Sylv an us Fin n ia n

Cue for an original fictional sci-fi scene: two survivors sprint across a suspended walkway that collapses beneath them. Goal: industrial, metallic tension that never resolves. Solution: glockenspiel, clean electric guitar, piano, bass and drums; polychord voicings, a chromatic run of diminished sevenths for the failing walkway, and alternating 5/8 and 7/8 bars, ending on a bare open fifth. MIDI mock-up from a hand-built score.

• Film Composer
• Music Composer

Spec score for a 90-second opening scene: a young man cycles through his village to a schoolyard full of laughter. Goal: a distinctly Vietnamese pastoral voice, not a generic folk sound. Solution: a sáo trúc melody on D major pentatonic over violin, piano and cello, with secondary dominants for gentle restlessness and one borrowed chord that casts a brief shadow under the close-up.

• Film Composer
• Music Composer

Short cue for an imagined scene: a young woman steps into a spotlight, torn between courage and doubt before her audition. Goal: warmth that never quite settles. Solution: G major built on 9th chords, with borrowed iv7 and bVII7 chords as a flicker of self-doubt before the music eases into the glow of resolve. Two pianos trade the melody and arpeggios. Suited to podcasts, short films and intimate scenes.

• Film Composer
• Music Composer

Spec score for a fantasy scene in which signal fires ignite across mountain peaks, one after another. Goal: build urgency and turn despair into hope. Solution: French horn, violin, piano, cello and percussion; a modulation from D minor to D major as the main theme ignites, secondary dominants pushing forward like each fire, and strings thickening from eighth notes to a sixteenth-note ostinato. Ends on an unresolved borrowed chord.

• Film Composer
• Music Composer

Spec cue for a tense, mythic action scene in the style of Norse-myth action games, and my first game-scoring project. Goal: relentless momentum and a dark atmosphere. Solution: C minor composite scale with Neapolitan and borrowed chords for Phrygian darkness, and meters shifting between 4/4, 7/8 and 6/8 to feel unstable. Scored for viola, pad synth, electric piano and drum kit.

• Game Composer
• Music Composer

A title-sequence cue for Charade (1963), Stanley Donen's Parisian caper of stolen fortune and shifting identities, where a train whistle opens the film the way a body is hurled from a moving train before the credits even roll, and the harmony never quite settles on who anyone really is.

• Film Composer
• Music Composer
• Music Producer