![]() ![]() The songs on this list are chock-full of brooding melodies, eerie sound effects, or straight up creepy lyrics, so beware: you might want to grab a friend for your at-home listening party. For example, Rihanna's "Disturbia" is a staple on the airwaves whenever Halloween rolls around, though, seeing as she released the bop in June, she probably didn't intend for it to be a holiday anthem. Often, pop stars don't set out to make a Halloween-themed song, but add just enough darkness to make it pass for one. With the right music, any time spent with friends can be a howling good time. These pop songs for Halloween playlists will get the party started and are spooktastic from start to finish. Thankfully, I've got you covered on the perfect playlist to throw on while carving pumpkins, devouring candy, or hosting your next costume party. And that’s it, aside from a few ambient effects here and there added during the mix.Every holiday needs a perfect soundtrack, and while there are countless Christmas songs out there, quality Halloween bops are harder to find. The amp is a Marshall DSL-50, and the speaker cabinet is an AxeTrak isolated cab. I recorded this using a Buddy Blaze Sevenator seven-string prototype with a poplar body, maple neck and ebony fretboard, and Seymour Duncan Full Shred and ’59 humbuckers. The arpeggio in the second bar is an example of the kind of intervallic unease this scale can conjour. Just as each of the three intervals explained above has a specific spooky effect when played off against the root note, you’ll find all sorts of devilishly fun intervals buried within this scale. It may sound strangely atonal when played out of context, so let’s listen to it used to form the basis of a song. ![]() Then there’s a big leap from the G on the sixth string to the A# on the fifth, and another big leap from the B on the fifth string to the open D on the fourth. I call it… The Dragon Scale.Īs you can see, the first four notes of this scale are chromatically sequential – in other words, each of those notes is one fret away from the next one. So I’ve thrown these three intervals into the cauldron, along with a few gnats, a few newts and a couple of other notes to come up with my own deliciously eeeevil scale. You can mine an awful lot of sonic sludge by exploring the relationship between a root note and the fret directly to the east. More simply defined as “one fret higher than the bottom note,” the Minor Second has that ‘Jaws is lurking nearby’ feel, and it tends to add an urgent, fevered feel to a riff. ![]() It can sound pretty mean in the right context, and it works great in pentatonic blues licks as well as mega evil metal. You can hear this being walloped on “Fuel” by Metallica or the first chord of the main (only?) riff of Ministry’s “Just One Fix” (a riff which makes its way up to the Tritone for extra aggression). The Minor Third (three frets higher than the root note) has a powerful and slightly unsettling effect which sets itself up for a nice sonorous resolution when it goes back to the root note of the scale. You can hear this interval put to suitably devilish use in “Black Sabbath” and “Symptom Of The Universe” by Black Sabbath – it’s that ‘set your teeth on edge’ interval that clashes so very perfectly against the rest of the song. Legend has it that just by playing it you could summon Satan himself and therefore get excommunicated. Known as Diabolus In Musica or more boringly the Tritone, this is the terrifying interval was designated as dangerous in the 18th century. Now move the higher of the two notes back by one fret. Sounds nice, huh? Tonally neutral, powerful, straightforward. Let’s look at each of these morbid musical mindfreaks individually before combining them into one super-doomy scale… It’s that ghoulish time of year when a guitarist’s thoughts turn to such devilish delights as the tritone, the minor third and – gasp! – even the dreaded flat second! The horror! These demonic musical intervals can create an unsettling feeling in the listener, scare off household pets, open a gate to the land of the undead, and maybe even make a few shirtless dudes crowdsurf. ![]()
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