Recently, we talked with composer George Streicher about his career working in TV, film, and video games and his new orchestral Halloween album, Music of the Macabre.
Horror Geek Life: Let’s jump right in and talk about your live orchestral Halloween album Music of the Macabre. Where did the idea come from to put this together?
George Streicher: Honestly, it happened back in 2020 during Covid; I got stuck at home for seven months. When fall came around, I just got struck by a lot of memories of Halloween when I was a kid, started going through old boxes, and found some Halloween CDs and cassettes that I grew up with and was inspired to try and make something that could perhaps sit alongside those. That all harkened back to stuff I liked as a kid, Halloween, movies, books, TV, theme parks, and whatnot.
Horror Geek Life: Did you have a creative structure for this album, or did it change on the fly?
George Streicher: It definitely changed on the fly, although I did know I wanted to make the album a combination of fully orchestral pieces and then smaller ensembles of duets, trios, and things like that. In regards to the different styles I wanted to attempt and capture, initially, I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted. I wanted a lyrical album.
You could write a Halloween album with a lot of scratchy strings and drones, but I wanted this to be a Halloween album that is not from the classical repertoire that we’re so used to and that it’s not from a movie. These pieces are all written for Halloween. They have strong melodies and are easy to listen to.
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Horror Geek Life: What kind of memories do you have of the horror genre and the music behind the films?
George Streicher: I remember growing up, I had a CD called Classics from the Crypt, I think it was RCA or something, but my earliest exposure to horror music was “Night on Bald Mountain,” “Dream of a Witches Sabbath,” “Symphony Fantastique and Funeral March of a Marionette,” which is the Alfred Hitchcock Presents tune. I listen to them now, and they’re not very scary (laughs), but when I was a kid, that stuff used to terrify me, it was really scary.
Then I remember discovering The Shining and being exposed to that modern concert music, which is really freaky, and we still hear that today… and the “Monster Mash.” (laughs)
Horror Geek Life: Horror films and their music have a very loyal fan base. Was it daunting to take on a project like this in the genre, or was it more like a labor of love?
George Streicher: A super labor of love, but it was definitely challenging. I did stuff that I’d never done before, and I just tried things that I’d never tried before. Of course, working with a big orchestra can be complicated. When you get to writing that kind of music, it can be complicated, but I really tried to find a way to do everything.
For example, there’s a piece on the album called Scherzo for a Harvest Moon and what I did for that is I took, I discovered in a lot of film scores they used “Chopin’s Funeral March” as the basis for a lot of melodic and harmonic material, the most famous one is the Imperial March. Another one is the theme from Hocus Pocus. I took that and tried to build my own piece off of that, so I tried to keep things in the world and connected harmonically. Even if you don’t notice it, it’s there.
Another great example of it being a labor of love and trying to find my way into it and attract memories of Halloween is there’s a spooky, shaking ghost from the ’80s and ’90s, everybody knows the sound, and I took that and used it as a kind of nostalgic love letter to Halloween from when I was a kid. I’ve been surprised at how many people immediately recognize that sound, and the piece works because of that. It’s a very kind of wistful longing for Halloween as a kid, I guess.
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Horror Geek Life: Becoming a composer isn’t your average childhood dream. How did that interest develop for you?
George Streicher: Movies, one hundred percent, movies. I come from a decently musical family; we all played or play instruments and studied music in one way or another. My dad was an amateur, and my mom played the flute, but for me, it was always through movies. Movies introduced me to so much music.
Of course, everyone knows John Williams; he introduced generations to the romantic era of the big orchestral sound. My dad introduced us to Henry Mancini and Classics from the Crypt and stuff, but movies were always my link to it. It wasn’t until much later that I started taking music seriously and enjoying it for music’s sake, as opposed to being attached to something else, and that’s what I wanted to do with this album, to be for lovers of Halloween.
Horror Geek Life: How hard has it been to make a career out of composing?
George Streicher: It’s been extraordinarily hard. I know a lot of people who’ve been at this a lot longer than I have and are a lot more successful, and it’s still very tough for them. It’s constant competition. You really have to be on top of developing yourself, and you have to be on top of trends and, of course, technology, which is getting easier and easier the more we are exposed to it, like with phones, for example. But yeah, it’s really tough.
I remember when I started and got on YouTube, and people found it. I can’t imagine trying to do that now. There are a million composers on YouTube now with these massive followings, tutorials, and things. I wasn’t hired to make this album or anything. That’s where I find the greatest joy: writing music, expressing myself, getting an idea, and following it through, not waiting for a project to come to me. That’s the beauty of being a writer, you can just sit there by yourself and write as long as you want, as big as you want, and whatever you want, and you don’t have to wait to get hired to do that, as opposed to say a director, which would be a little more challenging.
Horror Geek Life: There has been an infusion of interest in live orchestral music, thanks to the new concert series where you can watch a film with a live orchestra playing. Has this helped or made the competition more challenging?
George Streicher: I personally haven’t been impacted by this. Most of what I do is still synthesized virtual orchestra, which is almost everything today, an unfortunate development but a realistic one. I go to a lot of those new concert series too, and I see a lot of young people there, so I hope in the next decade, or whoever the next generation is, there is a love for orchestral symphonic scores for films. I’m hoping these new concerts remind people how important that really is.
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Horror Geek Life: You’ve worked in TV, film, and video games during your career. Do you have a favorite medium to work in?
George Streicher: Film, for sure. I love telling a prolonged story and love to be able to develop music through a longer form. You can do that with TV, but I just like the idea of sitting with something, living with it, seeing the whole picture kind of in front of me, and mapping everything out. How melodies will change with the characters changing is really fun for me and what I’m really most interested in.
TV is fast, and the TV stuff I’ve done is very eclectic. I had to do a lot of different styles, which have their charms but can be very annoying and frustrating. It’s crazy, and I guess that goes back to your question about competition. Now, I feel like you have to know how to do everything.
Production feels like it’s constantly changing, especially with pop music, so with TV, when I’ve had to do that stuff, I long for being able to sit with a feature film and map it all out, and you generally have more time with film than you do with TV.
Horror Geek Life: What is a typical workday like for you?
George Streicher: It would depend on what I was working on. If I were doing a film, I’d be pretty structured and organized. You build your Q sheet, where all your music is going to go, and where the timings are based on the film. Then you determine, with the music director, editor, or whoever, what kind of music will go there, its function, etc.
On a day I could take whatever my priority scene is, I’d sit and watch the scene over and over again, kind of map it out, and then simply start playing with ideas. Sometimes, and this goes for writing for something other than a movie, I will go right into my Pro Tools, start playing around on the piano, or go right into Sibelius, a notation program, and start sketching in there.
I generally get an idea and run with it, piecing it together here and there and building it all out. Then listen to it a million times, hate some things, and replace it with what I think are better things. It really never ends (laughs).
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Horror Geek Life: Besides the Halloween album, what other upcoming projects do you have?
George Streicher: Right now, I’m doing a little additional music for some animated shows for Nickelodeon, and I also just finished doing some additional music for the Harry Potter mobile game, which was fun. I’m not taking on any features for myself right now, I’m taking a break after this album, but I am pushing the album, trying to get the word out there. I’m also thinking about what I could put on a follow-up album if it happens.
A lot of people have been asking if this one is on vinyl, which it is not, but the cassettes sold out, which was really cool. I was not anticipating that. Analog is really in right now, so I might do a vinyl of the Halloween album next year. We’ll see.
I want to thank George for taking the time to chat with us.
