Award-winning composer Michael Wandmacher has pushed the boundaries of conventional film scoring by turning Grammy-winning Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee’s voice into a full-bodied, multi-instrumental film score for the psychological short film The Seventh Turn.
The Seventh Turn soundtrack, featuring this groundbreaking original score by Michael Wandmacher performed by Amy Lee is out now. Listen
here.
Michael Wandmacher has successfully traversed all visual mediums in creating unique scores ranging from the TV hit comedy series The Goldbergs, film thrillers Underworld: Blood Wars and Piranha 3D, to the PlayStation mega-hit Bloodborne. It is only fitting that the award-winning composer would pioneer a new scoring methodology and process while creating the haunting, ethereal music that mirrors the emotional journey of the film’s protagonist.
Bypassing all physical instruments, synthesizers, samplers, and AI, Wandmacher sculpted a complete sonic metamorphosis of Lee’s voice by transforming her vocal DNA into a “biological synthesizer” generating bells, keys, percussion, strings, FX, and complex atmospheres, proving that a single human voice can generate an entire cinematic world.
The Seventh Turn is written, produced, and directed by Eric D. Howell and co-directed by Marta Milans. Based on the Spanish urban legend "La Chica de la Curva," the film follows a young man driving through the night with his pregnant fiancée; his gaslighting manipulates her into rethinking a crucial decision for her and her baby’s well-being until a mysterious, ghost-like woman appears at a dark curve on the road ahead. Wandmacher’s score manifests the young woman’s living inner voice as she struggles with her inner turmoil.
To realize his ambitious creative vision, Wandmacher remotely, from his Los Angeles studio, instructed Lee, from her Nashville studio, to record vocal fragments. He spent months developing a way to combine vocal manipulation and advanced technical processes to transform thousands of her vocal fragments into every element of the score.
Wandmacher explained, “I had an unusual idea, if it is possible to create an entire score with only voices—not just the choral, vocal, and FX parts, but the whole score, where the voices substitute for the instruments, yet it doesn’t sound like that. With The Seventh Turn, I further drilled down on that idea to do it with one voice. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done because I had to invent every single element of the music from scratch. The subject matter, the intense character focus, and Amy’s willingness to give this a go was a perfect storm, and I couldn’t pass it up.”
“I asked Amy to record everything from sustained and short notes to specific articulations and vocalizations, including breathing, drones, screams, whoops, swells, percussive sounds, chanting, you name it. From that collection of mini-performances, I built all the melodies and everything else one note at a time. At the end, Amy returned and sang the fluid lines as single melodies to offset all the atmospheric and manipulated vocals. As the score progresses, the emergence of more organic vocals directly reflects the lead character, Ana, reclaiming herself,” he adds.
Amy Lee says: “It's very inspiring when there is this wild concept, and it gives you a bit of a roadmap. I thought, ‘Here are our parameters of what we're allowed to do, and what we're not.’ There are no instruments, no nothing, just only vocals. Even if they are affected or put through things, that's fine. Every single thing is sourced from a voice. You can imagine how fun that is for a vocalist to hear that assignment and hearing it work so well.”
The Seventh Turn is a psychological drama inspired by a Spanish ghost story. The film follows a young woman trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship who finds the strength to reclaim her freedom while encountering a ghost. The legend holds that the ghost appears most often at the seventh turn of a stretch of road in Spain. Seven is also the average number of times a woman attempts to leave an abusive relationship before succeeding.
The Seventh Turn score marks the latest collaboration between Wandmacher and Lee, who have been friends and creative partners for more than 11 years. They co-wrote the original song “Speak to Me” from Howell’s Voice from the Stone, with Wandmacher composing the film’s score and Lee performing the track. The song earned a Hollywood Music in Media Award and has since garnered more than 22 million views on YouTube. Most recently, Wandmacher contributed string arrangements for five songs on Evanescence’s new album Sanctuary, released on June 5, 2026.
The Seventh Turn is online now via the streaming platform
Kinema, where audiences can watch on demand or host live virtual screenings and community events.
