ITS SPOOKY TIME!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

This piece is a Theme and Variation so there is no real order you need to listen to it in. Feel free to flick around the timestamps to whatever section interests you :). The only things that I designed to be listened to in any specific order is the beginning and the end. I would recommend listening to the beginning because I don't spend any time establishing themes or melodic elements throughout the sections, so it may come across as a lot all of a sudden.

The text in italics is the story. I'm no writer and I'm coming up with it as I go, so please don't bully me. Apologies for any typos or errors, it is really early in the morning.

Intro - 00:00

Haunted Mansion - 01:10

Spooky Skeletons - 04:54

Creepy Circus - 07:15

Spirit of the Lake - 10:03

The Sun rises - 14:13

The Sun Sets (intro) - 00:00 - 01:10

You come back from a long day of work and you're just utterly defeated. Your manager keeps nagging you about every little thing and you've just had enough. "It's such a nightmare!" you say to yourself as you lay down in bed and begin to fall asleep. Suddenly you awaken and jerk your head up. "Where am I?" you ask. You look around and find yourself in the middle of the forest. The sun is setting and you better find a place to spend the night.

So this section is supposed to introduce the theme of the song. The main melody and whatnot, even though I never end up actually sticking to it faithfully xd. I ended up changing the melody for every single variation lol! When I say "Theme and Variation" I don't actually mean in the classical sense. I wanted to switch up the setting and instrumentation of each section. Y'know, play around with some instruments I've never used before.

Haunted Mansion/Museum 01:10 - 04:54

"Oh, thank goodness, a house! Someone must live there, they must know how to help me". You walk up to the door and you can hear people inside. You give a sturdy knock and the house goes silent. Hearing noises from the woods, you get the chills and enter. To your surprise, it looks like an old Victorian mansion. You look around for the people you heard earlier, but there is nobody... but you're not alone

Going into this section, I was planning to do the haunted mansion separately but I ran out of time. I went into this section with the idea of a haunted museum in mind, hence all the euphoniums and stuff. If I knew I wasn't going to get to a haunted mansion section, I'd have added a harpsichord and maybe even a saw. This section I do think is the most solid because it was before I got rushed/my brain melted. From this one onwards my transitions between sections become a whole lot less put together xd.

Spooky Skeletons - 04:54 - 07:15

Running for your dear life, you burst out the window on the second story of the mansion. You manage to grab onto a tree and climb your way down. You keep on running and running until you find a graveyard. You take a second to really think if this is a good place to be. You decide against it and you choose another direction. Suddenly, a hand reaches out from the ground and grabs your leg. You look down expecting a zombie, but it's a skeleton hand. You look around and you see more emerging from the ground. You struggle but you just can't seem to break its grip. For a skeleton, it's really strong.

You're left there surrounded by skeletons. One grabs your arms and another steps up in front of you. It reaches its bony hand into your pocket and it takes something out "What are you doing with my phone?!". The skeleton runs off and they all scatter into the woods. "Wait a second, did they just rob me?!"...

Screw the horror element, I wanted to make something cute! Fast-paced xylophones all around! Hopefully, you all weren't expecting something like spooky scary skeletons because the name of this section might be slightly misleading. Around this point, I was getting slightly creatively bankrupt because I also started working on ANOTHER project that to this date I have yet to finish. So uh, I am very smart.

Creepy Circus - 07:15 - 10:03

Stumbling around in the dark, you manage to see light in the distance. You rush towards it to get out of the dark woods. You get closer and it looks to be a carnival. Remembering what happened in the mansion, you are hesitant to explore, but you don't have many options. With your phone gone, you no longer have a torch. As you enter you hear a cackle and suddenly all the rides start moving.

You look to the center of the carnival and you see a little hut, You walk in and see a clown standing there. It turns around, staring at you with a wide uncanny smile. "You have 60 seconds to hide hehe. Once I find you it will not be fun!!" the clown says in a high raspy voice. Suddenly he starts counting. You sprint out and look for a place to hide. There's a carnival, a Ferris wheel and a fun house, "I'll go in there!"...

fast-forward since I'm lazy

There you stand, in the middle of the arena. You're on a circular platform towering over a giant pit of flames. As the weight shifts from either side of the platform, it tilts. You've been making your way through the fun house for a while now, each room posing a new challenge, all while the clown is hot on your tail. You had entered the giant arena and were forced to finally face the clown.

You stand there crowbar in hand (you probably got it from a previous room idk), jacked up on so much adrenaline, you feel like an absolute beast. After a brutal fight. you manage to tip the clown off balance. You run off to one side of the arena and stick your crowbar in the ground. The platform starts to tilt and the clown slides off it and into the pit of flames. Hanging from your crowbar, you see the flames extinguish and the platform returns to a level position as if it were controlled by a machine. A door opens and you exit. On a table, you see a bowl. Inside is a mint and a congratulations card.

My beloved. The genre of music I fall asleep to. I wanted to make this one a bit different so I decided to change the key every 4 bars xD. It's a rare opportunity to be able to do that and I think creepy carnival is one of the only genres you can do it in and people won't bat an eye. It works really well and I'm quite happy with how his one turned out.

While making the end, I was playing around with the happy fun chords, and I discovered 09:28. And I was like "Oh shit" and that entirely inspired the next variation.

Spirit of the Lake - 10:03 - 14:13

Exhausted from your previous encounters you stumble into a lake. You decide to take a seat and relax for a little bit. You see swooshing coming from the lake and suddenly a bright light emerges from it. Once you recover from the flash, you notice a woman is standing on the water. She gracefully walks over to you. "You have endured a lot these past few hours. Here is your phone". The woman vanishes and your phone falls onto your lap. "Oh neat" you say as you turn on your torch. You lay down in exhaustion and rest your eyes.

If you've listened to the other sections and this one, you'll probably know this one is the most different. I have a really good reason as to why that is. I got quite sick of the melody xD. To be fair, I've essentially made 4 entire songs with this same melody for the past month and a man gets tired. So I decided to spice things up and do something completely different. I do of course have a section with the main theme in it, but I wanted it to not be the focal point for once.

I finished this section a few days ago, as of posting this, and there are still a few things I wanna fix. Like, the clash at the beginning is a bit harsh and I need to lower the velocity of one of them to make it actually work musically. But that's a problem for later me. Also working with legato flute when you're not entirely sure how everything works is quite hard but I think I got it in a good enough state.

The Final Hours - 14:13 - 17:23

There it is, the sun rising. "Had it really been the whole night?" you ask yourself in a relieved tone. You start walking, the woods look peaceful now and not half as scary as before. While walking you trip over a stick and hit your head against a rock.

You wake up feeling warm and cosy. Eyelids heavy as ever. You are so exhausted but you think to yourself "Wow what a dream, maybe my job isn't so bad". You open your eyes and do a big stretch. "Hold on", you pause as you see a tree. "wait what?!" You're not in a bed. You're still in the woods. You realize this wasn't a dream and you slept the whole day away. Your heart sinks as you see the sun beginning to set. Ready for round two?

END!

I've been waiting for this season for a while now. Well, I'm actually lying because I've been celebrating the spooky season for the past month lol! This was actually made because a person organising a Halloween collab asked me to make background music for their gallery. I had gotten carried away and made the least background music-friendly track known to man lmao.

Congratulations on surviving the horrors and surviving the night haha. I hope you enjoyed the experience. Here is your honorary medal for your strong will and for listening to the track. Have a lovely Halloween!