Are you a video maker and wish to introduce suspense, thrill, drama, or horror in your projects? Make use of royalty-free suspenseful music and have your audience digging their nails into their palms!
We all know that choosing the right music for your video is crucial. But, it’s even more important when you are trying to create suspense, as the music speaks directly to the fear center of the brain, meaning the right kind of music is what you need to keep your viewers at the edge of their seats.
If you are finding it hard to pick the best suspenseful tracks for your videos, we have put together a list of our favorites that are certain to evoke strong emotions from your audience!
Summary
Part 1: Top Royalty Free Suspense Music to Download
1. Cinematic Suspenseful Piano
An ingenious piece of piano music that is dark and full of mystery. Use it as an introduction for scary movies, trailer background music, and jingles.
Free Cinematic Suspenseful Piano Download
2. Epic Staccato
Here’s an exciting orchestral track that gradually peaks to its climax, offering a lot of drama for YouTube videos and films, as well as endless runner games.
3. Dark Movie
A dark film score is a symphony of various orchestral instruments providing the perfect backdrop for dark political documentaries, suspense films, YouTube montages, and more.
4. Countdown
A work of art featuring analog clock ticking and deep, eerie electronic sounds that can be used to build tension and create fear. This is a must-have!
5. Suspense
Download this intimidating royalty-free suspense music track comprising of a dark ambient intro followed by high-pitched metallic sounds. Can you already feel the dark forces engulfing you?
Let your audiences feel the same by using this track in your YouTube video credits or horror movie trailers.
6. Suspenseful Cinematic Electronic
Find the ideal track to enhance blood-curling sequences in your YouTube videos, movies, advertising projects, and vlogs as unnatural synthesizer sounds crash with frantic percussion elements in this clip.
Download Suspenseful Cinematic Electronic Now
7. To Suspense
A terrifying piece of suspenseful electronic music combining some nice pulses with dramatic synth basslines. Make your cinematic sequences darker with this intimidating royalty-free suspense music free download.
8. Tension Suspenseful Drama Piano Music
This arrangement is made up of a simple piano melody played over tense strings. The simplicity of it makes for a creepy and anticipatory atmosphere.
Download Tension Suspenseful Drama Piano Music Now
9. Hero Epic
It’s war! And what better way to introduce the battlefield than this emotional soundtrack combining powerful drums, emotional strings, and an eerie wind section that is reminiscent of battle and gore.
10. Cinematic Suspense Background
Sinister yet controlled dark ambient music that can be used for tense scenes in your films, vlogs, and documentaries to accompany barren wastelands and lost places.
Download Cinematic Suspense Background Now
11. Countdown Drums
Build cinematic tension in your video projects with this powerful percussion beat that counts the time to zero, climaxing into a distant bang fit to introduce a dramatic moment.
12. Classical Cinematic Action
Enhance your videos with this dark instrumental track. You’ll find it will make the perfect composition for action and horror scenes.
Download Classical Cinematic Action Now
13. Open The Gates
If you are looking for a provocative theme to accompany your intros, trailers, credits, time-lapses, or video game promos, you would certainly be captivated by this intriguing yet cool track featuring spacey synths and darker spiccato strings followed by deep bass lines, quirky drums, frenzied violins, and piano bits.
14. Suspense Fear Horror Tension Music
This track would successfully convey some tumultuous emotions including angst, terror, doubt, and fear of the unknown.
Download Suspense Fear Horror Tension Music Now
15. Dark Dangerous Tension Thriller
A spooky track featuring deep electronic noises to create a haunting feeling that resonates with tension, worry, uneasiness, and an overall ominous environment.
Download Dark Dangerous Tension Thriller Now
16. Stranger At Night
Keep your viewers glued by adding some suspense to your films with this dramatic background score. The piano, muted beat, and sinister abstract noises make the anxious feeling of being chased come to the forefront of this track.
Download Stranger At Night Now
17. Dark Suspenseful Thriller
This perpetual fast-moving piano creates a feeling of looking over one’s shoulder. Long, tense string elements add to the menacing feeling.
Download Dark Suspenseful Thriller Now
18. Dramatic Suspense Orchestral Female Voice
A ghostly choir of female voices adds an element of drama to this spooky track. Its evocative nature creates fear and tension almost right away.
Download Dramatic Suspense Orchestral Female Voice Now
19. Take Shelter
A slow-moving but intense composition that builds subtle tension as it goes. This would be great for trailers, promos, and anything needing added suspense.
20. Rush Piano
This confusion-creating, breath-holding short track is less than a minute long and does wonders for causing tension to rise. It’s a bit of an unusual one, but worth having in your collection!
Part 2: Tips for Using Suspenseful Music
Music plays an important part in creating a tense or dramatic cinematic experience, especially when you want to build anticipation, suspenseful music can add an edge to your movies and YouTube videos when used correctly.
Here are some tips to create hair-raising videos that would keep your audience on the edge:
- Instruments such as the piano, synthesizer, or string instruments have been traditionally used to create a combination of eerie, unnatural sounds. However, that should not stop you from experimenting with new instruments such as the Apprehension Engine designed to play horror music for some spooky sounds.
- Use crescendos to build tension gradually before revealing an object or character in your video. A crescendo can be understood as a piece of music that keeps building in volume and intensity until it reaches the peak that coincides with your climax or reveal. This could be done with percussive instruments or playing minor chords repeatedly for an uneasy sound.
- Raise the tempo to have your audiences’ hearts beating faster with escalated music notes. The logic is simple, fear increases your heartbeat, and by simulating this in the tempo of your score, you can create some nail-biting moments effortlessly in your video.
- Juxtaposition two opposites together for a sinister effect. Remember the scene from Oldboy where a man is tortured with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing in the background? The classical piece manages to exemplify the horror in the scene in an extraordinary fashion.
Using the right music at the right place can evoke strong emotions, creating a lasting impact on your viewers. At Motion Array, you can find tons of royalty-free suspense music ranging from horror to panicky to bloodcurdling to help you achieve the drama and emotion you need for your video project. Start exploring now.
