Helloooo!
Sorry for the crazy inordinate amount of time that has passed since I last updated here (all of 2022)! I could write out a huge entry here explaining everything that has happened, but it might be better to just post this quick video instead where I talk about everything:
It was an incredible year full of momentum and positive changes. I have many plans and moves I’m making for 2023 and hope to update you on those very soon! Until next time!
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to quickly write to let you know that my score for the Small Town Monsters documentary “Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou” has been released! You can hear clips from the score and find links to watch the film on my Work page here on this website. It was a fun score to work on and I’m proud of the result, especially considering we only had 11 days to do it, which required over an hour of music in that time.
Along with Rougarou, I have been hard at work on multiple scores that I should be able to talk more about soon. I scored a horror feature called Manifest, a children’s animated book called “Why Do Flowers Grow?”, a short sci-fi film called “Desert Sky” and I’ve been writing additional music for an upcoming Nickelodeon show for an established composer in town. I can’t wait to share more information on these projects and more very soon!
Hello!
I know it has been a little while. Still being in the pandemic, things remain pretty strange out there, but things are looking up and I hope we can all see each other again soon.
Since last I wrote here, I have finally graduated college with a Bachelors in Music Composition (Scoring for Visual Media) with Honors! It was a proud moment and I’m really excited for the future.
I wanted to share with you a piece I wrote for my final scoring project, which I called “Mountains”. It was written for the orchestra and was supposed to be recorded by a full orchestra, but covid created some issues and we ended up with a much smaller ensemble, who actually recorded their parts in their home studios separately. You can imagine this caused some challenges in the mixing portion of it, but I ended up being really happy with the result. Not to be cheesy, but this song for me was my way of expressing how challenging the college experience was and what it felt like to finally overcome it, so hopefully that comes through in the music. You can hear it here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6m1mosp4t4fi2k/Mountains_Final%20Mix.wav?dl=0
I was lucky to often be working outside of school while I was in college. I’m excited now to be full force into my career and I’ve been lucky to have already been receiving work, assisting an established composer, writing additional music for a cartoon series they do, that I’m not sure I can talk much about yet, but it’s been really exciting. I’ve also been working with bands, like the metal band Vyle, who has hired me a few times now to write synth and electronic parts for their music, as well as recently some orchestral arrangements. I’ve also been working with music library companies writing some production music, more details on that to come soon as well.
Thanks so much for the support. I’m really looking forward to the future with a lot of hope and happiness.
Brandon
Hey everybody!
I hope you had an awesome Christmas. I know I haven’t updated here in a while. As you know, this year has been a strange and difficult one for us all. Despite many productions being delayed or halted, I was fortunate enough to still get a few projects this year. My score for The Mark of the Bell Witch film has now been released! I was going to write a big post about some of the behind the scenes on the creation of the score, but it doesn’t feel like the right time for that. But I wanted to check in and say hello. I hope next year is the year we all bounce back from all this. I want to wish you a Happy New Year!
Brandon
Hellooo!
It’s been a long time. As you know, 2020 has been something of a rollercoaster for all of us. As such, things have been pretty quiet in terms of film music for me. After scoring MOMO and Remembrance at the end of 2019, things were starting to move forward with projects in 2020, but alas, they were mostly postponed.
I did a few smaller projects: I worked on a trailer, I did synth programming for bands, etc. And of course, my school went online so I’ve been busy studying and continuing my education. However, over the last month or so, I’ve been scoring the latest documentary in the Small Town Monsters series, Mothman Legacy. It’s the first sequel we’ve ever done, being a sequel to 2017’s The Mothman of Point Pleasant. That’s one of my favorite scores I’ve done, so it was a lot of fun revisiting the legend and that score.
The main challenge for me was in creating a balance of using material from that previous score and then all new material as well. The end result became this mix of influences of the old score, James Newton Howard, the score for the TV show Ozark, and minimalist composers like Steve Reich. It was a lot of fun to work on. I have been using more orchestral instruments than ever before, with flute really becoming a primary instrument on this score. So much so that I hired someone to perform live flute on the score. It gave the score some life and realism that of course, you can’t get from samples.
The movie and score do not come out until October 20th, so unfortunately I can’t share anything with you yet, but stay tuned for some new stuff to come your way soon!
Brandon
Hey!
Dropping in to say hello and give an update on what’s been going on over the last month. After the release of MOMO a couple of months back, I’ve been mostly working with bands actually. There are two bands from my home state of Ohio who asked me to do some “programming” for them, which is essentially where I add strings, keys, electronic beats or anything else they might need on their record that isn’t the traditional rock band type instruments. I have a lot of fun with this as it is a big change from film music, but of course, scoring is still my main passion. These albums are in the early stages of production so I should have some more news on this in the new year.
In the film world, I recently won an award for “Best Sound” from the Indie Shorts Awards for my work on the short film “Zenith”! I was very honored and the screening at the fest was a lot of fun. Here are a few pictures of myself and the team:
I recently scored a proof of concept piece for an animated short called “Remembrance” which was a lot of fun to do. I worked with Dana Nugumanova who was the Director on the project. I only had about a week to score it so it was intense but we got it finished up and I attended the screening this weekend at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. There was a huge turnout for all the animated projects and a lot of energy in the crowd. It was also great to meet the rest of the team who worked on the project there as well:
So that’s what I’ve been up to! I put my music up on streaming sites finally this year and here are some stats from Spotify:
It’s humble numbers of course, but it is awesome to see it has spread to 47 countries!
It’s been an amazing year this year and I’m so excited for the projects I’ll be scoring in 2020. It’s also my last full year of college. A lot more to come and I’m pumped.
B
Check out this announcement from the director of Small Town Monsters. It’s a big step for us and I’m very excited about the future of scoring these films!
I was interviewed on The White Noise podcast about working as a film composer, working with directors, mapping out a score, as well as some of the pros and cons of playing with bands, etc. Check it out wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for The White Noise podcast!
Hey there!
Wanted to drop in quickly to let you know the extended score teaser for my score to the upcoming MOMO: The Missouri Monster documentary was released today! You’ll be able to hear short clips from some of the cues from the score and see some images from the film. The full score and the movie will be released this Friday on 9/20/19. I will also be flying in from Los Angeles to attend the Mothman Festival in West Virginia this weekend. We will be doing a screening of the movie at their kickoff event Friday night. It’s going to be an awesome time so if you can make it, come say hello. Check out the teaser below:
Hey guys,
I wanted to check in and let you know that I’ve finished my score for the upcoming Small Town Monsters documentary “MOMO: The Missouri Monster” yesterday. I learned so much during the creation of this one; it was essentially creating three different scores in one. It was also my first time scoring narrative scenes with acting for STM and that was a real treat. I believe it was the longest score I’ve ever composed as well. More details and clips of new music to come soon. MOMO will be officially released on September 20th. Special thanks to my Director Seth Breedlove and the cast and crew who killed it doing something we’ve never attempted before.
ALSO, I composed the music for a trailer recently as well that I wanted to share. This one is for a series called “On the Trail of UFOs” that comes out next year. I went out with the crew in the Nevada desert for a few days while they filmed which included a trip to Area 51! Check out the trailer below and let me know what you think of the music!
B
Yo! I put together a video walking through the creation of the cue “Discovery” from my score for the new Small Town Monsters documentary “Terror in the Skies”. Learn what software libraries I used, my writing process, and some of the lessons I learned while writing the score for “Terror”. Check the video to the left out to see it! Don’t forget to check out the movie on Amazon if you haven’t seen it yet and the score on all the streaming sites.
B
Hey there!
Today sees the release of the the new Small Town Monsters documentary that I scored “Terror in the Skies”! I’ve already talked a bit about the creation of the score in a previous post so I won’t go into that here, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the movie and score! You can hear clips from the score on the score teaser (below) or find it on all of the streaming sites including Spotify and iTunes.
I have a number of projects in the works but next up is the new documentary “Momo: The Missouri Monster”. I’m very much looking forward to continuing preproduction on this one throughout June and then heavily scoring it in July. Cheers!
B
Hey there!
I’ve finally completed the score for the short film “Zenith” and today is was released! I’ve put a short video above with clips from each of the cues so you can check it out if you’re interested. Zenith was made by the team behind "Black White Read" that I scored late last year so it was a pleasure to work with them again. And while this only required about 10 minutes of music, it was one of the more challenging in that every note had to really count and in stepping out of my comfort zone.
Zenith is a contemporary fairy tale about overcoming one’s mental struggle through an unusual spiritual experience and cosmic guidance.
The score is now available on all streaming platforms!
And so with Zenith being finished and out there, I move on now to the next Small Town Monsters film which has just wrapped filming. I’m working on pre-production for it now and then will start scoring it in June and then wrapping it up in July. It’s going to be a really interesting one. More details to come!
B
Hey everyone!
I know it’s been a minute. Wanted to drop in and update on what I’ve been up to these past couple of months. As of about 20 minutes ago, I finished my score to the Small Town Monsters documentary Terror in the Skies. It was a tough one for sure; after scoring 8 of their films now, it’s hard to not repeat yourself and to invent new and exciting ways to help tell the story. I had a blast though and wrote some cool stuff that I’m excited for you to hear! The movie and score release on June 7th!
You may have also noticed I updated my Work page with the theme from the On the Trail of Bigfoot series that I composed. The series is doing amazing critically and at the top of the charts on Amazon and elsewhere so I’m really proud of Director Seth Breedlove and to have been a part of it.
Next up for me is to finish that short film ZENITH I told you about and have been working on. We have one tiny part that still needs finished so now my full attention will be on that and then I have a couple of other smaller projects in the works. In a few months we film MOMO, which is the next STM film so I’m looking forward to that as well.
Hope all is well with you!
B
Hey guys!
Wanted to drop you a line on how everything is going. As you know, I recently completed the score to The Bray Road Beast documentary with Chris Dudley. It has been really well received and I can’t thank everyone enough for checking it out and sending in the kind words. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it by clicking HERE or if you haven’t heard the score, you can find it on Spotify or Apple Music or wherever you listen to music.
In other news, we at Small Town Monsters have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund this year’s movies. The first is called “On the Trail Of...Bigfoot” and I composed the theme music for it. I will be composing full scores for the other two movies that we are producing this year starting with “Terror in the Skies” about winged cryptids in Illinois and following that with “MOMO: The Missouri Monster” which is a Missouri Bigfoot case from the 1970’s. I’m very excited to score these projects this year. We had a live Q&A launch party a few nights ago and hit our goal of $35,000 in the first 24 hours! As of this posting, we have almost $50,000 which is amazing! We have an incredible support base and I’m very excited to be apart of STM years later. If you’d like to back to the Kickstarter, you can do so by clicking HERE. We still have 24 days to go and there will be awesome stretch rewards to come!
And finally, an update on the short film I’m currently scoring: ZENITH. I am getting closer to finishing this score. I have one or two scenes left to score and then we’ll be going all the way through with a fine tooth comb and finalizing everything. I will be finishing up by the end of February and then I’ll start scoring Terror in the Skies in March. Looking forward to being able to share with you what I’ve been writing for this!
Talk to you guys soon!
B
Hey guys,
I am super happy to announce that the score I co-composed with Chris Dudley for the Small Town Monsters documentary “The Bray Road Beast” is finally being released today! It is available on pretty much every streaming platform that exists, including Apple Music, Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube Music, Amazon, Pandora, Tidal...the list goes on and on. Find it wherever you listen to music and stream it for free, or if you’d like to support Chris and I, purchase it on iTunes/Apple Music or Amazon, or wherever you typically purchase music!
With the release of Bray, I was finally able to get all of my previous scores up on the streaming platforms as well which feels amazing. Finally you guys can stream them in their entirety! If you do check out The Bray Road Beast soundtrack or any others of mine that you previously hadn’t checked out, let me/us know what you think! We’d love to hear from you.
** Quick update on where I’m at currently: I finished the short film Black White Read recently. I had a lot of fun with that one and it actually led to another opportunity with some of the same team members who worked on it for another short film of theirs called Zenith. I have started pre-production on this score and will be working on it at the end of December, with the goal to finish it by the end of the year. Then I’m off to visit home for a week or so and then back to start the new year strong!
Have a great holiday season everyone!
Brandon
Hey everyone! Today is finally the release day for the Small Town Monsters documentary that I scored with Chris Dudley…The Bray Road Beast!!!
I’m beyond pumped for everyone to see it and to hear the score that Chris and I created. We are still ironing out the details on when and how the score will be released, but it definitely will be released digitally for all of those who may be interested! When that drops, I will definitely let you know and get you some more info on the creation of the score. You can hear a few cues right now in the “Work” section of this website.
In the meantime, check out the movie on Amazon and let us know what you think in a review! Cheers!
B
Hey guys! Wanted to drop in and let you know what I’ve been up to since finishing The Bray Road Beast documentary.
Immediately upon finishing The Bray Road Beast, I was accepted into a film intensive program through MI where six composers were paired with six directors here in LA to score their short films. I was matched with the Orphans Productions short film Black White Read and off we went!
Suffice it to say this was one of the hardest experiences of my career thus far but also one of the most fun. We had to score the film in about a week, so there were multiple sleepless nights…but that’s nothing new! :)
My Director, Justin Morck, was such a pleasure to work with. He was filled with enthusiasm all throughout the process, and really worked with me to create something that feels unique and fitting for their film. The challenge for me was that this film is stylized after the 1920’s silent films so it was black and white and there was no dialogue, but there was this deeper meaning in the film they were trying to get across so I needed to somehow be influenced by that style but also bring in some modern sounds in order to help communicate those ideas.
I have to give a huge salute to my mentors on this project: Tom Villano and Craig Richey. Both were of immense help and were always patient and kind although everything was always chaotic. I learned so much from them during this process, everything from writing, to more readable sheet music for the musicians to play…just too much to put here in words.
We also had the pleasure of being mentored for a day by composers like Rolfe Kent (Legally Blonde, About Schmidt, Wedding Crashers), George Clinton (Austin Powers), and Dave Porter (Breaking Bad). It was really amazing to have their influence and advice on our work as well.
We also had a great recording session with a string quartet, bassoon, flute, clarinet, etc. As always, it was amazing to hear the mockups come to life.
We had the screening last night and it was really incredible seeing all of my fellow composers in the program and how well they did on their films. All around it was just an incredible experience that I’m so thankful to have been apart of it.
By the way, The Bray Road Beast comes out on October 5th! Check back here on that day for some new music and a new post!
B
Yo!
I wanted to stop in and give a thorough update on what I've been up to since it's been so long!
As you know, I've been working on the score for the Small Town Monsters documentary, The Bray Road Beast, and the score is now finished! And with that I can finally announce that I did my first film score collaboration with another musician and that person is none other than Chris Dudley who plays keyboards/electronics in the band Underoath.
It was an incredible experience; I've been a huge fan of Chris and Underoath for many years, and never dreamed that we'd someday be working so closely together on something. I don't want to give too much away on the experience as I am planning on doing a behind the scenes post on the creation of the score on it's release day, which will be October 5th, to coincide with the release of the film! But suffice it to say, it was one of my favorite experiences thus far in my career and I think that we created something along with the STM crew that you are really going to enjoy.
Separate but related, the buzz is starting to begin on the movie. If you check out the Press page here on the website, I've linked just a few of the articles streaming in on the upcoming release. Very few have seen the movie as we're just now finalizing everything, but the response so far has been great! I can't wait for everyone to see it and hear it.
Also, I finally received back the final mixes on the four action movie trailer cues I did for Current Music. I've added those and the songs I did synth work on for the band Absolute Hero's EP Gone Bad to my Work page here on the site if you want to take a listen.
Speaking of Absolute Hero, they recently gave me a shoutout about the work I did on the EP while they were giving an interview on a podcast recently. Take a listen to that here.
That's about all for now. You can check out the trailer for the movie below and preorder it by clicking here.
I'll touch back in soon with a behind the scenes post and more news on what's to come for me in the future!
Talk soon,
B
Hey everyone, I apologize for the long pause in between updates recently. I have been incredibly busy!
I started working as a Coordinator for the music library company Black Toast Music. I've also begun work on The Bray Road Beast documentary. It's looking like this one will need finished by the middle of August. It's a daunting project for sure, but I am very much looking forward to diving in here. More behind the scenes on this one to come.
And finally, I recorded synths and did some programming for a band called Absolute Hero on a few of their songs on their new album. The band was recently featured as one of the "12 Bands You Need to Know" in Alternative Press magazine! Check out their music video for "Bad Hero" here.
Once I get a few weeks in to Bray, I'll be updating with some behind the scenes pictures and possibly new music as well. Talk to you soon!
B
