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Tag: musical composition

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SeaWorld Orlando’s new POP and Electric Ocean shows

1 min read

This Year, we were honored to compose and produce all the music for two new SeaWorld events; Pop, a bubble art show featuring 19-time Guiness World record holder Fan Yang and Electric Ocean, a night-time EDM event featuring Cirque style acts and ending in a Fireworks spectacular.

Pop was a great team effort… composition by Chris McDonald and Kurt Goebel with composition design by me and orchestrations by Chris. The score features harp and a 16 voice choir along with heavy synth work and a 64 piece orchestra.

Blog Post music Video

Ground To Crown – documentary film score

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Ground To Crown is a short form documentary film about a team of tree climbers from Cornell University and their annual trip to climb the Giant Sequoia trees in California to aid U.C. Berkeley. The film was produced by the climbers themselves, directed and edited by Colin Crilley. The film tells a compelling story and shares the experience and excitement of climbing trees that are nearly 300 feet tall and is full of beautiful camera work by director of photography Jake Rudin. Yes, it’s cool to work on a film that my son is in!

For the score I composed, I wanted to convey a feeling of “Americana” that (more…)

Blog Post Game Audio music

Software review – Audio Impressions’ Notatation Switchblade

8 min read


I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Audio Impressions’ Notatation Switchblade, here’s what I found:

Making accurate, readable score parts from DAW midi tracks takes a bit more know-how, elbow grease and time than most people are willing to devote. Among the biggest challenges from session to page are the optimum stemming of notes (the grouping of sub-divided beats to be most easily readable), dynamic markings and articulations. And when working with a copyist, any vagaries in your midi file can add up to extra charges while the copyist verifies all instrument, mute and articulation changes.

Enter Audio Impressions’ Notation Switchblade. The company claims that Switchblade can save you time by interpreting your midi data and simplifying some of these chores for you. Switchblade reads standard midi files (.smf) and outputs Music XML (MXML) for importing into score preparation apps like Finale and Sibelius. (more…)

Blog Post Game Audio music

Are You Leading or Following?

6 min read

Dan Rudin recording live score

How to make useful tempo maps for recording sessions, Part 2

Click tracks are often used in music recording, keeping ensembles playing tightly together and helping ensure that specific musical events happen exactly when they need to, as when scoring to picture. As discussed in part 1, a good tempo map will generate an audio click track that leads musicians easily and musically through performing a piece of music. (more…)

Blog Post Game Audio

GameSoundCon 2009, San Francisco

3 min read
with Brian Schmidt, GSC founder and presenter
with Brian Schmidt, GSC founder and presenter


Who wants to work in game audio? Well, I do.

Game audio (every sound and musical element in a video game) has grown exponentially from its humble beginnings just a couple of short decades ago. It has become the area of the audio industry that is most driving technological innovation, consumer electronics development and attracting some of the most talented people working in audio today.
(more…)

Blog Post

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

1 min read

In 2007, I had the opportunity to work with FlickerLab animation company on an animation segment for the documentary film “Bigger, Stronger, Faster”. The film, released today in theaters across the country, explores the use of steroids and performance enhancers in American culture.

The animation segment was dropped from the theatrical release (for fear of legal repercussions), but is slated to be included in the DVD release of the film. The segment is a musical tribute to steroids, composed by me with lyrics by film producer Alex Buono and FlickerLabs’ Harold Moss. The song, “Steroids” was orchestrated by Chris McDonald and I recorded and mixed it here at My Space Recording with a small orchestra (featuring Steve Kummer on piano).

I hope to include the piece on a soon-to-be-added video reel on my site.

Keep an eye out for this movie, it looks to be great!