I have spent the previous couple of months composing and recording the original sound track for the virtual reality game Topiary. Throughout this process, I have worked closely with the director to develop creative strategies for implementing music into the virtual world.
“Topiary Store is a meditative HTC Vive game where the player engages in topiary while independently managing a business to sell them. The main mechanic of the game is the ability to manipulate the appearance of shrubs or trees by pruning through the use of the Vive controllers.”
Humming Birds Don’t Sing for Bees
Humming Birds Don’t Sing for Bees is an independent film that came out the Art Institute of Chicago. I worked closely alongside the director, Allison Ramirez to develop the score while the film was in early stages of production. Over the course of a few months I recorded the songs that became the complete original soundtrack.
La Jolla Symphony
As a recording engineer for the University of California San Diego Music Department, my favorite concerts to record are always the La Jolla Symphony. These concerts involve an extensive set up and mic hanging. The excerpts I included below are from the Symphony’s October 2016 concert and include Beethoven’s 5th and Lachrimae by Bryce Dessner. I recorded, edited, and mixed these clips. The rights belong to the UCSD music department.
WinterWorks
WinterWorks is a collection of dance pieces from three esteemed choreographers, which I was a co-sound designer of. The first piece silent/ song by Yolanda Snaith is a beautifully delicate yet hazy dance performance evoking themes of nostalgia, disorientation, and isolation. It’s sound design incorporated ambient sounds, strange nosies, and Schoenberg piano pieces and Operas.
Real Gone is a very free dance piece that echoes the lyrics of Tom Waits. It had the sparsest sound design of all of the pieces and included field recordings previously gathered by the director, Liam Clancy.
The final piece, un-tongued, is a politically charged dance piece that passionately protests against oppression in the modern era. It expresses these ideas through evocative sound design and emotional visuals, including a continuously dripping bag of red rice
It juxtaposes its sublime visuals with the sounds of latin percussion, sirens, and ominous synthesizers . Creating the sound was a very collaborative process that involved a lot of back on forth drafting to adapt and compliment all of the components of this piece; however it is through all of these interwoven creative components that it is able to drive home such a plea for drastic change and freedom.
Video will be included shortly.
Included below is a brief write up about the performance.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/san-diego/article/UC-San-Diego-to-Present-Three-Part-Dance-Performance-winterWORKS-This-Week-20170315
