Acoustic textures of terror
Stray from the path in the dark wood, or venture alone into the cellar in a strange house, and you'll hear these sounds. Mark Korven (The VVitch, The Lighthouse, The Black Phone) understands like no one else the organic roots of real fear, and has developed a signature style based on acoustic instruments. Korven captures Mark's vision in a vast, terrifying, and inspiring orchestra—for folk horror, primordial dread, tense underscoring, and any kind of music that creates unease and apprehension.
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Playable acoustic sounds to evoke fear, tension, and unease. From the master of folk horror Mark Korven.
Highlights
622 playable instruments and patches
Includes 49 layered instruments and 83 processed patches
Includes sounds from the Apprehension Engine
Includes specially orchestrated experimental strings and wind quintet
Includes the experimental 8-foot Symphonae instrument, hurdy-gurdy, oktav harpa, waterphone
Special selection of risers, downers, pulses, and plucks
5 mic positions plus a mix for the processed patches
Designed and recorded by Mark Korven at Revolution Recording in Toronto, Canada
Sounds of mystery and imagination
Korven offers a vast array of genuinely fear-inducing sounds, all created acoustically. This focus on acoustic and organic audio sources, along with some careful effects processing and sound design, is a big part of Mark’s signature sound.
This unique approach manifests itself in physical form as The Apprehension Engine—a complex instrument created by Mark and luthier Tony Duggan-Smith. But the same approach can be applied to other sources, such as strings, woodwinds, or traditional instruments. It’s this vision that has captivated and terrified audiences, and it’s this vision that we’ve captured in this collection.
The Apprehension Engine
Specifically designed to produce unsettling, eerie, atonal, gritty, and otherworldly sounds, ‘the AE’ is a box of tricks including strings, a spring reverb chamber, steel rods, and a built-in hurdy-gurdy. It can be plucked, struck, bowed, or played with an e–bow.
Take a guided video tour of the instrument with Mark Korven...
Other instruments
Symphonae
About 8-feet long, this unique instrument was built for sound artist Ben Grossman by the builder Fron Reilly. Based on the rosined-wheel bow of the hurdy-gurdy, it's designed for drones and effects.
Aleatoric string and wind quintet
A most irregular ensemble improvising renditions of apprehension engine sounds. The resulting drones and textures were then used to create the layered patches in ‘Orchestral metamorphosis’.
Hurdy-gurdy
This medieval instrument was played in an unorthodox style to create raw and atonal sounds.
Oktavharpa
Twice the size of a traditional Swedish nyckelharpa and tuned an octave lower. Great for atonal effects as well as the more traditional tones—a reedy, untamed sound.
Mega bass waterphone
No horror collection is complete without a waterphone. This one is an XXL model created by Richard Waters, and used on the score of The Lighthouse.
Aztec death whistle
Of course, Mark used Aztec death whistles to create sounds that echo the cries of tormented spirits.
Dark art designs: Processed patches
Once the recordings were done, we took them into the studio to process and mangle them further. The result is an extensive array of playable processed patches that build on and extend Mark’s acoustic/atonal approach. Despite the processing, all the instruments here sound organic.
About Mark Korven
Mark Korven is a Toronto based composer for film and television. Dubbed “One of cinema's scariest composers” by Film Score Monthly, he’s perhaps best known for his work on the 2015 period Horror film The VVitch, which won the Best Director award at Sundance for director Robert Eggers. Other notable film and TV scores include Egger’s The Lighthouse starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, Ridley Scott's The Terror: Infamy, the TV series THEM, and Scott Derrickson’s blockbuster The Black Phone.
Mark Korven is also a multi-instrumentalist specializing in traditional instruments, and together with luthier Tony Duggan-Smith he developed the notorious horror musical instrument The Apprehension Engine.
We’re honored to collaborate with Mark on this project, and proud to share these horrific sounds with the composer community worldwide.
"As a composer, I tend to avoid normal harmony ... I try to look for harmony that I haven't quite heard before. It's experimentation."
―Mark Korven
Runs in SINE
Mic merging
Preserve your system resources: Fine-tune your mix using multiple mic positions, then merge into a single channel within the player.
Greater usability
SINE is designed to complement the compositional workflow. Create on the fly with auto keyswitch options, and easy remapping tools.
Download single instruments
Choose only the instruments and mic positions that you currently need—no need to download the entire collection at once.
Artist Series
Korven
Acoustic textures of terror
Revolution Recording, Toronto
Works with Orchestral Tools’ SINE Player—NOTE: Latest version required.
Size
37.5 GB of samples (20.6 GB SINEarc compressed)
24 bit / 48 KHz patches
SINE system requirements
Mac: macOS 10.15 or higher | Intel Core i5 or similar | Apple ARM chipsets supported | At least 8 GB RAM (16 GB+ recommended)
Windows: Windows 10 | Intel Core i5 or similar | At least 8 GB RAM (16 GB+ recommended)
Formats supported: Standalone, VST, VST3, AU, AAX