Suspense is all about making your audience want to know what happens next. Music and sound effects can play an important role in enhancing that feeling, often without the viewer even realising why they feel uneasy, excited or expectant.

In this guide we’ll explain how, in practice, you can highten suspense using the power of audio.

When can suspense be used in content creation?

The most obvious areas where tension and suspense play a key roll is within dramas, thrillers and traditional storytelling. Beyond these examples It can be used almost anywhere an audience is waiting to see what happens next.

Challenge videos can build tension around whether someone will succeed, while comedy can create suspense by delaying a punchline or reveal. Cooking videos can make viewers wait for the final plating up, and reaction or experiment videos can build anticipation around an unexpected outcome. Even product reveals, unboxing footage, sports content and DIY videos can utilise elements of suspense. Anywhere your audience is expecting something dramatic, surprising or important to happen, sound can help to build that anticipation.

Start by building anticipation

Suspense is all about the build, so it doesn’t necessarily require something dramatic to happen straight away. In fact, the anticipation of an event can often be more effective than the event itself.

Music can help establish this anticipation. Slowly developing tracks work particularly well, either by gradually introducing more instrumental layers or increasing in tempo. Think about using music that has a slightly unsettling feel. Strings and piano often suit this roll.

Another well-established technique is the use of a repeating pulse or sustained note, such as a drone. These elements can build in intensity as you approach the payoff. Pulses and drones also work particularly well because they are less melodic and therefore don’t trigger the same obvious emotional responses associated with melodic music.

Whatever your musical choice, a great technique is to introduce the music before anything visually significant happens. This can make the approaching moment feel as though it has been brewing for some time. You can then gradually increase the intensity as the moment gets closer, keeping your audience waiting for the payoff.

Embrace repetition

Using a repetition can be extremely effective for building suspense.

This can take the form of a simple bass note, rhythmic pulse or short musical phrase or loop repeated throughout a scene. As the audience becomes familiar with the repeating sound, even a small change can suddenly feel significant. They also sit more subtly within a scene, subconsciously suggesting that something is coming. The longer you allow this feeling to develop, the more your audience begins to wonder whether something is about to happen, creating a growing sense of tension.

Subtly adding elements to the looping structure can highten the growing anticipation. Alternatively, sometimes changing the rhythm, pitch, volume or incremental spacing of an existing element is enough to increase the tension.

Use silence as a weapon

One of the easiest ways to make a sound feel important is to remove the sounds around it.

Imagine a character walking towards a closed door. Music is building, but just before they reach the handle, everything suddenly stops. The absence of sound just before the reveal enhances the uncertainty of that moment. What happens next then becomes even more noticeable.

Silence provides a useful and powerful contrast after a sustained musical build-up. If you have been gradually increasing tension, cutting the music completely can leave the audience hanging for a moment before the next event.

Make small sounds feel important

When trying to build suspense and tension, it’s often not about big, explosive sounds. Instead, it can be about making the audience hyper-aware of subtle sounds that would normally fade into the background.

A creaking floorboard, distant knock, ticking clock, electrical hum or slowly turning door handle can become surprisingly powerful when the audience is expecting something to happen.

It can therefore be useful to exaggerate or isolate these small sounds. Bringing them forward in the mix can heighten a viewer’s senses, telling them, consciously or otherwise, that these sounds may be worth paying attention to. Even when they aren’t integral to the narrative, they can still add to the overall immersion and create a greater sense of anticipation.

These sounds are also often difficult to capture clearly while filming, particularly when you are relying on a camera’s built-in microphone. Using third-party sound effects can be a simple way to add them during the edit. Alternatively, you can record your own sound effects separately, giving you greater control over the recording and allowing you to capture a much cleaner, more detailed sound.

Don’t reveal everything

It is often tempting to use sound to tell the audience exactly what is about to happen. Sometimes it can be more effective to use a mysterious sound rather than an obvious one. For example if your character is approaching something unseen, you could use an indistinct rumble or unusual texture rather than the sound of thing that will be revealed.

Be selective over what information you provide to your audience. This way you allow the viewer to fill in the gaps and create a scenerio in their heads.

Executing the release

Eventually, the suspense you’ve built needs somewhere to go. The payoff could be a reveal, a sudden action, a challenge succeeding or failing, a joke, or simply the resolution of the situation.

Your music and sound effects should support this moment rather than compete with it. If you’ve built towards a frightening moment, horror-inspired music can reinforce it. If the payoff is comedic, the music should enhance that funny factor.

You don’t necessarily have to change the music when the suspense ends but the release should, ideally, time itself with a change in the musical arrangement. If you do introduce a new piece of music, make sure the two tracks work together. For example, if you’ve used a repetitive pulse or drone during the build, you could move into a more dramatic, resolved melodic theme for the payoff.

Experiment with different combinations and transitions. If two pieces of music work well together but don’t quite match harmonically, you could even try pitching one of them to bring the keys into alignment.

Another, very different technique is to use a stark contrast in the music. Suddenly switching from tense, restrained music to something bright, upbeat or even completely unexpected can create and enhance an emotional shift in the scene.

Whatever approach you take, the important thing is that the audience feels the change, both visually and sonically.

Summary

Creating suspense isn’t necessarily about finding the most tense piece of music or the loudest sound effect. It is about carefully controlling what the audience hears and when they hear it, as well as what they don’t hear.

Music, when it syncs perfectly to the onscreen narrative helps to shape expectation. Sound effects can help provide clues while silence can be used to create uncertainty.

Combined together, these techniques can make even a simple shot feel important and emersive. Sound can increase the feeling that something is about to happen at any point.

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