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Master Darkness & Tension in Music
Rating: 4.5 out of 5(123 ratings)
1,331 students

Master Darkness & Tension in Music

The Secret Power of Tension and Scary Atmosphere in Music Composition
Created byMikael Baggström
Last updated 9/2025
English

What you'll learn

  • My Best Guidelines, Practical Tips & Tricks on Dark Music Composition
  • The Sounds & Elements of Dark Music

Course content

4 sections • 20 lectures • 3h 13m total length

  • Your Journey in Dark Music2:08

    Master dark music by learning tension, dissonance, and intensity to compose powerful evil action music and ominous, creepy atmospheres, supported by practical tips, live examples, breakdowns, and demonstrations.

  • The Power of Dark Music2:47

    Learn to create dark music that builds tension and a scary atmosphere through shrill harmonics, drones, power notes, and legato lines; practice by improvising against tense visuals with muted scenes.

  • Dissonant Intervals - The Core of Tension12:44

    Discover how dissonant intervals generate tension in melodies, harmonies, and chords, and how voice leading shapes tense progressions from dissonance toward resolution.

  • Dissonant Intervals - How you Play them8:41
  • Tension Articulations4:02
  • Tension Sounds4:41

    Explore how to craft tension in scary music by using drones, pads, soundscapes, industrial textures, bowed strings, and distortion, then shape and mix these colors for intensity.

  • Tension Effects7:11

    Explore how dissonance and tension emerge from effects on acoustic and synthesized sounds, including tension stingers, tension clusters, movement presets, noise and drift, cassette, pitch bend, and rhythmic automation.

  • Unexpected Changes7:43

    Explore how unexpected changes in intervals and harmonies raise tension, contrasting with four chord pop progressions through strange harmonic changes, unusual rhythmic variation, and sudden silence.

  • Dark Music Breakdown - Escape the Silence39:04
  • Assignment - Sound Instinct2:37

    Develop your ear for tension and darkness by practicing the sound instinct assignment: analyze chords, harmonies, themes, tempo, keys, instruments, and layering while playing along on piano or midi keyboard.

Requirements

  • You need a DAW (Music Production Software)
  • You need to have sounds & plugins for cinematic music
  • You should already have some music composition experience

Description

Your Journey in Dark Music

Hello Composers, Mike here. And you are about to go on a new learning adventure. Your destination for this journey, is to learn the secrets of darkness, tension, dissonance and intensity in music. So that you will be able to compose and create scary and dark music of all styles, from powerful and evil action music, to ominous and creepy atmospheric music.

You will Master Dark Music Composition

  • The Foundations of Dark Music

  • The Guidelines for Dark Music

  • The Sounds of Dark Music

  • Dark Music in Action

You will get lots of practical tips, live examples, breakdowns and demonstrations, as well as several opportunities to practice what you learn so that you will truly master the knowledge you gain.

Let me first define what I mean by Dark Music, because I use this genre term in a broad sense. Here are some examples of styles and moods of dark music:

  • Evil & Powerful

  • Dark Underscore

  • Thrilling Tension

  • Ominous & Intense

  • Scary Chaos

This means that dark music composition is all about creating an overall mood and emotional response that can be summed up in one word: tension. But tension can come in many different colors in music, from shrill piercing harmonics, to dark brooding drones. From rhythmic accented power notes, to deep rich legato notes. Basically this will cover anything from the Darth Vader theme, all the way to the Aliens soundtrack.

My Story and Journey
My name is Mike, and I am a composer.
Just. Like. You. =)

I started making music back in 1998. And I love to educate, motivate, and inspire creative people, like yourself.

NOW TAKE ACTION!
So take action now, and start your journey to master dark music composition. Let’s begin your adventure, right now! =)

Who this course is for:

  • Music Composers
  • Music Producers

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