The following is a portfolio of work that demonstrates the various styles of music that I can produce for you. Scroll down to the area of interest and click through to read more details about the approach to the project. I also create the videos to go with the music, which is a fun side project.
This is a little exercise I did to create some new music for the game Stray.
TYPE: Original music for a 2D platform game made in GameMaker Studio for the 2021 Global Game Jam.
STYLE: VGM
I really enjoyed creating this track. I could see enormous potential for many emotional touch points throughout this short film. I wanted to use the music and sounds to make certain elements feel like distant memories, but at the same time to be raw and visceral, still fully felt and experienced by the main character as he rediscovered this special place. I wanted to create a little melody that would tug at his memory at the start, almost if wafting into existence from long ago and drawing him into the building. This was set to a soundscape made from a number of piano sounds (mercilessly tortured through various effects) to create an unsettling underpinning to the story.
Here is my entry for Stillalive Game Labs HLB Trailer Music Challenge #24. Loved the video trailer and the neon colours and frantic energy, so I went with music and enhanced SFX that played off the neon colours with sparkly synth sounds. I focused on molding the music to very closely fit the action, with just a drop of humor slipped in. I also wanted to capture in the music the parkour aspects of the action, and the galloping hunting down of the hapless prey. I hope you enjoy it.
I wanted to create a track that embraced what I felt was the flow of the narrative for this film, which for me was a story of tables turning, for the narrator - the movement of locus of control from a place of uncertainty, oppression and alienation to a place of control, familiarity and confidence, and for the films subject, the reverse. The music is delivered from the perspective of the narrator, and I hope it underpins his dialogue with this feeling of tables turning. I hope you enjoy it.
What a lot of fun to try my hand at scoring a DC show - first time to try! I wanted to treat this as a real world assignment, so I set myself a time limit for production (3hrs start to finish) and really focused on hitting the judging criteria over personal expression.
Here is my entry for the Hans Zimmer Month Scoring Challenge with Spitfire Audio. While it would have been tempting to go for a big "natures grandeur" style epic score I thought it would be more interesting to take a bit of a darker twist, and focus on the powerful and turbulent nature of a body of water under the influence of gravity. I started with ominous grey clouds opening up into tinkling bell-like rainfall, and then following the rainfall as it trickles into a stream. I used a rain-stick instrument to provide the feeling of water pouring over bounders and swirling into eddies as it picks up pace. Strings punctuate the amassing flow as it gathers volume and pace, drawn ever downwards, until it reaches the rapids that introduce the thumping drums and mallets which represent a tumbling, churning, headlong rush towards greater waterfalls. The final outpouring suddenly collides with a large still body of water, with the brass representing the full, deep resting place prior to a majestic final push into the sea. Its intentionally a bit different, and hopefully it captures the essence of the story of a river, from cloud to sea on the Blue Planet.
This is my trailer competition entry on the Video Game Composers Discord, made in under 2 hours, including the video, and using just free samples, not instruments or expensive libraries! I wanted to do something unexpected with this one to show what can be done with the bare minimum tool-set. :-)
TYPE: Soundtrack - Imagined Story
STYLE: storytelling, electronic
"In the cold dark expanse of space, where robots toil alone but for the brief changing of shifts at the recharging outpost, a chance encounter awakens strange deeply hidden programming of a most confusing nature."
TYPE: Game Music - Character study
STYLE: VGM
This is an original track inspired by a character from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Magician.
TYPE: Soundtrack - Image
STYLE: storytelling, hip hop
