Halloween Theme Song Download [NEW]

Bach could not have thought that his nearly 9-minute organ piece would become so strongly associated with haunted houses and sinister machinations. As a musicologist whose current research is focused on the musical representation of mystery, I see the story of this song as a classic example of how the meaning, use and purpose of music can change over time.

Then, the music is just simple. The theme is mostly three pitches that he repeats several times, and then he shifts it all down a half step. He's cycling through patterns and efficiently reusing musical ideas.

Halloween Theme Song Download

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In 1978, John Carpenter wrote, directed, and scored the film Halloween. It was made on a $300,000 budget, and ended up grossing over $70 million, making it one of the most successful independent movies ever released. The main theme to the film became one of the most iconic pieces of cinematic music ever made. Halloween became a franchise with 10 more Halloween films since the original. In 2018 a new Halloween film was released, directed by David Gordon Green. And for the first time since the first film, John Carpenter composed the score. That included remaking his theme song for the new film, this time with the help of his son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies. In this episode, the three of them break down how they did it.

Halloween season means a whole host of horrifyingly fun gatherings, all of which need a mood-setting soundtrack of best Halloween songs to really lean into the vibe. As you ready your costumes for this year's festivities, you need a great stockpile of hits to make the atmosphere as haunting as possible.

In short: no Halloween party or hangout is complete without a steady stream of scary tunes playing in the background. If you're looking for the best Halloween songs to embrace a spooky mood, look no further. We've gathered up 101 of the most iconic songs, ranging from classics like "Monster Mash" and "Ghostbusters" to modern hits like Billie Eilish's "bury a friend" or Beyonc's "Haunted." Are you a thudding beats, haunted house kind of Halloween auteur? A campy Halloween hitmaster? Someone who just really likes ghoulish ghost noises? Whatever your poison, we have a song for you.

Last December, Vox published a video on Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," analyzing just what makes the song sound so Christmassy. The video points to a specific chord used in "All I Want For Christmas Is You," the half-diminished (also known as minor 7 flat 5) built on the song's second scale degree. Vox explains that the same chord is used in various classic Christmas songs such as "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and argues that it is the "secret sauce" that can make a Christmas song sound like Christmas.

While I found the video a tad click bait-y, and am not sure that you can boil down an entire genre to one chord, I was intrigued by its premise; uncovering what about the music itself can evoke a certain holiday. Sleigh bells and lyrical references to presents under the tree aside, what musical qualities evoke the spirit of Christmas? Inspired by this notion, I attempted to tackle the same question of Halloween: What musical qualities make a song a "Halloween song"?

Before I could delve into what makes a Halloween song sound Halloween-y, I first had to ask, What even is a "Halloween song"? I defined Halloween music as songs that are popular on or leading up to Halloween; the type of songs that would make it on Spotify's "Ultimate Halloween" playlist, or the tunes you would spin at a Halloween party. These songs don't have to be explicitly written about Halloween, they just have to be popular during that spooky time of year.

I used two main sources of data to identify popular Halloween music. My first data source was Billboard's lists of top Halloween songs from the past five years. These lists use a formula based on digital sales, radio airplay, and streaming, to determine which Halloween songs are most popular around the holiday each year.

To no surprise, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" snagged the number one spot for all five Billboard lists. Other popular songs included the novelty Halloween classic "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers, soundtrack titles like Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" and The Nightmare Before Christmas' "This Is Halloween," rock anthems including AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" and Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," as well as spooky-themed pop songs like "Demons" by Imagine Dragons and the Eminem/Rihanna collaboration, "Monster."

While the data provided a starting point, it didn't give me any clear consensus on what makes a song a Halloween song. The most popular Halloween songs as reported by Billboard and Spotify looked like a smorgasborg of musical genres and eras. Where did all of this music come from, and what classifies it as Halloween-appropriate? In search of answers, I dug into the history of Halloween and its musical trends.

Moving into the 20th century, one genre notorious for its connotations with evil spirits is the blues. Various factors contributed to the blues' popular association with the devil, including the genre's secular and often sexual lyrics, as well as the its melancholy themes reflecting the lived experiences of racial oppression. With songs like "Cross Road Blues" and "Me and the Devil Blues," Robert Johnson was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical talent. Johnson was part of the legacy of Delta blues musicians, artists from the South, whose music laid the groundwork for rock and roll.

The dissonance of the blue note, plus the "unholy" themes of blues music earned it the nickname, "the devil's music," and various popular Halloween songs like Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 "I Put a Spell on You" come out of this blues legacy.

While spooky themes had been brewing in popular music for centuries, it wasn't until the 1950s and '60s that the U.S. saw a fad for Halloween-specific songs. "Starting somewhere in the mid to late '50s, and running through a good chunk of the '60s, every single band out there seemed like they had to have at least one Halloween-ish novelty song in their catalog," said The Current's resident Halloween aficionado, Brian Oake.

The majority of these songs were from doo-wop groups, like the Verdicts, who released the 1961 song "Mummy's Ball." Other Halloween novelty songs from this era include the Hollywood Flames' "Frankenstein's Den" (1958) and of course, Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers' "Monster Mash" (1962). These songs all feature Halloween-related subject matter, but in terms of their musical characteristics, are indistinguishable from other non-Halloween-related doo-wop songs.

According to Oake, these bands released Halloween songs in hopes of landing sought-after radio play in an era where radio was one of the only ways for artists to reach large audiences. Maybe the singles' straightforward doo-wop sound attempted to appease fans of the genre, while banking on the spooky lyrics to garner radio attention around Halloween.

Although it is the most popular contemporary Halloween song, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" doesn't include many examples of dissonance. However, the end of the intro features a particularly crunchy chord, a fully diminished 7th, which includes a tritone between the notes C# and G (occurs at 0:34 in the clip).

This tritone creates tension, keeping the listener on the edge of their seat to hear what chord will come next. However, the following chord releases that tension, and the rest of the song is fairly consonant.

Over the years, certain musical instruments have gained a spooky reputation. A large reason for associations of certain instruments with scary themes comes from film soundtracks. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" was used in various silent films in the 1920's, and in 1931 was featured in the opening credits to the 1932 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, cementing the song's association with scaring audiences.

One technique used to create suspense in music is the repetition of a musical phrase. This repetition is called ostinato. One famous example of ostinato is the two repeated notes in the theme of Jaws.

What did I learn out of this extensive dive into Halloween music? Did I find the secret musical element that can make a song sound like Halloween? Not quite. As I realized, Halloween music is a somewhat ambiguous category, for several reasons.

Although there are songs associated with Halloween, the holiday's musical canon (or that of any other holiday) doesn't come close to the plethora of songs that surrounds Christmas. Maybe no other holiday is central enough to Western culture to garner that many thematic songs, or maybe Halloween is just too nebulous a holiday to have a well-defined genre of music surrounding it.

Even if Halloween is centered around themes of fright, folklore, and evil spirits, the concept of fear can be hard to pin down. What we perceive as scary is largely dependent on our culture. During the Renaissance, the Church told audiences to fear unstable intervals. In the 1960's Psycho frightened its listeners with the shrill stabs of violins.

Maybe it is impossible to have a concrete and well-defined genre of Halloween songs, because as sounds age, they lose their fright-factor. If the unknown frightens us while the familiar makes us nostalgic or at ease, then music aiming to frighten us has to be constantly evolving to capture our attention.

This timeless theme from the "Halloween" franchise is one of the creepiest tunes ever written. This accessible arrangement maintains all of the eerie feeling of the original while staying in 4/4. Violin 1 includes optional third position. Excellent for teaching chromaticism and reinforcing multiple fingering patterns. Optional piano and percussion are included.

Halloween Theme (Halloween) is a song by John Carpenter.Use your computer keyboard to play Halloween Theme (Halloween) music sheet on Virtual Piano.This is an Intermediate song and requires a lot of practice to play well.The recommended time to play this music sheet is 03:00, as verified by Virtual Piano legend,Mark Chaimbers.The song Halloween Theme (Halloween) is classified in the genre ofSongs From Movieson Virtual Piano.You can also find other similar songs usingHorror. e24fc04721