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Home / Composition / How to Create Tension with Climbing Scales

How to Create Tension with Climbing Scales

By Ryan Leach on July 23, 2012

@http://twitter.com/rwmleach
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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

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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

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technique of stretching out a scale.

Expectation
Tension is aroused when there is a conflict between what we expect to happen and what actually

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happens. In music one of the easiest ways to do this is to set up an expectation, but then delay its

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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

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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

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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

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Western music, even non-musicians have expectations about how scales resolve and what they

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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:
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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:
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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.

Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings, op

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.

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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.

Ma Mre l'Oye - VII. Petit Poucet

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.

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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.

Catch Me if You Can Opening Title Sequence

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.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secr

The basic climbing scale he uses is this:

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Scales 3 FawkesScale

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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:
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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:
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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.

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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.

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Ryan Leach
As an 8 year old growing up in South Australia, Ryan Leach started
studying guitar so that he could play Beatles songs, which marked the
beginning of a lifelong passion for music. Now an award winning
composer for film and TV, his music has been heard on every major
network and clients include MTV and Disney. Before branching out as
a freelance composer, Ryan earned a degree in Film Scoring from
Berklee College of Music and worked as assistant to veteran
composer Michael Levine at Remote Control Productions. He has
scored a dozen feature films including Pastor Shepherd starring Danny
Trejo (Robert Rodriguezs Machete), Serbian film Skinning co-starring
Bojana Novakovic (M. Night Shyamalans Devil), and Anacapa by
writer/director Nicholas Tolkien. In 2010 Ryan won Best Original Score
from the Maverick Movie Awards for his score to Devils Racecourse.
For more information on Ryan's work, visit him at his official website
and at IMDb.com.

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Stephen Johnson

3 years ago

Awesome article, really informative and I know I'll use this sometime soon

Reply Share

Ryan Leach > Stephen Johnson

3 years ago

Appreciate it Stephen, thanks. I find that it's always the simple stu that has
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Appreciate it Stephen, thanks. I find that it's always the simple stu that has
the most potential.

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Shannon Penner

3 years ago

Really great article! Thanks Ryan

Reply Share

Ryan Leach > Shannon Penner

3 years ago

Thanks Shannon, let me know what else you'd like to read along these lines.

Brian Popkin

Reply Share

3 years ago

Terrific article! Thank you! I printed it out to save :-)

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Ryan Leach > Brian Popkin

3 years ago

Wow, breaking out into the oine world ;-)

gdw3

Reply Share

4 years ago

Nice article and nice examples, Ryan!

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Ryan Leach > gdw3

3 years ago

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

Reply Share

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Adam DiTroia Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Love the way you incorporated music and video examples. Great article!
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