Christopher Young Quotes

Film composers are the most prolific music makers on this planet, and most of us are, like, losing our minds if we’re doing five or more movies in a year.

‘Psycho’ is probably the best known example of a horror film whose exclusive sound was strings, and since then, it’s been hard to avoid that. The minute you have strings as your primary voice, the comparisons are always made.

‘Sinister’ is the first score I’ve done in which there’s no orchestra in it whatsoever. There are traditional instruments I sampled, then manipulated, so you don’t even recognize the source anymore.

Usually when I am approached to do a score for a horror movie, it’s to attempt a repeat performance of what I did way back on ‘Hellraiser’ or ‘Jennifer 8’ – one of those really orchestral scores.

Writing in the electronic world, you imagine a sound, and then you have to go and find it. It’s not like imagining a flute and then making that sound materialize. That’s easy!

When I was younger, I’d make a point of driving to the middle of nowhere and spending an evening with just me, the wind, and the moon. Your skin crawls up an octave. This is what I tap into when I’m working on horror films. I’m just afraid a time will come when I lose touch with that part of myself.

Horror allows you to do things as a composer than you’re able to do in no other style of movie. The music has to be aggressive. You can’t tiptoe around. It has to be incredibly focused dramatically – no time for second thoughts. It needs to generate a kneejerk reaction.

I’m into horror pictures because I love the fear of being alone in the dark, and I’d recommend that to any composer who wants to work in this genre.

I don’t care how inventive you are; once you introduce strings into the ensemble for a horror film, you’re entering into a world where a tradition has been thoroughly established. So it’s repeated use over the years is like, ‘Oh God, another film with strings, another spooky movie with strings.’