This film required a detailed approach to dialogue cleaning, sweetening and mixing, as you can tell by the before/after examples below. The film had some licensed music already in place, but the soundtrack needed to be filled out and given some thematic musical cohesiveness. I also worked through sound design for the film, primarily adding a sense of place, drama and doing some basic foley work.

This experimental short film required intensive and very specific sound design. The sound had to follow the narrative description and help reinforce a sense of place and drama, while the visuals portrayed symbolic and sometimes strange images. It needed to be atmospheric, ominous and slightly edgy throughout. The film also had very specific requirements for music, from a South American runway show to subtle stings, transitions and intimate but still unnerving cues.

I started this project as Sound Designer, Editor and Mixer. The filmmakers had a vision that required a great deal of soundscaping: creating a full, rich and at times overwhelming sonic picture of India’s traffic. I created a moldable soundscape that could follow the narrative and respond to the emotion of the story. I also wrote some cues, and composed and produced the title song.

This Documentary called for a distinctive fusion of East and West, and a balance between tradition and modernity. My overall approach to the soundtrack was to combine intimate and closely recorded acoustic instruments with low-res and early digital sounds, and to mix a strong traditional Japanese style with a downtempo hiphop feel. I wanted each piece to contain enough space to let the different instrumentation and styles mesh. The score needed to bring a level of playfullness at times, gravitas at others, and emotional depth throughout.
The music functioned as both interview bed / background music and traditional score, so it needed to move into and out of “focus” smoothly and coherently.

The music for this documentary primarily called for a lively, flowing theme that could move between a reflective and positive tone into a menacing and forboding one. The music had to play a supporting character and embody the duality of the river, but also had to remain pliable enough to move underneath interviews and step out into the forefront. For the river theme, I ended up writing one melody, branched it into a light and a dark varriation, then created multiple varriations of each of those to create a cohesive and anchoring thematic progression. Boulder Floods also called for ‘old-timey’ music to play under narration and photographs from the 1890s. (Ken Burns-esque). I made a point to create a texture and feel that was as far from the majority of the score, something floaty and lyrical.

I’m a big fan of classic early 20th century radio drama. There’s something incredibly charming and powerful in the medium.

I started this project to try my hand at bringing one of my favorite author’s work to life in a format that was contemporary.

This is a 3d, first-person exploration game built in the Unity engine. This game called for very dark and moody, forboding soundtrack to match the setting. I created several pieces, combining ambient and classical, with a very thin instrumentation and an emphasis on cluster tones in the harmonic structure. I also created sound assets for the game, from glass rattling as a missle launched to footsteps and object interactions.

This project was an exercise I started to keep my composing skills honed, reward my fanbase and practice imparting tone, emotion, meaning and place into short compositions. Fans submitted a context, emotion and stylistic notes that they wanted to hear illustrated in a score. These submissions ranged from the everyday to the fantastic, and challanged me significantly. Turning a short description into a musical piece that takes into account a setting, emotion and contextual elements week after week made me stretch my compositional skills across everything imaginable, from mixing seemingly impossible styles (Feudal Japanese Doo-wop?) to a single, pure emotion (grief). This project gave me versatility, speed, and something that few people understand: the ability to accurately render the ephemeral emotional subtext and setting of a piece.