Here you have a considerable amount of copyright-free music of horror genre, mystery, creepy and suspense, exactly what your dark project needs. Just remember to add a link to this website or my name Patrick de Arteaga in the credits of your project or wherever you distribute it.
Also take a look at my original horror music pack Battle Against Fear, a compilation that can work as a complete soundtrack and add life to your most terrifying projects.
| NAME | DESCRIPTION | LISTEN |
|---|---|---|
| The Biggest Discovery DOWNLOAD | Mystery music to enhance your most enigmatic scenes. | |
| 2nd Sonata – Malign Chords DOWNLOAD | Spooky notes played on an old piano. Perfect to express a paranormal situation. | |
| Abuse In The Orphanage DOWNLOAD | Inspired by terrifying stories. A music box can sound very creepy. | |
| Anguish DOWNLOAD | Best stories usually have sad moments caused by tragedies. Violins and cellos are perfect for this. | |
| Assassin DOWNLOAD | Tell horror stories about mad characters. Instill fear and darkness among your viewers. | |
| Beware The Monster DOWNLOAD | With a BPM in crescendo, this song helps increase the suspense. | |
| Biological Weapon DOWNLOAD | A strong and rhythmic battle theme focused on horror. This can be useful for playing a monster. | |
| Center Of The Earth DOWNLOAD | Intriguing dungeons and caves, mystery places with soundscapes and maybe scary atmospheres. | |
| Dancing Pumpkins DOWNLOAD | I was influenced by typical Halloween waltz when I made it, creepy parties with witches and ghosts. | |
| Death At My Heels DOWNLOAD | Shuddering chase and intense persecutions with an orchestral style. | |
| Dreaming DOWNLOAD | I think this one could be useful for staging strange dreams, memories, or fantasy places. | |
| Fear DOWNLOAD | Here are no harmonic chords, this is pure dissonance for your horror stories. | |
| Forgotten Spaceship DOWNLOAD | Mystery notes, old orchestral strings and ghostly choirs. All this to get a dark atmosphere. | |
| Homicida Paradójico DOWNLOAD | Just think about a friendly and mad assassin. Think about it. | |
| Horror Stories DOWNLOAD | The name says it all. Use it in your creepy video games. | |
| Infested City DOWNLOAD | In my mind, a city was infested by zombies. Then, I composed this dark song. | |
| It’s Time To Run DOWNLOAD | The monster is chasing you! Terror theme for spooky stories, maybe? It’s up to you! | |
| Let’s Play With The Demon DOWNLOAD | Some people have said that this is the loudest song they’ve heard. I’ll take it as a compliment. | |
| Looking for a new beginning DOWNLOAD | Unusual instruments on an unusual scale. The result is something like post-apocalypthic? | |
| Lord Mavras DOWNLOAD | Unusual rhythm and two pianos. This can only mean one thing: something evil is coming. | |
| Ouija A DOWNLOAD | Terror theme with a harpsichord and an oboe. Good combination for paranormal plots. | |
| Ouija B DOWNLOAD | This is like a soundscape, can be used to set nocturnal ambients. | |
| Ouija C DOWNLOAD | This is a slower version of ‘Ouija A’. Ideal for terror games, too. | |
| Stranger DOWNLOAD | Simple but rare. I composed this when I was a child and I think I can’t make anything alike now. | |
| The Ninth Crewman DOWNLOAD | Inspired by a famous sci-fi movie, this terror track can be used as a terrifying soundscape. | |
| They Are Already Here DOWNLOAD | If you are abducted by aliens, you will listen to music inside their UFO, and it’ll sound like this. | |
| TS – Beat Y DOWNLOAD | A mix of mystery and the Hip-Hop genre. It can be used for dark scenes. | |
| Typical Lullaby DOWNLOAD | As every horror story, your horror game must have a song for the memories of some character. |
These musical works are published under a Creative Commons license that allows their distribution and modification, even commercially (as long as they are part of another audiovisual project), provided that you grant the appropriate credit by sharing a link to this website or mentioning the name of the author: Patrick de Arteaga.
The term “non-copyrighted music” used on this website refers to the fact that the musical works displayed here do not retain all rights reserved. However, works with Creative Commons licenses are, in effect, protected by national laws and international copyright agreements.
What is horror music?
It is a musical genre that is aimed at causing fear in the spectator. Generally, horror music should convey expectation, suspense, fright, and strong emotions that are opposed to joy and pleasure, such as terror, repulsion, and even drama or sadness. If the music manages to keep the listener fearful, expectant and tense, the mission is accomplished.
Visually, it is closely linked to darkness, cruelty and strange or mysterious atmospheres, and is used to set movies, video games and any type of audiovisual representation, where the image on its own does not efficiently transmit what it intends. Background horror music is the underpinning part of any kind of story of fear or suspense.
For example, what makes you jump right out of your chair when you see a scary scene in a movie or when playing a horror video game, which can even contain violent and bloody scenes, is not the image itself, but the sound, its volume and its changes of rhythm, which cause you to experience a sense of alarm.
Try to watch any horror scene without sound and you will notice the difference. If you still keep jumping out of the chair it is because someone has put a thumbtack under you. (Joke)
Speaking of jokes, since a long time the so-called screamers move across the Internet, which are jokes in which people receive a link to a small horror video, which at first does not seem to be related to the genre until suddenly a demonic creature appears in the foreground with the intention of frightening. These videos wouldn’t have much effect if they weren’t accompanied by horror audio at the time of the scare.
History of horror music in video games
It all started with the alien invasion games, when Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 video game consoles experimented with the first games in the eighties.
Games like the well-known Space Invaders or Demon Attack, had a musical soundtrack that consisted of a single song formed by four notes that were repeated constantly in a loop but had the peculiarity that the rhythm was accelerating as the danger was increasing, resulting in a kind of scary music.
Later, better elaborated and sophisticated songs like the one of Panther (1986) came out, with a style that, still being 8-bit music, could more be assimilated to the current electronic music, but that still contained variants in some of its notes, modifying its tone gradually and causing tension in the player like every suspense soundtrack.
Already in the nineties, with the advent of the fourth generation of video games, titles emerged whose horror genre extended beyond the classic invasions of aliens and they experimented with vampires, ghosts and zombies. All with a horror music much more varied and, of course, more terrifying.
We can also highlight the advent of the gore subgenre, especially on Sega Mega Drive with games like Mortal Kombat, where blood splatter and “dark” audio made its gameplay a horrifying experience. Who would not be traumatized to see a fatality?
Currently, in video game music there is everything, from horror music inspired by films with orchestral instruments to soundtracks that follow the chiptune theme of yesteryear. Any style can sound thrilling.
Keys to compose horror music
Before we move on, I recommend you listen to some of my songs from the list above while reading the rest of this article. Here we go:
Since music is composed of melody, harmony, and rhythm, this genre can contradict its meaning because it does just the opposite. Horror music is not usually composed of harmony and is also arrhythmic, so it would not always fall within the correct definition. However, due to its beginnings and because a horror soundtrack in movies used to contain pieces with musicality, nowadays it is popularly considered a musical genre.
While there is no unique way to compose horror music or scary music, history has set guidelines that are still valid today. Leaving aside the harmony and the rhythm, since it is about making you shudder, there is no better way than to create discomfort in the listener with the dissonances.
Composing scary music is an activity that has no limits and can be innovative. Jason Graves, composer of the chilling video game trilogy Dead Space, created his own sounds with even his own instruments to get the most piercing sound effects and the most terrifying video game music.
As for the rhythm, in case of songs with percussion intended for creating a sense of danger or panic, unusual time signatures are often used. A 5/4 is ideal, being able to fiddle with half measures and create a sense of asynchrony that keeps a correct rhythm at all times.
The intention is to make the player stay so tense because of the fear that he ends up sweating his gamepad or computer mouse. In the case of a mobile device, if you manage to make the player sweat until soaking the screen and not being able to interact, it means that either the player has a problem with his sweat glands, or you are the best horror music composer of the moment.
Non-copyrighted horror music
Every artist register the copyright of their work. If you are an artist, you should know how to copyright your works for free online, because there is an easy way.
There are various licenses for musical works, regardless of genre and whether or not it is music for video games. Music, in general, is governed by copyright, something necessary for authors to be able to collect royalties corresponding to the art they have created.
Even copyright-free or royalty-free music usually handles licenses such as the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY), which allows music to be used for commercial activities or even to modify it if necessary, but always attributing authorship to the original creator.
Download horror or scary music
In this section, you have many of my original tracks of music for video games or multimedia projects, which you can use to set scenes of fear, terror, suspense or mystery. You can download and use them as you wish, even modify them, they are ideal not only to use them as horror background music for video games but also as horror music for videos or any multimedia project.
Just remember to mention that I am the original author, Patrick de Arteaga, since these audio tracks are subject to a Creative Commons license with an attribution condition. You can do it simply by adding a link to this website.