just look at the tons of horror films in the 70s and early 80s that used it. It never really turned into a cliche because the scores were usually really different.