Why the Halloween theme limps: counting Carpenter's 5/4 riff

Explainer · John Carpenter, Halloween (1978) · the main theme

Tap your foot to most film music and you get an easy answer: one, two, three, four. The Halloween theme refuses to give you one. It repeats a small piano figure that sounds simple, yet most people cannot say why it feels like a stumble. The answer is arithmetic, and you can hear it for yourself below.

Five beats, not four

The theme is usually described as being in 5/4: five beats to the bar instead of the four that pop, rock and most film cues lean on. Carpenter has said where it came from. In a PBS American Masters piece he recalls that his father bought him a pair of bongos at 13 and taught him five-four time, and in another interview he remembers his father suggesting that timing for the score.

My father bought me a pair of bongos for Christmas when I was 13 and he taught me five-four time.

John Carpenter, PBS American Masters

Five is an awkward number. It will not split into two equal halves, so any pattern built on it has to choose a lopsided grouping. One common way of counting the riff is in ten short pulses, grouped 3 + 3 + 2 + 2: two longer steps, then two shorter ones. Your ear settles into the pattern of threes, then the groups suddenly shrink to twos, and the phrase seems to lurch forward before it has finished. That is the limp.

Hear the difference

Switch between the two while it plays. The even version is the same ten pulses with the groups evened out, and it sounds like a clock. The uneven one sounds like someone walking toward you who occasionally changes their stride. A steady, relentless sixteenth-note pulse underneath is part of why the theme has been likened to a ticking clock.

Why it works on a film

Rhythm is the cheapest horror tool there is. A listener who cannot predict the next beat stays slightly braced, and a bracing listener is easy to scare. The score does this with almost nothing: a repeating piano line, a deep synthesizer bass and a fidgety beat. Carpenter has said he sat at the piano and played in octaves, and that is where the theme came from.

The score is also an example of working with what was at hand. Carpenter was not a trained notation reader, and the synthesizer programming was handled with the help of Dan Wyman, a music professor. The end credits jokingly name the "Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra", which was Carpenter himself. Reports differ on how long the score took to record, from a handful of days to two weeks, so treat any single number with caution.

Music did a lot of the work in how the film plays. Carpenter has said that an executive who saw the film without music found it not scary, and that it became scarier once the score was in. Carpenter has named Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone among his influences.

How to listen

• Count it once. Tap 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2 against the opening piano. When the count locks in, the strange feeling often fades. That is the point of the trick: it only works while you cannot predict it.
• Follow the bass, not the piano. The low synthesizer line carries the weight, and small speakers throw it away.
• Use closed-back headphones in a dark room. The score is mostly space and low notes, so isolation helps more than expensive detail.

Where to hear it: the score has been released on several labels over the years, including a 40th anniversary edition. Availability varies by country, so check your usual streaming service or record shop.

Sources

• PBS American Masters: John Carpenter on composing the Halloween music
• Dazed: how John Carpenter made (and remade) his Halloween score
• Den of Geek: the sound of horror, the enduring power of the Halloween score
• Hypebot: the Halloween theme, what makes it so scary
• Wikipedia: Halloween (1978 soundtrack)