Just use the harmonic minor or phrygian dominant scales instead of vanilla major or minor and you're off to the races.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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And maybe a few Shepard tones here and there for that unsettling feeling
I also recommend Arturia's Pigments. It's on sale at a deep discount very often.
C tuning, a good pedal or two, the Phrygian scale, practice, effort, time, and dedication. It’s worth it.
What we really need to do is create a powerful sense of dread.
See, the longer the note... the more dread
Take drum samples and slow them down then they’ll sound spooky when you make a beat with them
to those interested in dipping your toes into things like making industrial sounds and getting a feel for it, there are a lot of free options. it honestly doesn't matter what program you make your music in. they can all basically do the same thing. Reaper is free for personal use, for instance.
if you take some classic 808 drum sounds (which are usually built in to most programs, or easy to google) and just start with a distortion filter and mess around with knobs, even if you don't know what you're doing, you start to hear a lot of similar sounds and tones that are used in all sorts of darker electro music's
if you find you start to really enjoy that, there's a world of tutorials and resources to help get you going
I find a lot of things that I start with limited knowledge in, feel like there's a million things to learn to get anywhere, but it's usually a lot more reasonable once you start getting into it a bit
Good old Mick (?). His talk about that era at the GDC was fascinating (and I've only fiddled a little with sound - even being way over my head it was great)