Halloween Blog: Sounds of Bones! Same Story, Different Accent
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! This blog post is all about the spookiest of sounds – the sound of bones.
I’ve always found this sound to be pretty amusing. We hear and recognize bones all the time in music, films and games; yet, I think it’s safe to say that most of us have never seen real skeletons, nor have we ever heard bones clack in the cartoonish way we are so used to. I certainly haven’t! Yet, we are able to easily associate bones with “bone sounds,” and many other image-filled sounds and objects for that matter, because of how often they are represented in the things we love.
While I am generally not one for spooky things and can almost always be found googling the endings of horror films part-way through to put myself at ease (yes, this is really the only way I can get through watching), some of my favorite music of all time features bone sounds, across completely different genres! I’ll share my top two picks, along with how they tell the story of bones in their unique musical “accents.”
Watercolor illustration by Hazal Mestci from our film “The Treasure Hunters”
I’ll start with a favorite bone-chilling piece of mine: Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a narrative-filled story about a young artist’s self-destructive plight over a beautiful woman, where the latter is represented by an “idée fixe”, or fixed idea and recurring musical melody. (Rebecca and I share a mutual love for this commitment to storytelling!)
Side note: listen to the idée fixe here if you’re interested —>
The epic five-movement symphony ends with a final movement, called “Dream of a Witches' Sabbath.” In this movement, the idée fixe is warped as the artist spirals into his own haunted burial, with ghosts and skeletons all around.
Ah, yes. We hear skeletons loud and clear in this piece, one of its novelties. This is what they sound like:
This 19th-century work lives on for tremendous storytelling, and this memorable moment is one of the most famous uses of a string technique called col legno battuto. To play col legno, the player strikes the strings with the back wood of the bow instead of the bow hair!
While many elements of this work create the ultimate Halloween-scape, like low, evil chants and soaring lines that hint at monsters in flight, this effect is super clever within the storytelling!
Meanwhile, let’s jump to 2017 to completely different artists: guitarists Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge.
Their Grammy-nominated album Mount Royal kicks off with a tune called “Bone Collector.” Now, if you’ve heard this tune before, you may realize it is not overtly spooky like Berlioz’s symphony (yes, we are straying away from Halloween for just a moment). Yet, the bone sounds in this tune, as the name suggests, are clear as day. To make this rhythmic bone-like pattern, Chris Eldridge picks at the strings towards the bridge of the guitar (as opposed to playing over the sound hole) to create a more pointed, “scrapey” sound best achieved on his acoustic guitar. The result is a drone that feels totally ominous - until Julian Lage enters with the major third above Chris’ note, making the general feel of this melody much more relaxed. This is a chill story of bones told through folk jazz. Same idea, yet so different from the former! Any ideas what the story in this one could be?
Where else have you heard BONES in music? And how else have they been represented? Maybe by percussive sounds, like woodblocks or a xylophone? Maybe there’s an entirely different way YOU would represent them if you had the chance! We’d love to know what you hear this Halloween.
Quick Links:
Listen to “Bone Collector” and other instrumental music in our curated Spotify playlist for discovering musical stories.
Celebrate Halloween with spooky, pirate-themed fun for the whole family in our musical storytelling film, The Treasure Hunters.
Misc. Audio Credits:
Idée-fixe de la Symphonie Fantastique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6eeOIXIPjY
Col legno moment from Symphonie Fantastique (recording of full movement): https://youtu.be/cao6WyF-61s?t=497
