spooky sounds for halloween

[smallsynth]

any programming tips for spooky, eerie, ghosty halloween sounds?

-geoffrey smallsynth

[Jack Spider]

Square waves with a little vibrato, portamento and delay.

[Gianni]

LPFed Detuned Sine waves at with a moderate attack, vibrato and portamento and lots of feedback.

Also you could count spooky as some synthbass with some resonance, distorsion, flanger, phaser, delay and many cutoff and effects tricks. That sure scared the h**l out of my last dog.

[Joey]

listen to 'shes in parties' by bauhaus, try to get your synths to sound like the guitars

tune one osc a fifth or seventh above the other

chorus

lots of vibrato

play black keys

[tallowwaters]

Vibrato is an old standby.

Use a slow LFO tied to pitch on a choir sample.
Various samples of breath/mouth noises with reverb and delay.
Prophecy for whistling emulations.
Real time delay tweaking.

I could go on...

[Synthaholic]

There's all sorts of stuff you can do.

For music, use organs and vibrato leads, as previously suggested. Minor and diminished chords make it spookier.

For sound effects, use your imagination. Think of something that sounds "spooky" to you, and program your synths to make that sound. The theremin "ghost" sound is a good place to start. Modulate a square, pulse or sine wave with an LFO, and have the pitch rise and fall slowly using an envelope or a second LFO. If you have a synth with self-oscillating filters, that is a great way to get the "ghost" sound.

Use the noise generator in your synth too. Run noise through a resonant filter to generate wind sounds. The more resonance, the more stormy it sounds.

Get creative. Use cross-modulation, ring-modulation, oscillator sync with odd tunings, have some fun.

Delays and reverb are your friend for Halloween. Use them to great effect. If you have a vocoder, program it with some ominous, spooky voice and then say spooky sayings into it.

Here's a sound FX piece I created last Halloween. At the time I only had a Microkorg and Motif XS, which is what I used. It is the sound of a UFO coming and beaming you up for an "examination", then beaming you back down and leaving. Alien Abduction edit All the sounds are synthesized, except for the crickets and animal sounds at the beginning.

[RobotHeroes]

+1 Storm sounds

We did this last year. My brother and brother in law were all into it. They had a fog machine, eerie lights and a wireless mic for that whispery voice. And the Spooky sounds from my synth.

I used noise and pulse with the scale at 2. It's the basic storm patch from the MS-20 manual. I tweaked it a little and had it going without having to push any keys. Lightning strikes and howly wind.

The kids looked kind of scared coming up the driveway. All I needed was a wolf howling sound and it would've been perfect. Maybe this year.

[AstroDan]

A very low saw with the cutoff slowly opening. Instant 1978 zombie soundtrack.

[Suburban Bather]

Your random vocal noises+ a mic+ a bunch of FX pedals/rack gear/kaoss pads/whatever!

[Box]

Have you some wind and thunder going and set your synth to a "pipe organ" and play Toccata en Fugue in Dm.

[ColorForm2113]

take old black sabbath albums record them on to a reel to reel slow the speed down and play it backwards run it through your synth and some fx pedals nothing like ozzy moaning like barry white on an bad acid trip with some slow resonant filter sweeps and some ringmod and reverb going over it

[Hossinfeffa]

This thread is making me want to make some spooky track for Halloween.

[Carey M]

Vocoder, with mostly noise as carrier, and phrases like "SATAN! SATAN!" as modulator

- CM

[AstroDan]

Don't plug in any synths - just put on 'The Shining' soundtrack.

[cornutt]

Have you some wind and thunder going and set your synth to a "pipe organ" and play Toccata en Fugue in Dm.

Did that a few years ago. Very effective! I also like big slow LFO-driven oscillator sweeps.

If you have a modular, drag it to the front door. After you get the patch you want set up, hang some fake cobwebs on it. Get a few dolls and rig them up with alligator clips and cords so it appears that they are connected to the modular. If you can, put a bright red light in the back of the modular so it shines through the cracks between modules, and through the jacks.