By Paulo Camacho
Halloween season may be over, but that doesn’t mean many don’t want to hold onto that feeling. What better way to do so than with a little mood music? That means channelling the spirit of the macabre, the eerie, and the desolate. And nothing sets the mood for the dark and brooding like the right kind of music.
You know the kind: the aggressively chilling 5/4 meter of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” theme; the wickedly perfect mix of grunge metal and horror in Rob Zombie’s “Dragula”; the iconic guitar riff (and cowbell) that defines Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper”; the foreboding synthesizer hums from the theme to “Nightmare on Elm Street”.
Or the haunting melodies behind … Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting”?
Wait, what?
If you know your 80s music, you probably know that the latter is actually a love song that Marx wrote for his wife, who was in South Africa at the time. How can a touching love ballad be considered a “Halloween song” in the slightest?
Musically, the answer is actually quite simple: change the key of the song, from major to minor:
That was an arrangement by singer/songwriter and YouTuber Chase Holfelder — one that, incidentally enough, received a seal of approval from Richard Marx, himself. Many of the more viral videos he’s made over the past couple years has been in his “Major to Minor” series — taking popular songs that are played with a major key, and altering the scale from which it is played, into a minor key.
Musically, it’s a subtle tool that can completely change the mood of any particular piece of music. Holfelder exploits this distinction to put a darker spin on traditional songs. In the above video, for example, the song sounds less like an ode to a long-separated lover, and more like an unwanted message from a crazed stalker, straight out of a horror movie.
Another great example is Holfelder’s take on “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. While, admittedly (from Sting’s lips to our ears), the song doesn’t have bright and happy origins — the artist said that the song is about the obsession over a lost lover, and the jealousy and surveillance to follow — it is still played on a surprisingly upbeat, major tone — so much so, that people have used the song for weddings and anniversaries.
Holfelder, interestingly enough, makes the song even creepier than the original — not only by transposing the song into a minor key, but by musically reinterpreting the song into a theme from a 90s supernatural horror flick:
So, what is it about this major-key/minor-key phenomenon that resonates so universally with many people, musically? The answer, in this case, isn’t quite so simple — it has to do with cultural conditioning, rather than any natural inclination for musical sound. After all, musicians and music majors alike can identify examples of happy-sounding minor-key music, or sad-sounding major-key music. Take “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor for the former, and “Yesterday by The Beatles for the latter, for example.
But, for the most part, we are used to identify major keys with more happy, uplifting music, while we identify minor keys with more somber, sometimes dread-inducing music. That subliminal response — coupled with the nostalgia that is connected to much of the recognizable popular music we are used to — plays into our natural dissonance when we hear it in a different key. That’s part of the beauty of Holfelder’s videos — the change in response to a song we are familiar with.
Take “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper, for example. Many are familiar with the original, springing up memories of classic 1980s pop — a colorful, almost inconsequential song about, well, the carefree lifestyle teenage girls want to live. Then, there’s Holfelder’s minor key version:
Not only does the tone of the song change, but, subliminally, so does its message: “wanting to have fun”, as one could imagine, takes on a more seedy, nefarious meaning.
Holfelder’s videos are a testament to the power of music to make you feel completely different things, depending on almost inconsequential changes. In this case, he shows that even the most fun-loving, bubbly types of music can be just as dark as your typical horror music — all it takes is a simple key change.