Audio Engineering,
Music Composition,
& Sound Design
[This portfolio is still very much a work in progress. New tracks will be regularly added.]I’ve been working in music composition and audio engineering since about the age of 11,
before I even knew how to properly play an instrument.
In 2014, I began attending Weaver Academy in Greensboro, NC, where I had 4 years of
of formal, high-intensity education in music production and sound engineering,
with a supporting education in music theory, music history, and live audio.
This is a small collection of more recent efforts in
soundtrack composition and audio engineering.
Fantasy - Serene Desert Village
Inspired by more vibrant, colorful depictions of desert communities and villages as depicted in mid-day sun, primarily the vibrant City of Aurora from Fable 3. Regional accuracy of instrumentation was purposefully not considered — an attempt to avoid typical “desert-music” tropes and lend a more unique feel to the imagined setting: a lively festival of music and culture held in a sand-stone city in the heart of the desert, the streets and markets decorated with multicolored flags and banners.
Inspired by: City of Aurora from Fable 3, Gerudo villages from The Legend of Zelda, visual design of Journey
Stealth - Tense Night Air / On Alert!
Likely my most explicitly “Video Game” composition, this song was imagined as a reverse to “Serene Desert Village” — There, you get to experience to peaceful hub zone; here you are sneaking your way into a heavily-armed boss fortress. Imagined as a dual “stealth theme” and “combat theme”, the first half sees a player attempting to move quietly around the fortress and avoid detection, with the back end after the snare roll transitioning in as the player is detected and the gameplay shifts into combat. Have fun storming the castle!
Inspired by: Ganon’s Fortress themes in The Legend of Zelda series,Thief series, The Elder Scrolls soundtracks
Adventure - A Guide To Better Shiprigging
I’ve always had a fondness for scenes in adventure games and movies where the main character is first brought aboard their ship at the start of the journey, with the more experienced crew rigging the ship in preparation for their grand disembarking. An attempt at a more straightforward cinematic orchestral arrangement for strings and ensemble percussion, though my odd music school tendencies still shine through (those kettle drum rolls at the start are certainly a choice.)
Inspired by: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
Dystopia - Corpo Megabuilding
Tech-Dystopian worlds have always held a particularly hellish place in my heart. Of particular note: the neon-and-rain-drenched future Los Angeles Sprawl of Blade Runner and the low-life-high-tech philosophy of the Cyberpunk franchise’s Night City. Tension, bleak Futurism, transhumanism, corporate domination, rogue AIs, synthetic life, altered humanity — who wouldn’t want to soundtrack that? This track was approached less as a piece of music and more as sound design, with a specific intent to capture the looming dread and sense of uncontrollable technological power to be found in the halls of a Megacorporation skyscraper. Silverhand Lives!
Inspired by: R. Talsorian Game’s Cyberpunk, Vangelis’ Blade Runner score, the literature of Philip K. Dick
Jazz - Bleak Sky Strut
The real challenge in producing Jazz isn’t technical ability. It’s about making what you do actually sound like Jazz. If you push too compositionally intense or over-engineer the mix, it starts to sound like you’re faking it. My challenge on this song was to mix and master in the style of jazz, with subdued drums and roomy atmospheres, everything panned around just a bit. I’m especially proud of how relatively convincing the all-MIDI instrumentation comes across as live instruments, though I’m sure Bird would’ve thrown a cymbal at my head all the same.
Inspired by: Film Noir, Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um and Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, Kamasi Washington’s The Epic