The Upside Down (track)

This article is a stub. Help out this community by adding more information!

This article is about the music track. For the dimension, see The Upside Down.

"The Upside Down"
Track #	11 of Vol. 1
Length	5:07
Artist	Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
Album	Stranger Things, Vol. 1
Soundtrack Order
Previous Track	"Hawkins"
Next Track	"After Sarah"

"The Upside Down" is a track and music cue created by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein for the Netflix series Stranger Things, and was released as part of Stranger Things, Volume One.

The track is named after the Upside Down, the alternate dimension that serves as a sinister reflection to Hawkins, Indiana. The track is first played in a stripped-down form in the premiere episode, "The Vanishing of Will Byers", before being included in full during the following episode, "The Weirdo on Maple Street". The piece introduces a distinctive cue, or theme, that is doubly linked to the Upside Down and the creature that inhabits it, the Demogorgon. The Upside Down cue then reappears in various tracks heard later in the series, in season one and beyond.

Behind the scenes, Dixon, Stein and the Duffer Brothers initially referred to the cue as the "monster theme", but as the series progressed, the motif gradually became more associated with the Upside Down as a whole, leading to the version included in Stranger Things, Volume One being titled "The Upside Down".

Development

The 'monster theme' was sequenced using the eight-step Encore Event Generator in Stein's enormous 5U modular system.

In an interview with Sound on Sound, Michael Stein describes the creation of the "Upside Down" cue:

“

On the track 'The Upside Down', the creepy lead melody was programmed on an eight-step analogue sequencer in my 5U modular. The notes are all detuned in a very subtle way you can't play on a keyboard, so luckily I had two of those sequencers [the Encore Event Generator] and I literally never touched it for six months, out of fear they would want me to recall it. I would also record a few different tempos of cues for pacing just in case. Sometimes you have to redo something and getting it close is perfectly suitable. — Michael Stein

”

“

'The Upside Down' was a result of the directors requesting a 'monster theme'. The only reference was to have a signature similar to Jaws, in the sense of being something simple and yet easily recognisable. The backbone of this song is an eight-step sequence that utilises only four 'notes'. When you hear it, you know it's referencing the monster, or the monster could be present. Part of what makes something so simple so effective is that the sequence was purposefully programmed on an eight-step analogue sequencer in my 5U modular that is unquantised — not locked to any particular scale. Every note has a subtle detune to create the desired amount of dissonance and tension. This is something you couldn’t play on a keyboard and achieve the same mood. It is musical but it is also unsettling. Combined with some rising dissonant pads from the very cinematic-sounding [Moog] Polymoog, woozy sub-bass and bombastic percussion blast from an ARP 2600, it's pretty intense. — Michael Stein

”

Variants

#	Track name	Album	Track no.	Appearances
1	“The Upside Down”	Stranger Things, Volume One	11	"The Vanishing of Will Byers" "The Weirdo on Maple Street" "The Body" "The Monster" "The Pollywog" "Suzie, Do You Copy?"
2	"Entering The Cellar"	Stranger Things: Halloween Sounds from the Upside Down	9	"The Monster"
3	"Rats"	Stranger Things 3 (original score)	9	"Suzie, Do You Copy?" "The Mall Rats" "The Flayed"
4	"The Trees Are Moving"	Stranger Things 3 (original score)	30	"E Pluribus Unum" "The Bite" "The Battle of Starcourt"