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Stranger Things Main Theme Piano (with sheet music)
Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein: The music for “Stranger Things.”
Watch a horror movie (or series) without music. What? It’s not scary, is it? The soundtrack of horror stories appeals and pokes at our least obvious fears, those that no image can ever make explicit. How well have Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (both of S U R V I V E) learned this lesson.
Because of this, the suggestive soundtrack of the two seasons of Stranger Things almost stands on its own, without the need for the accompanying images. The analogue voluptuousness of Dixon and Stein’s dry synthwave already ignites the spark of cinephile nostalgia and activates the sleeping monsters in our imagination. So a performance exhaling exclusively the vapors of this red-on-black repertoire doesn’t just make ‘Strangerthingitis’ sufferers shudder. There are chills here for everyone.
In the annals of cinema and television, certain musical themes manage to transcend the moving image. From the iconic whistle introducing Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme to Tangerine Dream’s ‘Love On A Real Train’, memorable scores have the uncanny ability to encapsulate an era, an entire aesthetic. Prolific Texas musicians Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein are responsible for a body of work synonymous with the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, the supernatural town at the center of the Netflix hit Stranger Things.
But as the small town becomes the unlikely site of a supernatural battle in the hit series, the soundscapes of Dixon and Stein have also developed alongside it. In the meantime, Stein and Dixon compose music for feature films, documentary series and large-scale installations and play in the band S U R V I V E. Working in line with predecessors like John Carpenter and contemporary peers like Oneohtrix Point Never , Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein use a lifelong obsession with synthesizers and electronic music as a vehicle for larger-than-life visions.
While Dixon & Stein rose to prominence composing the music for a series that became a cultural touchstone, Stranger Things, imagery and setting have always been central to the duo’s practice. In 2009, alongside Mark Donica and Adam Jones, they formed the live synthesizer band S U R V I V E. Prior to the formation of the quartet, Dixon and Stein experimented with field recordings, venturing through tunnels and climbing castles of water around Austin, Texas, carrying battery-powered modular setups and field recording equipment to the kinds of places kids in Stranger Things could explore on their bikes.
Unlike laptop-based performances common in live electronic music at the time, S U R V I V E transported a studio’s worth of synthesizers and amplifiers to dive bars for legendary live performances, achieving room-filling capability, with a crushing sound. Whether they know it or not, with S U R V I V E, Dixon and Stein laid the foundation for their future as one of the preeminent scoring teams of our time. Rather than speaking in musical terms, they would describe their instrumental synth music with visual cues – a helicopter hovering over a waterfall, a high-speed chase through the dark alleys of Los Angeles.
When The Duffer Brothers found the band and brought in Dixon and Stein to work on Stranger Things, the duo rolled up their sleeves, taking on a workload typically handled by a fleet of songwriters and assistants. As the show gradually transformed from an ’80s sci-fi piece into an expansive supernatural epic, Stein and Dixon seized the opportunity. While their early seasons music focused on the timeless sound of ’80s analog synthesizers, they would soon tap into melodies and atmospheres befitting Eleven and Mike’s interdimensional struggle.
The music is a main character in Stranger Things, with Dixon and Stein’s soundtrack kicking in and out of triumphant, period-appropriate songs like Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’. This song topped the charts after its crucial use in season four. Likewise, the duo’s tireless work on Stranger Things catapulted them from underground synth heroes to key composers for modern film and television. Stein and Dixon won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Score of Main Title Theme for their work on the show, in addition to nominations for multiple Grammys and ASCAP awards.
Over the past few seasons of Stranger Things, the duo have been working at a breakneck pace, creating the equivalent of a feature film score every two weeks. Somehow they have also found the time to work on several feature films in recent years. For Joaquin del Paso’s 2021 indie psychological thriller The Hole In The Fence, Stein and Dixon paid homage to Tomita’s epic synthesizer compositions as well as Oscar Sala’s pioneering electronic experiments.
Their score received a Hollywood Music In Media Award nomination for Best Independent Score, while the film itself premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won Best Film honors at the Cairo Film Festival.
They also composed music for Meow Wolf’s massive Denver site. The multimedia installation features an unnersave zone written by the duo, tasked with designing a simple Close Encounters-style melody that saves a fictional world. During the pandemic, Dixon and Stein have managed to collaborate remotely with musicians and several choirs, even incorporating the mysterious and singular sounds of a Bulgarian women’s choir into their Meow Wolf score.
The duo also composed the score for 2021’s horror-tinged thriller Retaliators, adding to a burgeoning catalog that placed Stein and Dixon’s soundscapes behind VR views of the cosmos (Spheres), Silicon Valley scenes of the 90s (Valley Of The Boom), and the journey of an 11-year-old transgender girl (Butterfly), to name but a few.
After this prolific run, Dixon and Stein simultaneously return to their roots and take on new challenges. Currently working out of their respective studios in Los Angeles and Austin, they will soon be reuniting with their band, S U R V I V E, for a new album and world tour. Deep down, Stein and Dixon are avid students of electronic music history who are constantly exploring new methods of composition and notation.
Though they have an obvious facility for the supernatural and otherworldly soundtrack, Stein and Dixon have an equal interest in scoring quieter, decidedly human drama. It’s been a crazy decade for Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, who went from tinkering tinkerers in Austin to introducing a whole new generation of synthesizers via the alchemical combination of sound and moving image. The images have always been in their head. Now we just have to watch them.
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