Halloween

This Halloween, we asked renowned modular synthesist and sound designer Lisa Bella Donna to share her secrets on dialing in spooky synth sounds. Continue reading to learn more about the best synths for sculpting haunting soundscapes, listen to audio examples and download Lisa's exclusive Spooky Synths patchbook for the Moog Grandmother! Check out Lisa's new album, Hypnosis to hear her putting these techniques to use. Continue reading →

As Halloween draws closer, we’ve been enjoying one of our favorite fall activities: binge-watching classic horror movies. Perhaps more than any other genre of film, horror movies rely on the score to set the tone with spooky synth sounds and haunting soundscapes. Continue reading →

Lisa Bella Donna is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and modular synthesist. She has many years of experience as a session musician and has developed extensive techniques with a variety of genres including musique concreté, micro-tonal music, orchestration, film composition, and more. Recently, Lisa put out two new albums, Night Flight and Orchards of Churchyard Departures. Both records are sonically fitting for the Halloween season, as they feature a number of dark and brooding tones created using a wide range of analog and digital synths. Continue reading →

Here at Vintage King, Halloween is one of our favorite times of the year. Not just because we get to wear all black and stuff our faces with candy, but because we get to revisit some of our favorite horror movies and spooky soundtracks from the 1980s. To celebrate the spirit of Halloween, we spoke with synth lord and certified super-villain Protovolt to find out what makes a classic horror score. Known for his sick retro scores and insane synthesizer collection, Protovolt is easily one of the raddest dudes on the internet, and an aficionado of all things 80s. Read on to learn about Protovolt’s favorite tools for writing retro-inspired scores, his custom arcade cab modular synth, and what his death scene would be like if he was in a horror movie. Continue reading →

Michael Jackson’s Thriller may be the most significant piece of recorded music in human history. On the first day of recording, producer Quincy Jones walked into the studio and said “OK guys, we’re here to save the recorded music industry.” And then they did. 35 years on, Thriller is the still best-selling album of all time. At its peak, it sold more than 1 million copies per week. Since its release, it's sold an estimated 66 million copies in America, and over 105 million worldwide. In light of the title track's horror film-like lyrics and the album's upcoming anniversary, we decided to take a look at what it took to create a modern masterpiece. Continue reading →

Fans of the horror genre will certainly be familiar with the far-reaching discography of Charlie Clouser. The former Nine Inch Nails member moved onto the world of scoring film/television and has been responsible for an incredible number of projects including the Saw series, American Horror Story, Dead Silence and Wayward Pines.   In keeping with the spooky Halloween season, we reached out to Charlie to talk about his studio set-up, his sonic inspirations and some different ways to get ghoulish and unsettling sounds out of your gear. Continue below to read our conversation with Charlie and to hear a few pieces of his fantastic work. Continue reading →

When Stranger Things debuted on Netflix in July 2016, the show's soundtrack single-handedly rekindled the public's love of spooky sounds created with vintage synthesizers. Scored by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of Austin-based band Survive, the duo predominantly used synths like the Arp Odyssey, Roland SH-101, Korg Mono/Poly to create the sounds of Hawkins and the Upside Down. Instead of recreating the Stranger Things score with similar synthesizers, I had the idea to build it from scratch using some of my favorite guitar pedals. By using only a Meris Ottobit Jr., Meris Mercury7 and Electro-Harmonix Synth 9, I was able to get something extremely close to the sounds of Dixon and Stein's original theme.   Continue reading →

As Halloween draws closer and closer, we've been binge watching all kinds of classic horror movies. While some achieve greatness in terms of jump scares and gory visuals, others remain our favorites because of their incredible soundtracks. From Argento and Fulci to Carpenter and Romero, these masterful directors have made fantastic choices when choosing the composers and artists who would make the music for their films. Continue reading →