Sony Crunchyroll

Jun 2021 - Present

Starting in June 2021, I have been working at as an ADR Engineer at Crunchyroll (formerly Funimation) Studios located in Dallas, Texas. Crunchyroll is one of the largest anime dubbing companies in America, responsible for the dubs of shows such as Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and Attack on Titan. Since I have been working with Crunchyroll, I have had the privilege working on many different shows. Some of my work includes being the lead engineer on How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom, assistant engineering for How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom Season 2 and Requiem of the Rose King, as well as helping out on many other shows from time to time such as One Piece.

Stephen F. Austin State University

2015-2019

From 2015 to 2019, I spent my time studying at Stephen F. Austin State University. I was awarded a Bachelors Degree in Sound Recording Technology in December 2019. My areas of expertise include audio recording, sound design, mixing and mastering, music composition, and music production. Examples of all of these things can be found in my demo album Strings to Synthesizers.

The League Rundown Podcast

2017 – Current

On top of music and audio, my second passion is video games. The League Rundown is a podcast that I have been a host on for over 3 years. The League Rundown is a weekly podcast centered around discussing the professional scene for the worlds most popular video game, League of Legends. We enjoy a sizable audience with between 3,000 and 4,000 weekly downloads. My responsibilities on the League Rundown include in depth research on teams, players, and story lines, creating detailed documents for each show, as well as editing and uploading each episode. Check out my demo reel down below to hear me in action!

Strings to Synthesizers

Released December 2019

Drawing inspiration from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, Life is a piece that centers around the idea that life is a mysterious, fragile, and beautiful thing. When creating this piece, I wanted to make something that the listener could get lost in and fall into an almost meditative state. The drone fading in at the beginning of the piece is supposed to help the tension and stress of the listener fade away. As the piece continues, short hits of a synth start to appear, bouncing around in the mix like stars twinkling in the night sky. Finally, a soft but distinct heartbeat can be heard in the second half of the piece, symbolizing the beginning of a new life. This piece is best experienced with eyes closed and in a relaxed position in order to help the listener lose themselves in the sounds of Life.

Death’s Pursuit is a piece that is meant to be played during a video game cut-scene. The scene is as follows: “It is late at night, and a brave adventurer is wandering through the haunted woods. Suddenly he hears a bell toll, and in horror, looks behind him to see a demonic monster slowly walking out from the shadows. As the adventurer turns to run, he hears one last bell toll before the monster begins chasing after him. The chase is intense, as the adventurer tries to outrun the beast. As the chase goes on, the music grows in intensity as the monster begins gaining on him. Finally, the monster catches up to the adventurer and, with one final toll of the bell, swiftly takes the adventurer’s life.” Death’s Pursuit is meant to instill a sense of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, just like the feelings that the adventurer would be experiencing in this scene.

Death’s Lullaby is meant to act as an epilogue for Death’s Pursuit. Meant to be played at the funeral of the fallen adventurer, the piece is supposed to evoke sorrow, despair, and sadness. The persistent low octaves in the left hand represent the dark reality that the world stops for nobody, even when unthinkable tragedy has occurred. The melody played in the right hand represents the emotions of those in attendance at the funeral, delicately growing until the climax of the piece where the reality of what has happened truly sets in. The melody then transitions into higher octaves to match the left hand before fading away to finish the piece off, leaving the listener with a feeling of loss.

A raw, high energy punk song off of an album that took the 90s by storm, Basket Case by Green Day is a timeless classic. The process of recording and mixing this song was some of the most fun I had as an SRT student. Getting to slowly hear one of my favorite songs come together as each piece got recorded was incredibly satisfying, and getting to sing on a song for the first time in years was exhilarating. This song also has a personal connection to me as well. Many of my close friends struggle with anxiety, and this song is written to try and shed some light on what it is like to live with constant anxiety and paranoia. Because of this, I thought it was extremely fitting to do a cover of Basket Case for my senior project.

The Hymn of Acxiom was a piece originally performed using a vocoder, giving it a very synthesized and robotic feel. For this recording, each of the 10 vocal parts were recorded individually and then autotuned to help recreate the synthesized feeling of a vocoder. I believe that for this song in particular, it is also important to understand what the song is about. Vienna Teng explained at a live concert that The Hymn of Acxiom is a love song, written from the point of view of a database. This gives The Hymn of Acxiom, a song that incredibly beautiful at first glance, a very eerie undertone with lines such as “Leave your life open, you don't have to hide.” and “someone is gathering every crumb you drop.”

Video games have been a major part of my life since a very young age, and to this day remain one of the most important aspects of my life. They have helped me get through tough times, they have helped me discover incredible music, and they have helped me keep up and maintain some of the most important friendships I have ever had. Because of this, I thought it only fitting to create an 8-Bit piece in order to pay homage to video games and how much they have positively impacted my life. Boss Battle! is a piece that is in the style that one would typically hear while fighting a “final boss” of a game. The music is intense, and helps create a sense of urgency and hype in the listener as they take on their enemy. The piece was created almost exclusively using a plugin called “Magical 8-Bit” and it was quite a fun experience getting to learn how to use it.

Take Five was by far the most challenging piece in my entire project to undertake. Figuring out how to track 4 people at the same time with limited space was a big challenge. Fortunately, SFA uses the Dante network which allowed me to put the drums and bass in one room, saxophone in a different room, and piano in another. This allowed each instrument to be recorded without having the mics pick up unwanted sound from other instruments. Getting the whole session up and running was quite daunting, and getting the Dante network configured correctly so that everyone could hear each other was difficult, however in the end the piece was successfully tracked in 3 separate rooms simultaneously, making full utilization of the Dante network as well as SFA’s studio space.

In 6th grade, I decided I wanted to play the trombone. This would be a decision that would change my life forever as it was what introduced me into the world of music. Without the trombone, I would have never ended up having the passion for music that I do now, and I genuinely have no idea what I would have tried to pursue as a profession. Because of this, I obviously had to do something involving the trombone for my senior project. After going to my trombone professor, Dr. Deb Scott, and asking about what might work best for me to play, I settled on a beautiful arrangement of Simon & Garfunkel’s famous Scarborough Fair.

One of my Mother’s favorite songs, Mad World is a simple piece that focuses almost entirely on the words. The song is beautifully written, with lyrics depicting someone who is struggling to make sense of the world they live in, barely holding on to their sanity. Something interesting to note about this piece is that the cello part that can be heard that comes in about halfway through the song is actually a virtual instrument. I originally had my friend Kenneth Waldrop play cello for me, but after I started trying to process the recordings I had gotten, I found that I much preferred the virtual cello to the real one. I believe this may be because in the original recording by Gary Jules, the “cello” in the song is actually a Mellotron imitating a cello rather than a real recorded one. Another unique thing for this recording of Mad World, I had another friend, Sarah Bond, come in and sing for me. On that particular day, Sarah’s voice was quite tired and strained after a long day of practice. This surprisingly led to a performance of the song that has a very unique feel to it. The strain on Sarah’s vocals and the tension in her voice all help add to the feeling of stress that the person the song is depicting is going through, and just how tired and worn down they must be from living in such a Mad World.