Doudmusic

Doud – Don’t Take [Composer, Director, Editor]

I had been getting more into visual processing (photoshop, touchdesigner, premiere) and wanted to deploy some of those techniques in a coherent audio visual piece. The song was written in October of 2024 and I began ideating the video a couple of months later. The idea was to have two shoot days. The material from the first shoot day I would edit together and get a feel for what processing and sequencing would work. Then a plan was formed for the second shoot day with an actual shot list. The second shoot day, me and my DP John Roche (infinite span man) marched through the shot list like a Viennese clock. From there it was replicating some processing from the rough edit, exploring new textures, and filling in the blanks. I am super pleased with how it came out. I feel the song and video together are a total expression of interests and feelings I had at the time. The entire video was edited and abused in premiere.

Taco Night [Score Composer, Sound Mixer, Audio Post]

As is ritual, John Roche (John Roche) sent me a rough cut of his short “Taco Night” and was looking for a sexy custom score. We made plans to get together and discuss references, inspirations, hopes, and dreams. The score came together over the course of 4 or so sessions in my studio. The first cue was drafted in midi and recorded by John and I. The vocal theme came first, then orchestrating percussion hits and developments according to the video. The second cue was a found recording from a 1973 studio apartment in greenwich village from a band called “bed bug wool death”. The song is titled “I’ll bring a gun to a pillow fight”. The third cue I drafted and recorded a base layer for on piano, and then went to local Atlanta vibraphonist Jordan Benator for her malletic expertise. The three pieces comprise a total tripole of musical experience. Every piece of music created before or after can be placed somewhere within the three-dimensional space created by these works. This was intentional. Finally, we mixed the dialogue and SFX to the score. This was awful, the mic used for dialogue recording sounded like it had piss in it (and maybe it did watch the short). To clean the audio we had to use AI and for the first time I had to experience AI taking my job.

Kongo [Score Composer, Sound Mixer]

John (director and friend) called me and asked if I wanted to score his new short, a folk-horror called Kongo. He sent me the rough cut (which was already great). Immediately after watching, I went around my house gathering sounds using Voice Memos on my phone. Plucking exposed piano strings with a pick, dragging the pick across the piano string windings, striking mightily the piano strings, gathering door creaks, various metal and other textures I could find around the house. Perhaps my favorite was turning the treadmill on high speed and pressing my iphone mic against the belt with varying pressure to create a horrible screeching sound. I found I could control pitch and pitch rate of change to get some interesting results. This sound features heavily in the climax (no spoilers, watch it). Once I had gathered the sound palette, I imported the sounds to Ableton and started piecing things together. I began with the climax and worked backwards. I enjoy working this way, letting sound germs develop. Once I had something rough assembled, I joined John and Bryan at the cabin (filming location) to tweak and sound mix to taste. We played Monopoly every night that week and I didn’t lose once.

Muchacho Taco Party [Audio Post, Sound Design, Sexy Taco Sax Man??]

John and Ben (directors and friends) kidnapped me and took me to a faraway and isolated shot location (in East Atlanta). “We’re shooting an ad spot for Muchacho Tacos,” they said. “And oh man are you gonna be in it.” I told them I didn’t think I had a face for the silver screen, much less tiny screens in people’s pockets everywhere. They heard what they wanted to, which was nothing. “You’re going to play the saxophone. And you’re going to play it for a silent room full of dancing party extras…Hop up on that prop pool table.” And so I did, and we got the shot. Extremely strange gig.
(I also arranged sound effects throughout and tracked some jazz bass and saxophone for the intro which were thrown out in cold blood)

Sabiine – Hotline [Sound Mixer, Audio Post]

John and Ben (directors and friends) didn’t kidnap me this time. They simply asked if I would do some mixing and sound design on their latest music video. I obliged despite the previous ordeal. I got to boom op for the narrative bits (difficult, painful, slightly rewarding) and would later take the audio I recorded into Ableton to arrange and mix. I got to tackle some interesting dialogue related problems on this project.