Apprehension Engine
A handmade acoustic instrument built to order in Ontario, Canada.
DreadFolk HorrorPsychological Horror
See developer for price Instruments
Instruments
Instruments for Horror Music
Physical instruments that make unnatural sounds.
Experimental acoustic instruments and hardware synths used for horror scoring, led by the Apprehension Engine, the instrument built specifically to make horror music.
What makes horror instruments different?
Unusual physical instruments give performances that samples can't fully copy: bowed metal, springs, resonating strings and unstable electronics react to the player in unpredictable ways.
Our top picks
Browse by type
Experimental Acoustic
Physical instruments built for horror. Bowed, scraped and struck, they give you the sounds a lot of modern horror scores are built on, and because you play them by hand, nobody's track will sound like yours.
Start with: Apprehension Engine
See all 1 tool →Electro-Acoustic
These sit between acoustic and electronic: physical things you hit, scrape or bow, run through electronics. Perfect for the found-sound side of horror.
Start with: Field Kit – Electro Acoustic Workstation · ETHER
See all 2 tools →Hardware Synths
A hardware synth with a bit of unpredictability is perfect for horror. Try making one synth your limitation for a whole track. It can become the vocabulary of the piece.
Start with: LYRA-8 · PULSAR-23
See all 3 tools →Browse by horror style
Dread
The slow stuff: a low drone, the rumbling of doom, the sense that something bad is going to happen and we don't know when.
Tension
Notes fighting each other and wanting to return home. In horror, we never quite let them.
Jump Scares
All about contrast. Against quiet, something loud seems even louder, so the silence before matters as much as the hit.
Psychological Horror
Unsettling isn't the same as tense. Two things that don't get on: notes, instruments or vibes that shouldn't be together.
Supernatural
Things that shouldn't be there: pure sine tones with glide and vibrato, whispers, and sounds with no visible source.
Body Horror
Organic, wet and close. Sounds the listener feels in the body, not just hears.
Dark Atmospheres
Atmosphere is the mood of a place. What type of drone, and what is it doing? Even a drone can change how a scene feels.
Industrial Horror
Metal, machinery and noise. Found sounds and distortion that turn pipes and factories into something hostile.
Cosmic Horror
Too big to understand. Vast spaces and music with no tonal home, so the listener has nothing to hold on to.
Folk Horror
Old, rural and wrong: acoustic instruments, voices and simple melodies taken out of context.
How to choose
Sampled alternatives
Many rare instruments are available as sample libraries. Korven, for example, captures the Apprehension Engine.
Recording
A contact microphone and a portable recorder turn everyday objects into instruments.
Hardware synths
Drone-oriented synths like SOMA's are built for evolving, organic textures rather than tidy notes.
Explore all instruments
LYRA-8
An analogue synthesiser by Vlad Kreimer with eight voice generators grouped in four pairs, playable in organ or FM mode, plus a two-signal 'Hyper LFO', a cross-feedback modulated delay and a distortion stage at the end of the chain.
DreadDark AtmospheresCosmic Horror
€670 Instruments
Field Kit – Electro Acoustic Workstation
A boxed electroacoustic workstation for building sound from motors, sensors, contact microphones and radio signals.
Industrial HorrorDark AtmospheresTension
€274 Instruments
ETHER
A pocket-sized, battery-powered wide-band receiver (SOMA calls it an 'anti-radio') that makes the electromagnetic fields around electrical devices audible.
SupernaturalDark AtmospheresPsychological Horror
See developer for price Instruments
ENNER
A touch-controlled analogue instrument whose audio signals pass through the player's body via touch-sensitive metal pots.
Body HorrorTensionPsychological Horror
See developer for price Instruments
PULSAR-23
A semi-modular analogue drum machine made of 23 modules, with four drum channels (bass drum, bass/percussion, snare, cymbals/hi-hat), four envelope generators that can sustain into noise or drone, four trigger-event loop recorders, a shift-register random generator, an FX processor and distortion.
Industrial HorrorTensionJump Scares
See developer for price Instruments
Apprehension Engine
A handmade acoustic instrument built to order in Ontario, Canada.
DreadFolk HorrorPsychological Horror
See developer for price Instruments
No tools match those filters.