Sound design
Below you will find a selection of sound design examples, original works for stage, and my process.
Group Project
A huge part of the show was the intercom. As the students try piece together what they are suppose to do, the intercom occasionally chimes in with … I realised very quickly that the intercom was an intergral character in the story. It will occasionally chime in with advice, instructions, or distractions. I prerecorded all of the intercom dialogue so I could have control over the sound of the voice, and I could add in additional sound like the clicking on and off of the microphone switch.
Temple University - Sept. 2022
Group Project was written/developed by Lindsay Goss in collaboration with Temple University theater students as a part of the 2022 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Goss and her students created a piece that was abstract, absurd, and daring with a world that matched.
On the day of the big test, a high school classroom spirals into chaos. Teachers are missing and none of the questions make sense. Will the students play along? Or is it time to take what they’ve learned and build a new world?
Another part of the show that needed to be created were several different alarms. The first was created to be a slight strange alarm, one that might exist in their world but one that they have never heard before. The second goes completely crazy, showing the students they the are in an absurd world.
For this show I wrote two pieces. First was a simple piece of elevator music that would play over the intercom. This was the first clue to the audience that we were in a world of absurdity. Second was a piece underscoring a beautiful monologue. After seeing a run of the show during tech, I saw a moment that I thought would be heightened with music. I asked the director if I could write something, and I recorded a short demo on the train home.
Small Mouth Sound
For some simple transitional moments that brought us from night into day I wanted to create a simple melody that could be played using several instruments that would make sense in modern meditation music, but give it a slight sense of tension. The slightly off tempo with the slight instability of the mode gave it just the right amount of tension. I then set this theme using a Koto and later a Kalimba.
American Lives Theatre - Dec. 2021
Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl was a fascinating piece to work on. This show takes place in a silent retreat, and most of the show is in silence. This presented a very specific challenge, but let me play with an aspect of sound that I don’t often play with. Silence
The first piece I wanted to write for this show was my take on meditation music. I spent a lot of time listening to Tibetan singing bowls, meditation videos, and whale songs. While listening I realized that because of my Autism I was having very strong reactions to the music, both psychological and physical. I then decided I would take all this into account and create music that made my Autistic brain feel amazing. I created an atmospheric soundscape with a deep droning bass line, and bells, and combined it with a calm but dense monophonic melody played on several instruments.
Measure for Measure
I then took this piece and exported different short segments that I could use to create several cues that were used to transition between scenes.
After this, I wanted to take the music that I created and mix a version that would support the scenes that took place in a dungeon. I added additional ambient sounds, and put my main melodic figures through several filters, along with different automation to change the space the music lived in.
Finally, the director asked me to create ringtones and texting sounds. The first ringtone was for the main character’s assistant, so I needed to make something that was simple and professional. The second ringtone needed to be as obnoxious and obtrusive as possible since it needed to startle another character. I also recorded the various “clicks” and “bloops” from typing on my iPhone and created a sample piano so I could simulate someone typing much faster than I can.
Lauren Briggeman's directorial vision took this challenging piece of Shakespeare and set it in the world of the “me too” era corporate office. This concept inspired me to write “The Corporation Lives”, a 10 minutes composition using a variety of different synthesizers, and background noise, all structured using minimalism techniques like that of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Marian University - Nov. 2021
Argonautika
Marian University - Mar. 2019
This was one of my largest projects to date. During my meeting with the director, he told me how important the sound was to this show. He talked about waves crashing, monsters screaming, and music that supported the traveling that was taking place on stage. He wanted the music to sound authentic to the Greecian story while adding elements of ambiance. In the end this show had around 100 cues and was completely underscored. The final score was a balanced mix of acoustic and digital, natural and synthetic, as well as ancient and modern
One challenge of the show was finding the aural world that some of the creatures. After the death of a character, his ghost comes to talk to one of the friends he left behind. I took come a sample of bells that I haad use previously for this charcter and applyed several filters, while also adding a layer of the same sound reversed under it, to show the uneasy work he now enhabited. For the Dryope I wanted to mix a bit of the magical with some natural elements. Once we got to the heart of the Dryope’s lair we heard the sounds of the water dripping in their cave while also hearing the echos of a nondiegetic choir singing through stone walls
Another important aspect to this show was the non-diegetic underscoring of specific emotional moments. The first moment we have is Jason giving Libations to the gods right before he and his crew set off on their journey on the Argonautika. Moments after Idmon is thrown into a vision, a Prophecy of their death and ultimate failure. I took some themes from the show and played them backward while adding other atmospheric sounds to give hints to what would be heard later on, while also showing what was going on in Idmon’s head.
The Rollcall took place early in the show, and introduces us to the crew that Jason is taking on his quest. I decided to mix percussion instruments from all over the world to create a piece that spanned the world just like the crew was about to do.
Out of all of the cues I wrote, this moment meant the most to me. At the end of the show, Hera and Athena come out and, in a fourth-wall-breaking moment, talk about the absurdity of what just happened. Then Hera asks what happened to all of those who died along the way, and Athena simply responds with “Look up”. We then find out that all those who die became the zodiac signs we see in the night sky. As soon as I read this the phrase “naming of the stars” came into mind. I heard the swelling strings playing in chorus, I heard bells twinkling in the sky, and I felt the grandiose nature of space wanting to fill the theater.
Project: Roll Gay Role Play Podcasting Network
June 2019 to Current
Roll Gay Role Play is a podcasting network that focuses on LGBTQIA+ and nerd culture. I was asked to create theme songs their flagship live play D&D podcast. I have gone on to write several theme songs for them.
When I was first approached about this project I was asked to make a theme song that mixed Dungeons & Dragons and “gay music”. For the first season, I took inspiration from Renaissance composers like Byrd & Tallis and mixed it with Freddie Mercury and Synth Music. For the second season I was asked to keep the main motivic idea, but give it a gothic/Grimm Brothers twist.
The podcast also loves to have one off bonus episodes where the players get put in odd situation.First I have their first christmas, or Yulemas in their case, special. Kris, the dungeon master, sent me the audio of him reading the introduction to the episode and I underscored it. I wanted to find a mix between “The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky and Danny Elfman’s Score to “Nightmare Before Christmas”. I took the most christmasy instruments, the Celeste and Sleighbells, and then used the famous “Dies Irea” theme to hint at the chaos that was yet to come. When I was asked to write the theme for the olympics special I knew I wanted to draw inspiration from one of my favorite pieces, “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” by John Williams, specifically the wonderfull trumpet fanfare. Finally, I was asked to do a theme for a Dr. Who themed episode. I decided to listen to the original theme a few times, and then just try to recreate it with my own spin. In all three case I made sure to end each them with a variation on the main theme song of the podcast, to keep it on brand.
When the podcast decide to create its own network, I was asked to create an ad break that could be used on all of their future shows. I was told that the segment was going to be called “gay for pay”, and as soon as I heard that I grabbed my phone and recorded a demo of what I heard in my head. This was the final mix that I created. They ultimately decided to change the name of the segment, but this will always be one of my favorite tunes I have written
Project: Unreleased Theatre Podcast Theme
June 2020
A theatre company in Indianapolis heard my work and reached out to me about a podcast they were going to be starting. The basic idea they gave me was they wanted it to be modern, exciting, and memorable. I decided to send them two different ideas, both of which leaned into synthesizers. The first was attempting to sound more chill and friendly, while I made the second one much edgier. They chose the second option, but the podcast was never released.
Miscellaneous Songs