A smoke-lit score for the moment a grieving Reaper walks into a rival kingpin's world, where everything is warm, boozy, and quietly dangerous.

NOTES

Scored to picture for a 1'29" scene in which Arn pitches himself to King, an Afro-Caribbean crime boss: Rhodes, sax and Caribbean percussion over a low C2 pedal at about 73 BPM. The slow, unhurried groove acts as ironic counterpoint to Arn's grief and fear, projecting King's total control, while the music drops out beneath dialogue, falls 7 dB on a picture cut, and settles into a low bed once the pitch begins, keeping the story on Arn's words.

MOOD

Smoky · Sultry · Menacing

VOICES

RhodesSaxCaribbean PercussionBass

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.

NOTES

Scored for Flute, Synth (Train Whistle / Electric Guitar / Wood Chimes patches), Piano, Bass, and Drum Kit, a lean combo instrumentation echoing Mancini's own jazz-combo scoring language for early-60s sophisticated comedy-thrillers. The piece leans into old-school jazz vocabulary: secondary dominants (V7/V, V7/IV) and ii–V motion drive the turnarounds, while tritone substitutions (subV7, subV7/V, subV7/IV) slip in wherever a chord needs to arrive at its target by the "back door" instead of the expected route, a harmonic disguise that mirrors Peter Joshua's own parade of aliases. Walking bass lines and close 4-way piano voicings root the cue firmly in vintage cocktail-jazz territory, matching the sly, tuxedoed elegance of the film's Paris.

MOOD

Sly · Sophisticated · Suspenseful

VOICES

FluteSynthPianoBassDrum Kit

A spotting-to-picture cue for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, tracing the beacon-fires of Gondor as they wake one by one across the mountains, a kingdom's last, wordless cry for help answered in flame.

NOTES

Scored for French Horn, Violin, Piano, Cello, and Percussion. A Picardy-third modulation lifts the cue from D minor into D major exactly as the "epic theme" ignites, turning despair into hope in a single chord; a chain of secondary dominants (F7, C7, F#7) pushes the harmony forward the way each beacon pushes fire to the next peak. The opening dotted "call to arms" motif is left untouched in the horn through four repetitions of the main theme, while the strings underneath thicken from an eighth-note pulse into a driving sixteenth-note ostinato, tension built through density and orchestration rather than tempo. A borrowed bVI (modal interchange) chord derails the triumphant D major at the final bar, landing the cue on Aragorn's stunned, unresolved reaction instead of a clean cadence.

MOOD

Rousing · Urgent · Awestruck

VOICES

French HornViolinPianoCelloPercussion

My first game score, a cue scored to a God of War scene, where Norse myth, vengeance, and motion collide; harmonic shadows and shifting meters track a relentless momentum through a world ruled by gods and grudges.

NOTES

Built on C minor's composite minor scale (raised leading tone plus modal-interchange color), with borrowed bVI and bII (Neapolitan) chords lending a Phrygian darkness, and a single V7/V secondary dominant sharpening the cue's pivotal tension point. Shifting between 4/4, 7/8, and 6/8 mirrors the scene's unstable, combat-driven motion. Scored for viola, pad synthesizer, electric piano, and drum kit.

MOOD

Tense · Mythic · Relentless

VOICES

ViolaSynthElectric PianoDrums

A short cue for Häxan (1922), Benjamin Christensen's genre-bending silent film on the history of witchcraft, music that steps into a world where folklore, body horror, and dark humor blur into one uneasy dream.

NOTES

Built in C minor using the composite minor scale, blending ♭6/6 and ♭7/7 for harmonic ambiguity. A minor-major seventh tonic chord (I-maj7) and a borrowed ♭VImaj7 lend an unsettling sweetness, while ii°7 and VII°7 diminished chords and a V7 cadence inject sudden jolts of tension, mirroring the film's own slide between dry documentary tone and grotesque dramatized horror. Scored for viola, violin, piano, and bass guitar. Rounded binary form.

MOOD

Eerie · Whimsical · Unsettled

VOICES

ViolaViolinPianoBass Guitar

A 1'58" movie cue for a fictional sci-fi scene: an old man and a young survivor stumble out of an explosion into a cavernous metal ruin swarming with flying creatures, sprinting across a suspended walkway just as it gives way beneath them.

NOTES

Scored for an intentionally "metallic" ensemble, Glockenspiel and clean Electric Guitar double the melody in bell-bright octaves, Electric Bass locks into the piano's syncopated comping, and a standard Drum Kit drives the chase, echoing the scene's industrial, wire-and-steel architecture. Fourteen distinct polychord voicings (upper-structure triad over lower-structure tones, split hand-to-hand on the piano) carry the harmonic language throughout; a chromatic run of diminished 7ths (♭VI°7→VI°7→♭VII°7→vii°7→i°7→♭ii°7) traces the walkway losing its footing underfoot, and the meter fractures into alternating 5/8–7/8 bars as the ground gives way. The cue never resolves: it ends on a bare open fifth (i, no 3rd), the walkway's collapse left hanging in silence. Realized as a MIDI mock-up from a hand-built MusicXML score (no live recording).

MOOD

Frantic · Industrial · Unresolved

VOICES

GlockenspielElectric GuitarPianoElectric BassDrum Kit