Tell us about your musical background! What inspired you to become a composer?

While I was growing up, music and the arts were all around me. My aunt is a dance teacher; my grandparents played various instruments like clarinet, piano, guitar, and the harmonica (all of which I have picked up at one point or another); and my dad was and still is a big influence. I grew up watching my dad DJ various events, and around the time I was born he created an animated feature musical called Bongee Bear and the Kingdom of Rhythm. Throughout my entire childhood up until college my dad and uncle were working on this feature film. They worked with Debi Derryberry, Rob Paulsen, Dom DeLuise, Bill Farmer, Daryl Sabara, the list goes on and on. 

By the time I started college, the feature film was finally heading into post-production after twenty or so years in the making. They had moved through multiple animation styles and companies, which made it hard to finalize the film. I already knew that I wanted to be a film composer before I got into college. It’s kind of funny, but I had watched The Holiday which features Jack Black as a film composer and I was already into music and my family was into media, so it just made sense to me and felt natural. So while I started attending Columbia College Chicago, my dad finished the feature. And I was asked to do the score and help finalize the songs for it. It was my first feature film. 

The process of working on Bongee was intense. A lot of the vocals had actually been recorded years earlier, probably when I was still younger than 10 years old. And the vocals weren’t even placed to actual music yet. So when I started working on the songs, I had to find the tempo and time signature. My dad didn’t have any musical training. He’s just a really talented DIY-er that made it work in the record sessions back in the day somehow!

You’ve also worked on Nickelodeon titles like The Loud House and The Casagrandes both as a music editor and a composer! What was your favorite part of your work? Has music editing subsequently informed your composition?

I have greatly enjoyed working with Nickelodeon over the past six years. I started out in 2019 as a composer’s assistant to Jonathan Hylander, the main composer for The Loud House and The Casagrandes. This opportunity gave me the chance to compose for multiple Loud House and Casagrandes short films. I composed Latin music, 80’s synth action, jazz, blues, rock, you name it! In 2024 I was hired by Jonathan Hylander again, but this time as the music editor for the LDH series, and an upcoming feature film through The Loud House, which was directed by the wonderfully talented Darin McGowan.

Music editing has informed my composing drastically. Before I started music editing for Nickelodeon shows, I was naturally pretty good at knowing where music should be placed and where it should start and stop in a scene. I’ve always had a keen sense for that. But music editing has given me a much clearer ear for when a track works or doesn’t work for a scene overall. My instrumentation, orchestration, musical form, and style have all been influenced by music editing. I’ve learned how other composers and songwriters are making efficient tracks that bigger production companies might utilize for their projects. I’d recommend music editing to every composer who is just starting out. 

On the Emmy-award winning series The Chronicles of Jessica Wu, you were not only the composer, but you also did both music and post audio. Being so involved in the series, are there moments or lessons that have stuck with you on this project?

The biggest thing I learned through this project is the importance of having a team. This was the first project where I was able to hire other folks to help me out with dialogue and sound design, while I music edited, composed, and mixed all of the episodes. I created a workflow with my team in order to get each episode done weekly, so that we could then make any edits the following week while starting a new episode. For a lot of independent projects I tend to do bundle pricing for music and sound design, and sometimes I do everything myself because I don’t have the funds to hire a team. But being able to hire a team makes a huge difference for every aspect of post-production. It allows for everything to have the attention it deserves, so that the end product is the best that it can be. For instance, with The Chronicles of Jessica Wu, there was a particular moment where there was an intense amount of wind during an outdoor scene. I tried everything on my end that I knew of to help get it clear without ADR. In the end I hired my incredibly talented friend and dialogue editor, BriElle Achterhof. She absolutely crushed it and I couldn’t have gotten this series to sound as great as it did without her expertise!!

With such a variety of creative projects under your belt, do you have a preference for composing in certain musical styles or genres? Or is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t yet done? 

It’s been amazing to be able to compose for as many projects as I have: at this point I’ve composed for over 50 independent projects, short films through Nickelodeon, four feature films, and more than a handful of podcasts and commercials. I’ve composed for pretty much every genre that you can think of. My musical strengths definitely lie with comedies, sci-fi, thriller, drama, and animation. I am a bass player, and so I love incorporating really slick bass lines into my scores when I can. Electronic music and synths are my bread and butter. I absolutely love writing scores that have a unique sound and can really bring you into the world of the project. I would love to connect with someone from the company Hello Sunshine. Tiny Beautiful Things, Little Fires Everywhere, Big Little Lies, etc.: the list goes on for shows I have loved from them. My goal in the next few years is to be the main composer for a TV series, and to work on more feature films. 

You’re also quite creative in the world of sound design across many types of media! Tell us about your sound design work; is it similar to your composition process?

Music and sound design are so often interconnected. It baffles me that composers and sound designers don’t work together as often as they could. There are moments in projects that need the music and the sound design to work collectively. Sometimes the sound design is favored over the music, or the music over the sound design, and components of both can be taken out or emphasized. To create a cohesive sonic world that is unique and interesting, it helps to bring everyone together as a team. 

As an example, maybe the sound designer is recording or placing a sound in order to create an alien’s scream. Maybe that specific sound could actually be utilized in the score as well! There are so many ways that you can change and tweak sounds in order for them to sound musical and be a part of the score and the story. And honestly it’s incredibly fun when I get to resculpt sounds! I love recording found sounds, and creating an incredibly unique musical piece out of them. By taking sounds, obscure or not, and sculpting them into something musical, you can really create something special and help immerse your audience in a brand new world.

Interview by Kati Falk-Flores

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