Drone of Dread

"What we want is to create a powerful sense of dread."
*DUUUUUURRRRRRRRRN*
"See? The longer the note, the more dread."

— Super Hans, Peep Show

In music, a drone is a sustained, low, continuous sound, note or tone-cluster. Music based around drones is minimalist and focuses on texture, timbre, and in some cases harmonic sonorities, with less focus on rhythm and melody. The drone note or chord, called a "pedal point", creates tension as the chords and harmonies change over top of it, leading to temporary dissonance.

Because the atmosphere created by this kind of music tends to be creepy and unsettling, it is a close cousin of the "Psycho" Strings and Scare Chord, and the two often overlap, but are just as often very distinct: the original psycho strings, for instance, are not drony at all. Many drones do not use strings, rather relying on low brass instruments, woodwinds, buzzy synthesizers, pipe organ, or weird apparatuses and machines to produce their sounds.

Drone-based music can delve into Nightmare Fuel particularly efficiently if it uses what is called "infrasound," which simply put, is sound pitched so low that it's just barely above the human threshold of hearing it as an individual tone. Studies have been conducted showing that this ultra low pitched sound, while almost undetectable to people, has a strange ability to cause nervousness, and even physical discomfort, despite the listener not even being aware of hearing it. There's even some speculation that local harmonic resonance in certain areas is responsible for people perceiving those locations as being haunted.

Frequently used in Horror stories (particularly Psychological Horror ones), but can show up in other genres as well, such as thrillers and mysteries, ( generally as a way to highlight that, whatever the appearances are, something very wrong/unusual is going on under the fragile surface of reality. The low drone acts as musical foreshadowing.

Not to be confused with the similarly named part of a bagpipe (which however does produce a droning sound), an Attack Drone, the sound made by a heavy bomber aircraft before it bombs its targets to rubble, or a male honey bee (even though the musical element, the instrument part and the robot are all named after the animal, which in turn is named after the onomatopoeia for the sound it makes). Note that old-fashioned bagpipes and the like do rely heavily on the more contemplative drone in place of a bass section.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Worldwide Reveal Trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 overlays scenes of Monumental Damage with a chilling, rhythmic, atonal blast reminiscent of a siren, only a couple registers lower and slower. As the film progresses, it is combined in chorus with the tone used for the Emergency Alert System in the United States.

Anime & Manga

• Mononoke: When the Kabuki Sounds are replaced by low-droning brass instruments, you know something creepy is about to happen.
• Serial Experiments Lain: The powerlines make an ominous humming sound, made creepier by the implication that Lain is the only one who hears it.
• The track Blue Summers of the Trigun anime consists mostly of this.

Film — Animated

• The leitmotif of the Prowler in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a repeated, discordant screech/roar, underscoring the impression of a high-tech predator implacably chasing its prey.
• In Turning Red, this is combined with "Psycho" Strings and a Scare Chord for the sequence where Mei discovers her mother is spying on her at school.

Film — Live-Action

• 2001: A Space Odyssey: Whenever the Monolith is involved, drony contemporary classical music composed by György Ligeti (see below) is heard.
• The ABCs of Death: The closing credits cleverly uses dialogue, sound effects and bits of score from all of the shorts to create a dreadful ambient piece that lasts the duration of the credits. Sounds from each short pop up when the respective short's credits are on screen.
• Antichrist: With the exception of Händel's "Lascia ch'io pianga", used in the prologue and conclusion, the soundtrack consists entirely of drones.
• Apollo 11: This 2019 documentary uses a lot of drones, especially in the section leading up to the launch. This may be to give a modern audience some of the tension that would have been felt back in 1969. We know now that the mission was a success, but every step had a non trivial risk of death, and everyone involved would have been very aware of this.
• Avengers: Infinity War opens with one of these, notably replacing the bombastic music accompanying the Marvel Studios-logo. This immediately clues the audience in to just what kind of movie this is...
• Sinoia Caves' soundtrack for Beyond the Black Rainbow makes good use of droning notes, especially during the 1966 flashback scene with the song "1966: Let the New Age of Enlightenment Begin".
• Citizenfour has an eerie, static-y noise that appears whenever the US government is doing something sneaky like surrounding Edward Snowden's house (and his unsuspecting girlfriend) with "maintenance vans" shortly after Snowden's leaks hit the news or detaining one of the reporters' partners for nine hours at an airport under "national security".
• Several parts of the soundtrack to Close Encounters of the Third Kind use drones reminiscent of the aforementioned Gyorgy Ligeti; e.g., the piece when the aliens emerge from the mothership at the end is similar to "Requiem", the Monolith music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In The Dark Knight, the Joker's leitmotif is a dissonant droning which sounds like running a razor across a piano string. (It was actually achieved by heavily sawing on the D note on a cello.)
  • In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane's theme "Gotham's Reckoning" begins with a long droning note to start the film off with tension, but then the rest of the song proceeds with long-held low notes and a manic repetition of Bane's "Deshi Deshi Bashara Bashara" motif, communicating that even though the CIA feel like they're in control of the situation, they're playing right into Bane's hands. Once Bane executes his plan, the music ramps up in intensity.
• This is practically a Characteristic Trope for David Lynch, typically used to make something mundane suddenly terrifying.
  • The film Eraserhead loves using it, and to great effect; an especially unnerving drone is played at the end, matching the equally terryfing imagery.
• Goblin's soundtrack for Dawn of the Dead (1978) is full of this trope.
• The ominous drones denoting the presence of evil spirits in The Evil Dead (1981).
• Used repeatedly in the German film Das Experiment.
• A Field in England uses this frequently throughout the soundtrack to signify that there is something off about the field the characters find themselves in.
• The march of the SS battalion in Fury (2014) in accompanied not just by the soldiers singing an (authentic) SS marching song in universe, but also by a drone on the soundtrack to amplify the sense of fear at seeing several hundred SS marching for war while our protagonists are down to five men and an immobilized tank.
• In Happy Feet Two one accompanies every instance of the moving icebergs advancing the conflict.
• Used in The Hurt Locker when the main character finds a cord on an IED that reveals a daisy chain of about 8 more
• Used by Hans Zimmer in the score of Inception to solidify the "wrongness" of the dream worlds.
• Irréversible has a horrible techno drone repeat over and over in the infamous Fire Extinguisher scene, consisting of one recurring note, bent higher than lower, in a cyclical wave.
• The long organ notes at the beginning of Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi score have this effect.
  • It led to the robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000 chanting the film's name anytime a film's music resorted to this trope.
• Peter Gabriel's soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ had a lot of this. Peter even lampshaded it in an interview at the time, saying that his rule of thumb while composing the soundtrack was "When in doubt, Drone."
• Other than the slow "Psycho" Strings below the opening credits, and some music performed onscreen by the characters and then under the end credits, this is Martha Marcy May Marlene's only soundtrack.
• Nope: An ominous synth drone swells beneath the "from Jordan Peele" credit in the trailer. It is the same sound the UFO makes when it is first seen at the ranch during the film proper.
• For the documentary De Nuremberg à Nuremberg, Vangelis used several menacing/sad synth drones to convey War Is Hell and the horrors that came in the wake of Nazi Germany.
• In Shredder Orpheus, the EBN programming is accompanied by a sustained droning sound to show the brainwashing, soul-sucking effects of prolonged exposure to Hades' network.
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has the Probe make this droning WUB WUB WUB sound along with an inhuman electronic sounding screeching, which turns out to be whale calls when played back underwater.
• Terminator:
  • In The Terminator, a frightful metallic-sounding droning theme plays as the Terminator prepares to shoot Sarah Connor in the night club.
  • In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a terror-inducing droning sound plays in the background whenever the T-1000 makes an appearance.
• The use of a crescendo-going ominous drone in the very first seconds of There Will Be Blood quickly established the strange nature of the movie.
• John's Carpenter's The Thing (1982) makes heavy use of minimalist drones to evoke apocalyptic dread. The political/sociological documentary The Power of Nightmares borrows from The Thing's soundtrack.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Repeated drones were used in the trailer for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.
  • Lockdown's leitmotif in Transformers: Age of Extinction has a prominent one. Because being an Implacable Man, Hero Killer and Knight of Cerebus all rolled into one wasn't enough.
• Experimental 45-minute short film Wavelength has a buzzing drone on the soundtrack that starts out low (50 Hz) and goes all the way up to 12,000 Hz where it becomes a high-pitched whine. The droning noise establishes a sense of unease and discomfort that is combined with bizarre, surrealistic imagery from beginning to end.

Live-Action TV

• The Season 3 intro of Babylon 5 features low sustained synth chords, combined with an echoing Dramatic Timpani.
• The soundtrack to Chernobyl is overall very subtle and understated, but uses a low, unsettling droning sound - reminiscent of the workings of the fateful power plant - as a common motif to add to the series' bleak, eerie atmosphere and the dread of nuclear radiations.
• Doctor Who: Throughout Season 11, any time they show the crack in reality, a quiet but deep pulsing rumble plays on the soundtrack. For a show known for gloriously melodramatic Orchestral Bombing, it's impressively creepy in its subtlety.
• Feel Good: Mae experiences a sharp, staticky drone whenever they get an addiction trigger, like seeing someone do cocaine, but the first time we hear it is when Mae and George hit off at the comedy club, and Mae realizes they're going to end up in another whirlwind romance.
• Hannibal uses one for its uniquely ominous opening sequence.
• Law & Order makes extensive use of this (at a low pitch) when the (usually disturbing) key revelation comes out, either on the witness stand or (better yet) in chambers or an interview room.
• The miniseries Manhunt: Unabomber overkills the heck out of this, with many scenes involving the Unabomber not only using a drone but also using a very shrill, almost eardrum-piercing pitch.
• The end music of each episode of The Shadow Line is the siren drone of doom, but high pitched instead of low. It's singularly disturbing.
• When they were testing the Brown Note myth on MythBusters, the boys tripped over this trope: the myth involved a victim surrounded by stereo speakers that would play various frequencies. Although they couldn't make anybody cack their pants, both Adam and Jamie noted that when the speakers played an especially low frequency, that they felt very uncomfortable and nervous for reasons they could not explain.
• For some reason, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) has seen fit to accompany the rating cards before each movie they show with one. The effect is unintentionally unnerving.

Music

• Most of 16 Horsepower's output is ominous to begin with, but when David Eugene Edwards breaks out his Chemnitzer concertina or hurdy-gurdy, the ominousness gets cranked up to 11.
  • Ditto Woven Hand, Edwards' followup music project. He frequently plays drones underneath the main melody, to make these already-menacing songs even more so.
• Detroit goth-techno duo ADULT. use this trope to horrific effect in "Teeth Out Pt. II", which consists of heavily reverbed vocal chants over a synth bass drone. Notably, it's the first track of theirs to lack drums.
• Some ambient music is based around sounds like this.
  • In particular the dark ambient artist Lustmord, who uses the aforementioned infrasound in his music to incredibly unsettling degree.
  • Jack Dangers' album Music for Planetarium.
  • Most pieces by Greg Davis (an ambient artist, not to be confused with other musicians of the same name).
  • Both albums by Dilate.
• Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II has a lot of songs that incorporate this trope to unnerving effect, e.g. "Tassels", which inspired the forementioned "City of the Dead" in Fallout, but "Stone in Focus" manages to have a drone that sounds nice.
• Some of Autechre's ambient works, such as "Parallel Suns", which sounds like Silent Hill ambience, "Perlence Suns", and "Perlence Subrange 6-36".
• blowupnihilist use these in many of his works, as heard here, and on the Objective Nothingness EP.
• Bull of Heaven.
• Cabaret Voltaire does this a lot with their earlier work, especially their first 3 albums, as well as Richard H. Kirk's final two solo albums under the moniker.
• Calibretto's "American Psycho" uses a sustained organ drone for an effective Last Note Nightmare.
• Carbon Based Lifeforms' "VLA" is just one long droning track with some distant chirping/screeching sounds that, depending on your choice of version, lasts 10 minutes (album version), 45 minutes (EP edit for music streaming services), or 1 hour (full version).
• The Caretaker 's Everywhere at the End of Time starts off as slightly distorted old music, but resonant drones become increasingly prominent in the tracks as the series goes on, symbolizing the protagonist's memory loss. The sixth and final installment consists almost entirely of empty droning, with any actual music samples being slowed down to the point of being practically inaudible.
• Cathedrelic, a collaboration between ambient artists R. Lee Dockery and Smokey Emery, is comprised of two 1/2 hour-long drone pieces that sound like they were lifted from one of Aubrey Hodges' video game soundtracks (mentioned below).
• "Modern Ruin Part 2", the Hidden Track on Covenant's Modern Ruin album (only on the CD, not the digital release), is reminiscent of the forementioned Quake soundtrack, as well as the otherworld hospital ambience in Silent Hill. Likewise for the ambient piece "Cryotank Expansion" from their first album. The opening track of Skyshaper, "Ritual Noise", starts with a siren-like drone.
• New-wave band Daniel Amos opens "¡Alarma!" (off the album of the same name) with thirty seconds of buzzing synths. On Doppelgänger, a similar synth drone connects "Hollow Man" and "Mall (All Over the World)".
• David Morales often likes to insert moody synth interludes into his house remixes. His remix of Shawn Christopher's 'Another Sleepless Night' rather jarringly goes from candlelight jazz to a pitch-black brooding drone. The dub omits the jazz altogether and keeps the drone.
• Black Metal performer Echtra used this a lot on his first solo album. His later albums used drone, too, but usually with the intention of creating a trance-like meditative state rather than creating an atmosphere of dread. These albums also no longer resemble Black Metal, and arguably can't be characterised as metal at all (ambient is probably a better categorisation of most of their content, though there are still a few intense passages on some of them).
• ElP:
  • Time Out of Joint (TOJ).
  • Accidents Don't Happen feat Cage & Camu Tao.
• They Come Out at Night by Eschaton combines drones with Drum N Bass beats.
• Fever Ray's "If I Had a Heart", used as the main theme for Vikings.
• Freaky DNA uses drones throughout "Bass Armonium", and in parts of "Fog Stalker" and "Iced Cubed".
• Fuck Buttons prominently utilize drones in Sweet Love for Planet Earth, OK, Let's Talk about Magic, Race You To My Bedroom / Spirit Rise, Colours Move, and Brainfreeze.
• Folk/avant-garde project Giles Corey also has used this both to create a sense of unease (on the Self-Titled Album) and to create a state of trance (on Deconstructionist, in whose liner notes doing this was explicitly stated as being a specific goal of the album; the album also uses binaural beats and other techniques with this in mind).
• Gregorian chant music often uses a vocal drone to underpin chants, sung by several choristers careful only to breathe at different times. It's either a single extended note or a slowly shifting sequence, and the effect is gorgeous (and, yes, a little creepy).
• Post-Rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor have always used this trope a fair amount (the intro to "The Dead Flag Blues", the mid-section of "Sleep", etc.), and its prominence in their music has increased with time. Two tracks on each of their two latest albums consist almost entirely of drone.
• György Ligeti's compositions spanned a large array of different styles, but some of them featured really prominent drones, notably the pieces Requiem and Atmospheres (both heard in 2001: A Space Odyssey). The former combines drones with Ominous Latin Chanting, and the latter features the largest cluster chord ever written, with every note in the chromatic scale over a range of five octaves being played at once — that's 60 different notes.
• John Cale tends to carry this with him wherever he goes.
• "You Can't Cool Off in the Mill Pond You Can Only Die" by John Fahey (not Blind Joe Death) adds throat singing for more drone.
• Klaus Schulze's debut album Irrlicht consists predominantly of drones played on a broken and modified electric organ against a reversed recording of an orchestra rehearsal. Ominous organ and synth drones are also heavily used in "Conphära" and "Neuronengesang" from Cyborg, "Ways of Changes" and "Voices of Syn" from Black Dance, "Wahnfried 1883" and the reissue bonus tracks "Echoes of Time" and "Solar Wind" from Timewind, and the second half of "Mindphaser" from Moondawn.
• L'Étoile du Matin Noir, an EP of dark ambient and noise music featuring many drones, released for free under Creative Commons.
• A lot on Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta, most prevalent on "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore". The title track, not actually included on the album, uses the trope even more prominently.
• Muslimgauze does this alot; but with the tribal variety of Middle-Eastern chants and beats added in to give texture. His earlier work on the other hand replicated industrial-style drones from the likes of his contemporaries.
• Several songs by Nine Inch Nails, including "Sanctified," "Something I Can Never Have," "Even Deeper," and the ending to "Hurt."
• Nordra's "Remembering", from Pylon III, combines sub-bass and synth strings drones with a repeating One-Woman Wail hook.
• Nurse with Wound, especially the minimalist album Soliloquy for Lilith.
• OGRE & Dallas Cambpell prominently utilize Drone of Dread to horrific effect on their All Hallows and Beyond the Infinite albums, notably in "Tomorrow's Headline", "Lockstep", "Of Terror", and "Carve" on the former, and "Monolith I", "A Great Big Mystery", "Monolith II", "Open the Doors", "Daisy", and "Jupiter" on the latter.
• The intro of The Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me".
• The intro to Red Rider's still-popular "Lunatic Fringe".
• Robert Fripp and Jeff Fayman's 2000 collaboration A Temple in the Clouds uses "Frippertronics" guitar drones. link
• Norwegian duo Röyksopp have this hidden track on their album 'Senior': [1]
• Confirm Humanity by multi-genre artist Soularflair resembles the Doom PSX soundtracks as well as Mark Morgan's drone ambient pieces from the first two Fallout games.
• Swans have done this quite frequently. Examples include "Surrogate Drone" and "The Seer".
• Tears for Fears: A deep, lingering synth drone underscores "The Prisoner".
• Some Throbbing Gristle material, such as "Slug Bait" and the legendary "Hamburger Lady".
• Twinker from Shrill (or is it Shrill from Twinker?) starts out with heavy brooding droning synth which it keeps for most of what is otherwise an ear-piercing acid techno banger.
• The Velvet Underground used this a lot, especially live, which may not come as a surprise since John Cale, mentioned above, was a member. A good example is their live improvisation "Melody Laughter".
  • When Velvet Underground alumnus Nico started writing her own music on harmonium, she used this trope ubiquitously. The Marble Index, Desertshore, and The End... contain particularly notable examples of it.
• Wilco's "Less Than You Think" contains three minutes of piano and vocals, followed by twelve minutes of drones that were generated by each member on a synthesizer. It was meant to be a musical depiction of frontman Jeff Tweedy's migraines.
• Xera's "Inda" starts off with a rather creepy, minute-long drone performed on a rabel.

Theatre

• The last of the six Sea Interludes in Britten's opera Peter Grimes (and the only one not available in a concert version), "Fog", sustains one fifthless dominant seventh chord quietly for several minutes under various orchestral laments and outbursts.
• In Trouble in Tahiti, a low held note on the cello fluctuates in volume as Dinah and Sam, not looking at each other, despair of reconciling.

Video Games

• An unintentional example is the Level 3 music in "Lollipops" from Action 52. Listening to it in a ROM utility is scary enough, but that's nothing compared to how it sounds in-game.
• The AMBER headset in AMBER: Journeys Beyond does this by the low hum it emits while you're wearing it, and given that it enables you to not only see and hear where ghosts are, but also project your mind into them, it fits this trope well.
• One accompanies a victory for the Imposter(s) in Among Us as a sort of hopeless note following the defeat of the innocents.
• Animal Crossing has the chilling and iconic “K.K. Dirge”. The song begins with a high-pitched, quiet drone that could probably equate to a One-Woman Wail in-universe, and the ‘chorus’ consists of several low-pitched ones as well.
• In Baba is You, whenever you lose control over all in-game objects (either by breaking "X is You" rules or creating situations where the rules no longer apply), the music cuts out in favor of a deep, windy howl.
• The mission "Remember... No Russian" from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has a particularly unsettling droning bass line playing throughout the whole level to emphasize the unsettling nature of the level in which you commit an act of wanton murder and terrorism. One variation of this, appropriately titled "Airport Stalk", also plays during the Terminal Spec-Ops mission.
• In Chrono Trigger, when you enter Magus' castle there is at first no music, then when you proceed deeper into the castle this song plays. It is entirely a Drone of Dread, with only one violin chord and a half-laugh, half-sob sound effect repeated throughout. The battle music doesn't play when you encounter monsters, and an echo effect is added on to any sounds produced by the fighting.
• In Dark Fall II: Lights Out, one of the places you visit is an underwater lab, and its machinery emits a steady ambient drone while you're inside it, with ocacsional bits of futuristic music to provide variety.
• The theme of the eponymous Darkest Dungeon, "The Final Combat", uses this to underscore its status as The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• DayZ has its entire soundtrack as this, and its pure, unadulterated, terror. The best part is the music always seem to come up at the worst moment, making nearly every situation incredibly tense and every player paranoid of what's around the corner.
• Doom:
  • The soundtracks to Doom 64 and the PSX/Saturn port of Doom, both scored by Aubrey Hodges, are mostly made of this trope.
  • Doom³, in keeping with the more unsettling atmosphere, has a soundtrack and ambient sound design composed largely of subtle drones.
  • My House, as an homage to the aforementioned "Everywhere At The End of Time", starts with the Doom II MAP 01 music "Running From Evil", but progressively corrupts it upon entering the second version of the house, ultimately degrading it into a drone ambient track titled "Memory=Entryrrrr////" when the player enters the Dark World.
• The level "Dark Side Part Two" in Duke Nukem 3D includes The Monolith as an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, accompanied by similar droning choral ambience.
• The infamously scary Giygas battle music in EarthBound (1994), which quite literally exists to unnerve the player as much as possible during the boss fight.
  • Before the boss fight, The Cave of the Past's theme "The Place" also fits the bill, made from a sample of 'Deirdre' by The Beach Boys of all things. It solidifies how truly alone the Chosen Four are and how hostile the land is, stuck in robot bodies with no way to return to their original time until Giygas is defeated.
  • The Mother's Day Graveyard/Rosemary Manor, cave themes and the Giegue battle theme in EarthBound Beginnings also use this, more so the second and third examples.
• Ecco the Dolphin:
  • The Medusa Bay theme uses creepy sitar-like drones, which adds to the desolate feeling.
  • Undercaves also has a droning bassline.
  • The Lagoon, in addition to the level of the same name, also forebodingly plays in Home Bay after Ecco's family is swept away by the storm.
• The soundtrack for the Soul Cairn (plane of the undead) in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim consists of soft but held bass notes and silent ambience to create a feeling of unease in such an unnatural location.
  • Some night overland themes for the regular Skyrim world contain this, too. Particularly the ones meant to play near ruins or magical locations.
• Fallout, epically with the songs composed by Mark Morgan, notably in City of the Dead, Vats of Goo, and Industrial Junk. Likewise for Gold Slouch from Fallout 2.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has a number of original drone ambient tracks, such as Garden of Evil (Dungeon 6) and Boys & Ghouls (Dungeon 8)(especially disturbing when heard in the Divide), as well as reusing many from the first two games.
  • Fallout 4: Far Harbor has "The Children Of Atom" with it's heavy drone being punctuated by ominous chanting to Atom.
• A staple of the FEAR soundtracks: Insertion, Initiation, She's Afraid of You, Bad Water, Armacham Rooftops, Premonition, Distorted Realities, et al.
• Five Nights at Freddy's features drone ambient which is pretty akin to Aubrey Hodges' soundtrack for the PlayStation port of Doom, all of this to keep the player on edge as they're stalked by Freddy Fazbear.
• Halo:
  • Several pieces in Halo 2, eg the first and last parts of "Sacred Icon Suite", use choral drones. Of particularly disturbing note is the Gyorgy Ligeti-esque ambience in the dark corridors of the Flood-infested High Charity. As with the first game, the remastered Anniversary soundtrack amplifies the horror factor.
  • The original Halo: Combat Evolved has "Suite Autumn"(even creepier in the remake), the bass drone in The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe, the middle of "Truth & Reconciliation Suite", which also uses "Psycho" Strings, "Lament for Pvt. Jenkins", and parts of "Library Suite" (remastered as "Dewey Decimate" in Anniversary). Other reworked ambient tracks in Halo: CE Anniversary that amplify the creepiness include "Unfortunate Discovery" (originally "What Once Was Lost") and "Bad Dream" (originally "Trace Amounts").
• In Hollow Knight, the Forgotten Crossroads theme changes to a much creepier drone arrangement after the Infection takes it over. The Hive also fittingly has a drone-based BGM. The Abyss's theme is a series of very low and very slow notes. They are actually part of the game's main theme, slowed by about 500%.
• The music in Hotline Miami switches to rather unsettling droning ambiance after a mission is completed, helping to unnerve the player and keep them on their toes even after everyone's dead which comes in handy in one mission when a van crashes through the entrance on your way out and tries to run you over.
• In The Journeyman Project, the underground maintenance area of the Mars Colony features a proto-Silent Hill-esque ambient drone that enhances the Nothing Is Scarier atmosphere. The ambience in the adjacent Shield Generator, where the player has to solve a Timed Mission Mastermind puzzle, is equally unsettling. The Pegasus Prime remake replaces the original's upbeat Mars Maze theme with a similar dark ambient track.
• Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days makes the unusual choice of having this instead of your usual crime shooter orchestral soundtrack. Created by Mona Mur, it uses a mixture of real life city noises, vintage synths, unusual software, guitar amps, and generally unsettling noise to create a sense of unease and to reflect the deteriorating mental states of its two criminal protagonists as they find themselves in increasingly chaotic situations. Here are some great examples of the soundtrack.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Fire Temple (v 1.0) music from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time combines this with Ominous Arabic Chanting, somewhat reminiscent of the aforementioned "Requiem" from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    • Also from Ocarina, the Shadow Temple music, which fits its undead and ghosts theme. The re-done Fire Temple music in later versions of the game replaced the Arabic Chanting in the Fire Temple with the same MIDI instrument.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the final boss theme features an eerie droning tune in the background.
    • The Day 3 Clock Town theme also has ominous low tones, which makes the cheerful melody from Days 1 and 2 sound pretty darn creepy.
    • Two words: Ikana Valley.
  • Some of the dungeon soundtracks in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
• In LISA : The Painful RPG, entering the Nice Neighborhood has you greeted with Blood For Sex, and the sight of a scientist hanging on a makeshift gallows sets the tone of the area.
  • It also makes an appearance in The Stinger, as a mutant Brad slowly crawls its way to Buddy, before a Smash to Black.
• In Luna Game 3, the music changes to a Giygas-esque drone after the slowdown and white noise Scare Chord. ^note This is actually a slowed-down and reversed version of the Sonic Rainboom Theme Music Power-Up from the MLP episode of the same name.
• Some of Marathon's music tracks, e.g. "Landing" and "Aliens Again", utilize Drones of Dread for atmospheric effect in the ship's dark corridors. The Pfhor ship and derelict Jjaro ship levels in Durandal and Infinity use eerie droning alien ambient sounds for the same purpose.
• In Marble Madness, the Aerial Race music changes to a pulsing single-note drone towards the end of the stage to ramp up the tension as they near the finish line.
• Mario:
  • The Big Boo's Haunt theme from Super Mario 64.
  • The World 4 background music from Super Mario Galaxy 2.
    • Also, the meteorites Mario/Luigi uses to fight Bowser.
• Mass Effect 3 gives the Reapers a chilling BWWOOOAAARRMM when they arrive. It's part of the soundtrack too. The Reapers actually use this with this trope in mind. The sound is there for the purpose of putting fear into their enemies.
• Amongst the Dead from Medal of Honor: Underground uses this alongside "Psycho" Strings, Ethereal Choir, and For Doom the Bell Tolls. Also, Passage to Iraklion, and Rescuing The G3 Officer from the first game.
• Metroid:
  • Tourian in Super Metroid features long drawn out notes as Samus makes her way to Mother Brain.
    • The Item Room theme is quite eerie. Oddly doubles as a Most Wonderful Sound since it often plays directly after beating a tough boss and/or getting a powerful upgrade. Though certain moments like discovering the broken metroid capsule after defeating Ridley can still make the music come off as incredibly ominous.
  • Metroid Fusion bases its entire soundtrack on this, with every song that isn't a boss theme, a chase theme, or background ambient noises featuring drawn-out low notes to increase the tension in every environment. Fittingly, this game is the closest the series comes to the Survival Horror genre, and given the series' roots in the Alien series, this is almost certainly a direct homage to The Thing (1982).
  • Metroid Prime has this in the Chozo Ruins Depths, the Space Pirate research facilities in Phendrana and the Phazon Mines, and Phazon-heavy areas such as Mines Level 3. Nearly every Phazon environment will also feature long notes coupled with Geiger Counter clicks to emphasize how unnatural phason is.
• Myst, though the Trope Codifier of the Beautiful Void genre, has quite creepy ambient tracks at times; notably the gateway, hallways, and caches of the Mechanical Age, the Stoneship Age's arrangement of Achenar's leitmotif, and the Temple in the Channelwood Age.
• Not for Broadcast: In the third part of Day 296: The Heatwave (although with no music), during the time Jeremy Donaldson is talking to Andy and Jenny, a low-pitched infrasound drone is faintly heard, but over time, it grows louder and louder, indicating that security is coming for Jeremy. It's pretty kinda bad if the Disrupt ad tape is not played, but it borders on Nightmare Fuel if Alex Winston did play the tape. What's even more unsettling is that in the latter scenario, when Jeremy dismisses Jenny and Andy on realizing that security is coming for him, he makes a final mano-a-mano broadcast with all tapes focused on him as the drone grows louder and louder, eventually reaching its climax as he puts the gun up close toward his head and, barring Jenny's pleas to cut to the ads, caps off his Final Speech with his usual Signing-Off Catchphrase before ending his own life with a Pretty Little Headshot to the temple.
• Obsidian uses this trope in two of its dream worlds with general MIDI.
  • The cube-shaped Bureau has a giant light bulb on one of its faces, which hums in this manner when you get close.
  • The second dream world uses this as background music, fitting what's meant to be a character's nightmare about an ominous Mechanical Spider. The hub factory it resides in consists largely of dark bass guitar notes, overlaid with high-pitched whining tones, and climbing scaffolding around the spider plays a distorted choir as you go. As you repair the spider, this music can make the situation more and more unsettling each time you return to the hub. And when you finish, the Spider comes alive and eats you, sending you to the next dream world.
• Oracle of Tao has mostly okay music. But a few of the songs are Brown Note material. Especially this one. If you pregnant, nursing, or hell just don't want a stomach ulcer, don't listen to this music.
• Ori and the Blind Forest uses drony ambience in the Misty Woods, and when Kuro is stalking Ori after the Forlorn Ruins to put the player on edge, the latter being combined with "Psycho" Strings.
• Pizza Tower has the track "Meatophobia", which plays whenever you approach a level's Pillar John. Interestingly, it's actually the taunt sound effect, just slowed down to an unrecognizable degree.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Yellow's version of Missingno causes the battle music to become dead static. Not quite a drone, but close and creepy as hell.
  • As for deliberate musical uses, the Distortion World theme in Platinum features a lot of drone.
  • Kyogre's theme in Sapphire can be described as "wow, things look pretty bad right now". Groudon's theme in Ruby can be described as "the sky is on fire and we are all going to die".
  • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has Mystery of the Fossils which has a drone as the bass which is paired off with an Ominous Music Box Tune. It plays out during two of the story's Gut Punches that both involve Pokémon being turned into stone.
• Portal 2 combines this with a One-Woman Wail in the track PotatOS's Lament
• In Project Firestart, one plays occasionally to add tension to the otherwise still ambiance, such as when Jon first arrives on the Prometheus.
• Quake has a soundtrack featuring many creepy drones, composed by Trent Reznor.
• The Resident Evil games like to use this, for example:
  • "The Second Floor", "Wandering Alone", and "The Underground Laboratory" in Resident Evil 2.
  • "Feel the Tense" and "Never Give Up the Escape" from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
  • "Deathtrap", "Lost in Darkness, "Narrow and Close, "Rush of Fear" and "Rush of Horror" from the Resident Evil remake.
  • Resident Evil 4, while more actionized, still has a plethora of scary drone pieces, especially Ruined Village, Noche(heard when first encountering a Plaga), Bitores Mendez(combined with "Psycho" Strings), Cold Sweat(combined with Heartbeat Soundtrack), Novistadors, and *cough* *cough* Regenerador.
• Rigid Force Alpha has "Suspense" when approaching a boss for the purpose of building suspense.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Shin Megami Tensei I when the music plays for the Terminals which acts as save points, starts with a long drone and repeats with a single tune that adds in the eerie soundtrack.
  • Used for macabre effect during the first couple of blocks of Eldritch Location Tartarus in Persona 3, since the party is venturing into the unknown in a place crawling with metaphysical manifestations of the human psyche. The effect goes away as they climb more floors and more and more instruments are added to the piece, and by the time they reach block 6 it's a complete composition.
  • Persona 4 features the glitchy, distorted, hard rock boss theme "A New World Fool", representing the damaged, twisted psyches of the characters who have the song as their theme: Taro Namatame and especially the true Killer and big bad, Adachi.
• SIGNALIS: That low humming noise that you can sometimes hear in the background isn't your system fan. It's the game. Yes, it is a Survival Horror game, why do you ask?
• This is the entire basis of the award-winning sound design in the Silent Hill series. When there isn't all that scraping crashing metal or absolute silence, there's usually low drones of things along the lines of, for example, deepened breathing sounds on the streets of the fog town in the original game. "Black Fairy" from the second game's otherworld hotel, with its Giygas-style distorted drone chords accompanied by a periodic screeching sound, ranks as one of the most horrifying music pieces in video game history. On a similar level of horror is the glass armonica drone that accompanies the lethal red light at the end of the Borley Haunted Mansion.
• In Spore, when you encounter the Grox, this song plays in their planets. It's an eerie mix of mechanical sounds accompanied by singing that (depending on your perspective) is either goofy or disturbing.
• Syphon Filter 2 uses this in the ambient score for its Airbase levels, both being tense insta-fail Stealth Based Missions playing as the virus-infected Lian Xing, and the first starting as a No-Gear Level where Lian is clad in only a hospital gown and has a limited time to find an adrenaline booster. The first ambient track is used again when Gabe Logan infiltrates the Agency Biolab, also sans equipment. Ditto Aljir Prison, the last mission where the player controls Lian before her condition worsens.
• System Shock 2 has dark ambient hums and occasional thumping noises lining almost every bit of the Von Braun and Rickenbacker spaceships. Sometimes it's obviously coming from computers or industrial machinery nearby, but other times...you can't really tell at all what's making those noises. And to top it all off? Even the main menu has a low electronic drone to it.
• Used commonly throughout the Thief series in certain segments of its ambient/atmospheric music. Particularly in scary missions.
• Twisted Metal:
  • "Stalk 'n Roll", the ambient track that plays in the Warehouse District Warfare and River Park Rumble stages of the first game when not in combat, is a drone-backed Anti-Christmas Song medley more suited to a Survival Horror game, in contrast to the heavy metal that makes up most of the soundtrack.
  • Most of the ambience in Twisted Metal: Black fits this trope, but Snowy Fields is the epitome of terrifying drone.
• Undertale has You Idiot which plays as Flowey gloats over the player before his boss fight.
  • Also, during the Genocide route, the music that plays when you've killed everyone in an area, "But Nobody Came", actually "Your Best Friend" massively slowed down and the "music" that plays when the Fallen Child speaks to you.
  • Chapter 2 of Deltarune has "Digital Roots", a droning sound that plays when Kris explores the basement of Queen's mansion alone as part of a quest leading to the chapter's Superboss.
• In Vanquish, the Romanov-Gs' One-Hit Kill super missiles emit a droning sound.
• The opening menu music for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
• The scary or suspenseful tunes in the When They Cry series use this often, like in Depressive Paranoia or Stupefaction.
• The Witness: As there is no score, the environments will give off subtle ambient cues — and some of the plot-heavy areas fall squarely into this trope.
• Yasunori Mitsuda's soundtrack for Xenogears has two of these: "The One Who Is Torn Apart" and "Omen". There's also "Jaws of Ice" which mainly focuses on two slowly-alternating tritone drone notes for a particularly unsettling effect.
• Several of the background songs from Yume Nikki, like the appropriately named "Hellish Hum".
• Ys:
  • The TurboGrafx-16 CD arrangement of "Beat of the Terror" from "'Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen'' features a droning ambient synth pad that enhances the creepy atmosphere of the Abandoned Mine.
  • Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter has a rare chiptune example in the form of "Pressure Road", which plays in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon prior to breaking Darm's spell on the Twin Goddesses.

Web Animation

• Rabbit Games: Ominous droning music plays when the player puts butter in the bowl in "Cooking Rabbit".

Webcomics

• The track Crystamanthequins from Homestuck is mostly defined, early on, by a harsh, droning note intermixed with a heavy drumbeat and high-pitched synth wails, although the drone dissolves towards the end. In the comic itself, it's used for [S] Make Her Pay, which depicts the most significant points in the troll Cycle of Revenge.

Web Original

• Used in this adaptation of a Fuan no Tane segment.
• The injury list for UrinatingTree's "This Week In Sportsball: NFL Week Two Edition (2020)" eschews the usual Taps in favor of a piece of ambient music that incorporates this. Considering the list consisted of forty-five injuries (eleven of which were season-enders) and two deaths, Taps would've been insufficient in terms of both tone and duration.
• Le Matos's soundtrack to the sci-fi horror web series EXODE utilizes this trope to terrifying effect.

Western Animation

• This trope is part of the appeal of the Hypnotoad from Futurama. Interestingly, it was originally just a placeholder sound until they found something better, but they decided it was just so wrong sounding that they had to keep it. According to David Cohen, the name for that particular sound effect in the editing machine is "Angry Machine". ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD.
• The Legend of Korra adds it to the soundtrack during season 2 with the Northern Water Tribe's invasion of the South Pole, among other instances. It also has an in-universe example: dark spirit Vaatu's Wave Motion Eye Beams go accompanied with a thrumming bass roar, similar to the Mass Effect example above.
  • In Book Two's finale, the drone also features prominently in the soundtrack during the Dark Avatar's attack.
  • The drone appears again in-universe during book four when Varrick's experiment with a spirit vine produces a similar blast of energy. His tech is weaponized against his will by Kuvira for her conquest and then mounted on a 25-story mech. It's heard many, many times during the series finale two-parter.
• Aku's theme from Samurai Jack is this trope, occasionally stopping for humorous moments.
• The Leitmotif of each of the members of The Diamond Authority of Steven Universe is a distinct rising and falling synth rhythm that slowly builds in volume before ebbing away again, showing their cold and stoic demeanor. It's made to sound "non-musical" and manages to be both relaxing and chilling, landing into this trope, as a result.
• Appears various times in Thomas & Friends, particularly in the more electronic-sounding early episodes. Combined with "Psycho" Strings in Season 2's "Ghost Train"

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