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Maker Series E3: Phil’s Music Notes – [Horror] Intervals

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 23, 2025 Leave a reply

🕯️ Maker Series: Phil’s Music Notes – [Horror] Intervals 👻
🎃 A pre-Halloween special exploring the dark side of sound.

At its core, music is a game of intervals — the spaces between notes that define every melody, every emotion. Even without musical training, we instinctively recognize the cheerful sound of a major chord or the melancholy of a minor. But some intervals go far beyond sad or happy… some are unnerving, unsettling, even evil.

In this pre-Halloween edition of Phil’s Music Notes, we dive into the tritone, the infamous “Devil’s Interval.” Once banned by tradition and feared for its dissonance, this interval has haunted music for centuries — from John Williams’ shark-infested tension in Jaws, to John Carpenter’s chilling Halloween theme, to the thunder of Holst’s Mars, the chaos of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, and the heavy riffs of Black Sabbath and Metallica. 🎸

But there’s more to this sinister sound — it’s also at the heart of jazz harmony. Those lush, complex 7th chords you hear? They’re built on the same mysterious tritone. The very interval once deemed forbidden became the key to modern expression.

In this episode, we’ll explore how this interval transformed from symbol of darkness to a cornerstone of musical color — and how you can use it to bring new life (or afterlife 👀) to your own compositions.

List of works –