Long before radio became mainstream entertainment, Edgar Allen Poe was already writing for the airwaves. Throughout the last decade of his life, his poetry and prose bristled with words and phrasing ...

The world is full of sounds, and sound can affect us greatly. Some sounds are pleasant, like the laughter of a small child or a babbling brook in a peaceful forest. Other sounds are unpleasant, like ...

The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along ...

Researchers have shown that humans perceive approaching sounds differently than we perceive receding sounds. We overestimate how quickly the sound approaching us is moving (Neuhoff, 2001). There is ...

Picture this: A girl walks alone down a long, creaky hallway. The lights are off, her pace is slow, and she’s inching towards the shadows. What sort of music is playing in the background? Almost ...

In the opening scene of Silent Hill, it’s the first time players finally get to hear the notorious siren. This is probably the sound effect that defined the rest of the Silent Hill franchise and is ...

This is the mecca of sound in horror films. A placid orchestra turns to dead silence right before veering into screeching violins, a death-bellow and then — the shower-drizzle. This is one of the most ...

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