There are three notes for when shit gets real. The popular “Dun Dun Duuun” has been around for centuries and pops up in every piece of media. You know what notes I’m talking about when I say “Dun Dun Duuun.” There’s even a Wikipedia entry for “Dun Dun Duuun!”
A dun on the Eb, another dun on the C, and a final duuun on the F#. This music interval is the infamous “diabolus in musica,“ a tritone between the C and F#. This interval is so evil that medieval churches banned it. The final duuun is a type of diminished chord. At least that’s how it sounds to my tinnitus-y ears. I’m not a blind autistic guy, so I can’t perfectly break down a 10-note chord.
Technically, the chord is a F#6(#11) or a Gb6(#11). I know some music nerd is going to get mad at me for being so enharmonically disgusting. But if you think of the above example in G minor with a latent IV V cadence, it makes sense to mix and match sharps and flats.
These notes have been widely used as a shorthand for suspense—in Victorian melodramas, radio, and cartoons—so you know they’re the right notes.
“Dun Dun Duuun” might have inspired (or been inspired) by the dino-brawl from Fantasia with The Rite of Spring providing the score. Three similar notes play over the death of the stegosaurus (not my favorite dinosaur).
Dick Walter recorded the popular sting known as Shock Horror (A), but he says he probably got it from his mom’s old melodramas. It must be nice to have composed a piece of music that people know phonetically. The sting is timeless owing to its orchestral sound, but it’s a little long for today’s audiences.
There is a new suspense sting in town that is gaining popularity—the alert sound from the game Metal Gear Solid. In keeping with refinement culture, the alert sound is even more economical than dun dun duuun. This is a single dun, or rather a ree! with strong feline energy.
This is the suspense sting that zoomers are familiar with because they play videogames rather than listen to Victorian melodramas on a restored 19th-century Victrola gramophone. Or wait maybe they do do that.
The alert sound is a diminished seventh chord, a very goofy chord indeed. It’s a close relative of the major sixth sharp eleventh (dun dun duuun chord) with a one note difference. Instead of a major third, this chord has a minor third. In fact, it’s all minor thirds, which is why it’s so clownish.
When I was a young’un, I used the diminished seventh chord exclusively with no regard for my audience or my own ears. I was trying to be Stravinsky Jr. Now that I’m older I’m more into the maturity of the major sixth sharp eleventh chord, even if I can’t get my enharmonic spellings correct.
