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thatbagelcreature · 9 months

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Was just thinking about the ethics of Shepard's tones today.

For anyone who doesn't know, a Shepard's tone is an auditory illusion that makes it sound like a note is continuously ascending or descending or both.

This sounds super funky, but the scary thing is that it's known to exhibit physiological responses, like nausea and panic attacks in some people, which is crazy. It has no effect on many others though, and can even create effects of happiness in some.

So basically this thing is an scp.

What I was considering, though, is if it could and/or should be used in horror media, like if you put a Shepard's tone in the background of the tracks of a horror game or movie. It would have no effect on some, a profound effect on others and the opposite effect on a small few, making it pretty different from normal forms of auditory horror, right?

Well, maybe. But maybe not.

Conventional horror music that builds tension (not the sharp horror 'stings' of jumpscares) seems to fill the same theoretical purpose as the Shepard's tone would in horror, so create discomfort and unease. In some ways, conventional horror music even manipulates our psychology into feeling afraid, such as utilizing sounds we associate with danger from millions of years of evolution.

Despite this similarity, I still believe the Shepard's tone to be significantly different, due to the fact that no matter how horror movies you watch, how used to tension you become, a Shepard's tone might give you a literal panic attack. Or, no matter how much of a scaredy cat you are, a Shepard's tone might make you feel happy.

So given that Shepard's tones have the capacity to give people actual harmful conditions when they're heard, is it really all that ok to use them? And furthermore, if one used a Shepard's tone to create a sense of unease in a piece of media, would it be cheating?

There are actually a number of examples of Shepard's tones being used in media, from Super Mario 64's endless stairs to The Dark Knight's batpod to Franz Ferdinand's 'Always Ascending.' These pieces use the Shepard's tone to great effect, but are using far tamer versions of the Shepard's tone than what is possible, such as myNoise's Binaural Shepard's tone generator. (Linked below. You've been warned.)

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/shepardAudioIllusionToneGenerator.php

So there are examples of the Shepard's tone being used in media, but not using the full brain melting capabilities of the tone, so should we be using this power at all? Should a disclaimer be placed at the beginning of a piece of media that uses the full destructive power of the Shepard's tone? Probably, but I don't really have a diffinitive answer. It's probably more about finding the sweet spot. You don't want people fainting while they play your game, but the Shepard's tone is a very powerful tool nonetheless.

But is it too powerful of a tool? If you used it in a piece of media, would it be cheating? It kind of seems like a cheap way of building tension, just slap one sound in there and that's that. Personally, I think it's more nuanced than that.

Take jumpscares. No, really, take them. I don’t want them anymore. They're cheap, they're overdone, and they're lazy, like the joke I just made. As much as I could bash jumpscares all day, there's still something about a masterfully pulled off jumpscare that manages to elevate a film despite the concept of jumpscares being overused and cheap. A good writer knows that jumpscares relieve tension and will go out of their way to account for that. Many great pieces of horror avoid jumpscares entirely, but others don't. The same goes for gaming. Jumpscares are everywhere, par for the course and often don't work very well. The games that create horror without jumpscares go on to be some of the best horror titles ever, but jumpscares are still useful and they don't necessarily make a piece of art bad. It's the use of jumpscares as a one stop shop for scares that makes them so frowned upon. I believe the same should be said for the Shepard's tone.

Should the Shepard's tone be used in a piece of horror media, it should be sparingly used as a deliberate artistic decision that makes sense given the overall work and that elevates the moments it is used without becoming stale.

Also maybe don’t use the brain melting versions unless you want your audience to leave because they physically cannot take it.

To anyone who actually finished reading this monster of a post: What the actual heck, you must be as mentally ill as I am. Cheers.

#thinking #horror #music #sound design #ethics #essay #long reads

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