This week’s selection was underscore for a steamy bedroom scene. The onscreen action was more psychological rather than physical, and so the music’s job was to imply the characters’ inner experiences: attraction, but also undercurrents of conflict. Ambient and distorted guitar, performed by the multitalented Tom Strahle, create a sonic atmosphere of mixed emotions.


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	The Bedroom

This week’s selection is a busy but sad-stalgic piece for piano and strings. (Sometimes you just need to invent an adjective.)


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	Departing Friends

One more scary cue for Halloween! This one is more of a family-friendly kind of scariness, rather than something you’d hear in a film about saws or silenced lambs. In this short cue, a rising orchestral crescendo marks the arrival of the world’s most frightening sea creature (if you happen to be a penguin).


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	The Killer Whale

My goal for this cue was to make a harp sound scary. This might seem like a tall order given the instrument’s angelic associations, but in fact the harp has an oft-overlooked lower register that can sound quite creepy. The orchestral accompaniment helps out here with a non-vibrato string drone and subtle wind pulses that swell in and out.


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	Captured

Continuing the theme of creepy music for October: from Aaron Simms’ supernatural thriller Vermilion, this underscore accompanied the final run-in with a painting come to life. (This was much scarier on film than it sounds in my description!)


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	Encounter