How to Create Tension with Climbing

Scales
scorecastonline.com by Ryan Leach July 23, 2012

Among the many primary functions of film music, tension is near the top of the
list. Wether its to generate feelings of suspense, anticipation, or even a false
sense of danger, creating tension is a major part of our work as film composers.
In this article Ill discuss one of the tools you can add to your bag of tricks for
creating tension, the technique of stretching out a scale.

Expectation
Tension is aroused when there is a conflict between what we expect to happen
and what actually happens. In music one of the easiest ways to do this is to set
up an expectation, but then delay its resolution.
Im reminded of the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which the villain is
trying to get Roger Rabbit to come out of his hiding place. He knocks out the
rhythm to the first part of Shave and a Haircut:
No toon can resist the old Shave and a Haircut trick!

Roger Rabbit cant help himself, the tension is just UNBEARABLE! He has to
finish the phrase, its driving him insane not to, and thus he comes out of hiding
and is caught by the throat!
There are many ways to establish expectations in your listeners ear, including
using predictable melodies, setting up common cadences, creating patterns in
the music, and using scales. Lets now take a look at how we can use scales to set
up expectations and delay resolution.

Scales
Many people find scales boring because they are so predictable. But thats
actually what is so great about them! We want to take advantage of that very
predictability. Being a backbone of most Western music, even non-musicians
have expectations about how scales resolve and what they generally sound like.
We already looked at how leaving off an expected resolution can drive you nuts
with the Shave and a Haircut example. Consider this even simpler example:

If youre like most musicians, the lack of resolution to the tonic will really get
under your skin!
A scale climbing and not quite reaching home is great for demonstration, but it
feels a bit rudimentary in a musical context. A more musical approach, and a
very common one, is to stretch out the scale by repeating notes, rising a little bit
and then backing back down and starting over. Ill use a half-diminished scale
here for some added darkness:
The tension comes from two different places here. First of all, we expect the scale
to just keep climbing in an upward direction, and so when it jumps back down
we are a bit surprised.

Secondly, we are never really sure when its going to stop, and so tension is
created by the uncertainty of just how high this scale is going to go. We keep
expecting it to resolve but it never does.

Examples from the Repertoire

Barbers Adagio for Strings
An example very similar to the one we just looked at can be found in the opening
to Samuel Barbers Adagio for Strings.
Essentially all he is doing is climbing from A natural up to Eb, but by stretching
those 5 notes into 15 he creates an incredible feeling of tension.
He stretches the scale out in two ways. First, he has a pattern of going up a third
and down a second:

Then he stretches it out further by repeating each climb up a third before moving
to the descent of a second:
Even after the Eb it feels like the pattern could just keep on climbing forever, but
he gives us a break and rests on the C. A perfect reminder that all tension and no
resolution would soon become tiresome to listen to!

Little Tom Thumb

The second movement of Ravels Mother Goose Suite, Little Tom Thumb, starts
off with a similar technique. In this case, however, Ravel manipulates the tension
in two different ways.

The first noticeable difference from the Barber is that he uses longer stretches of
the scale. Instead of climbing only three notes at a time, Ravel climbs as much as
10 notes in his longest segment.
An even more significant difference is that every stretch of the scale is longer
than the one before it. This is an incredibly useful technique for creating tension,
as the climbing scale just keeps getting longer and longer and longer, stretching
out the climb more and more and never quite reaching a feeling of resolution.
Only after the melody comes in and finally jumps down a third onto a quarter
note at bar 5 do we actually feel a moment of resolved tension.
I am reminded of the opening motif from John Williams score to Catch Me If
You Can. The opening phrase backtracks and develops just a tiny bit further each
time. Every little extra development teases us into expecting more and more.

Fawkes the Phoenix

Speaking of John Williams, our last example comes from his cue Fawkes the
Phoenix from the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets score. Its a great
example of how to use the climbing scale as a modulating sequence.
The example comes from about 1:22 into the track, in which he uses a climbing
scale pattern to take us from A major to C major.
The basic climbing scale he uses is this:
He uses a similar pattern to the up a third, down a second pattern that we saw
in the Adagio for Strings. Its doubled in length to be up a third, down a second,
up a third, down a third:
Notice how the energy increases towards the end when he stops repeating the
patterns and moves into a faster climb of the scale.

Finally he adds excitement to the pattern in the violins by embellishing with

neighbor and passing tones:

The result is an exhilarating climb that feels incredibly tense until the resolution
on C, which in contrast to the build feels quite refreshing!

Conclusion
You may have terrible memories of being forced by your music teacher to
practice your scales, and many of you may have resented the seemingly lack of
point in the exercise.
But with some simple manipulations, weve just seen that the boring old scale
can actually provide us with amazing potential for creating, expanding and
developing tension.