Composition
"Thriller" is considered an funk disco song. Set in the key of C♯ Modern Dorian, its instrumentation consists of synthesizer, guitar, trumpet, flugelhorn, saxophone, flute and trombone. The song has a moderate tempo of 118 beats per minute. The lyrics and sound effects on "Thriller" pertain to frightful elements and themes. Throughout the song, sound effects such as a creaking door, thunder, feet walking on wooden planks, winds and howling dogs can be heard. Bruce Cannon, a sound effects editor for "Thriller", said that, "Things like the lightning may have come from old Hollywood movies – we'll never know which movies – but the best sound-effects editors do go out in the desert and find a coyote, so I have a feeling that was a real howl." The backing track, especially the bassline, has certain similarities to the 1981 number-one R&B hit "Give It to Me Baby" by Rick James.
Read more about this topic: Thriller (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)