美国国家公共电台 NPR The Scary Sound Machine That Is 'Trying To Set People A Little Bit Off-Kilter'（在线收听）

The Scary Sound Machine That Is 'Trying To Set People A Little Bit Off-Kilter'

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Creaking doors, clanking chains. With Halloween just around the corner, we're now going to a guy who specializes in making scary sounds.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARK KORVEN: (Playing apprehension engine).

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mark Korven plays a custom-made instrument he calls the apprehension engine. We're listening to a performance earlier this month - Friday the 13, of course, at a cemetery in Brooklyn. Korven is a Canadian composer for film and television soundtracks. He's helped spook up everything from "The Twilight Zone" and sci-fi cult film "Cube" to the recent horror blockbuster "The Witch."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WITCH")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As unidentified character) (Screaming).

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As unidentified character) It's not safe. Not again.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mark Korven brought his apprehension engine into the studios of the CBC in Toronto to show us how he makes music for nightmares.

Hi, Mark.

KORVEN: Hi, how are you doing?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Good. So what was it like when you played the apprehension engine in front of a live audience? What was the reaction?

KORVEN: People were kind of confused and a little bit in awe. I remember we had people flocking into the chapel, which is where I was playing - in the chapel in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. And I remember this woman walking past the apprehension engine, and I did this...

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: ...And she jumped about a foot in the air.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).

KORVEN: I just love to get a rise out of people on occasion.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So this is an instrument that you sort of designed and created with the help of a friend. But can you give us an audio tour of the instrument in front of you? Play us some sounds.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So that sounds really eerie. What are you doing?

KORVEN: So that's a collection of metal rulers, and I have four of them in front of me. If I was just to pluck them, it'd sound a little bit like marimba.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: But when you bow them, it's kind of cool.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: What I bow them with is called a nyckelharpa bow. And a nyckelharpa is a medieval pushbutton violin that I used when I was recording the score for "The Witch." I needed a very small violin bow. So that's what I'm using for this. And I also have something that's a spring reverb from a guitar amplifier. You can hit it, which I love.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: And then we have a hurdy-gurdy, which makes this sort of sound.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's kind of like a wheel, right?

KORVEN: Yeah, it's like a wheel. This is my squeaky wheel sound.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: And then next up, we have a - basically, we have a single string, and I use an Ebow, which is something that guitar players use, which sustains the string.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: And then on top of that, we have a single rod, which, if you let the rod go...

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: ...It goes wack, wack, wack (ph). And I can bow it, as well, and get this sound.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: We also have this...

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: ...Which is basically a collection of junk in there, and then a switch.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: And then something I use for a tick-tock sound...

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: ...Which is nice rhythmically.

I've thought a lot about what makes for freaky sounds. And, I think, it goes back to that primordial fear of being hunted. And something that is hunted might scream, like - so you might, you know, that sound like I'm doing.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.

KORVEN: You know, real screeches and cries. And I think that unearths that primordial fear of being, like, attacked by an animal that's bigger than you are.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, in the dark woods at night.

KORVEN: Yes. That's right.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: On Halloween.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sorry, I'm being taken away by this already. How did you get into scary sounds?

KORVEN: Well, it wasn't much of a leap for me at all. I actually come from a jazz background, and I've always been attracted to strange, unusual harmonies. So it wasn't that much of a leap to get into music that was a little bit more dissonant. And I love creative and harmonic freedom to do whatever I want. And horror is one way of doing that. You can be really weird and strange. And 9 times out of 10, it's going to work quite well with the images that you're working with.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you change the sounds for different projects? I mean, I suppose something like "The Witch," might be different than "The Twilight Zone."

KORVEN: Oh, absolutely. "The Witch" was a very unusual score in that Robert Eggers, the director - he didn't want anything that was electronic at all. He didn't want even reverb. He wanted it to be very flat, very dry, very real. It did inspire this machine. I didn't actually use it on "The Witch," but I became enamored with that sound of, you know, that real tactile sense of touching a real acoustic instrument and being able to...

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

KORVEN: ...You know, scratch it with your fingers where it just felt like someone touching it.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Mark, I've got to ask you this - are you going to use this to sort of, like, freak out your trick or treaters in your neighborhood?

KORVEN: You know, I got to say that is the plan...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter)

KORVEN: ...As long as we don't get rained on because I have a couple of kids (laughter). And my two kids are rather bored by all this because, you know, they - oh, daddy's up to his usual stuff. But I think it has the potential of freaking out the neighborhood children. And that really appeals to me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) Mark Korven is a composer for film and television and is a virtuoso on the instrument he calls the apprehension engine. You can check it out in his neighborhood, apparently. Thanks, and Happy Halloween.

KORVEN: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF APPREHENSION ENGINE SOUND)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You can see a video of the apprehension engine in action on our website npr.org.