Hello! Matt here; I also go by MJ. I’m a sound designer born in San Francisco and raised in Northern California. I started experimenting with sounds and timbre using my tuba at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois while taking classes in psychoacoustics and musicology. I graduated with a degree in music performance for tuba and an ad hoc degree in sound design and technology in 2012. I moved back home to San Francisco in 2013 to attend a sound and music production studio called Pyramind Studios, where I discovered my love of post-production and surround sound mixing. Following my passions, I then attended and completed the Vancouver Film School's Sound Design for Media program in 2016. I moved back home to San Francisco in 2024 to complete my master's degree in Technology and Applied Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I have a proficient grasp of the post-production audio pipeline for film and animation using Pro Tools Ultimate, from spotting to editorial to assembly (to fixes!) to pre-dubbing to mixing to mastering. I’m well versed in sound effects editing, background editing, dialogue editing, music editing, the ADR and VO recording and editing pipeline process, and I have experience re-recording mixing using D-Command and Control 24 control surfaces. I have twelve years of experience as a self-taught and industry-taught Pro Tools professional and have Avid Pro Tools Post and Music Production Expert Certificates. Outside of Pro Tools, I use a core combination of programs and software plugins that include Soundminer, OBS, Adobe Premiere Pro, Frame IO, iZotope RX7, Kontakt, Logic Pro, and Sibelius. On the game side, I have experience with middleware programs Wwise and FMOD for game sound implementation using Unity and Unreal integration, coupled with a basic understanding of audio scripting.

Hearing the hum and crackle of the lightsaber and its doppler effects from Star Wars sparked the very first time I had ever marveled at an instance of sound design where the sound was noticed cognitively instead of unconsciously. I had to know how that distinctive *shhhwoom* or *bihhhzzouwh* was made: “A combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged movie projectors and the interference caused by a television set on a shieldless microphone and its doppler effect.” I was fascinated by the thought process regarding the genesis of that sound and the awe I felt from it. Little did I know how deep that rabbit hole goes! I became intrigued with the idea of psychoacoustics and music psychology, i.e., the study of the psychological perception of sound and music. Why did I bike to school faster on a particular genre of music? Why did this horror movie become innocuous when put on mute? Why are gastropubs so cacophonous nowadays? Down that rabbit hole I went…

I prefer the rare instances where the sound guides the picture instead of the other way around. Scenes where music meets and melds with sound design. I began experimenting with multi-phonic effects in college by simultaneously singing and playing into my tuba. I modulated that raw audio into grotesque, cacophonous, monstrous sounds, which I then edited and re-dubbed to monster and creature video clips in movies. I do believe the best sounds are most certainly found entirely by accident: squeezing nearly empty chocolate syrup containers with force while making chocolate milk makes for stellar slug monster noises; the sounds that noisy car engines make reverberating between dense city buildings when they take off from a distance make perfect fodder for horror sound design. There is something very satisfying about obliterating a pumpkin with a sledgehammer and playing with its guts, all for work of course! My biggest ambition in life is to change the world with sound.

Favorite Sounds

• The Lightsaber and its doppler design from Star Wars

• The BB-8 Droid, also from Star Wars, that used human speech and inflection re-recorded into a talkbox

• A deep guttural harmonic Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine hum and rev, because sometimes noise is beautiful

• The reverberations and early reflections that bounce off of city buildings from distant motor engines after midnight hours

• Pure silence, or a vacuum of sound, can be more powerful and deafening than the loudest noise within the right narrative or with stellar timing

• Rain and rolling thunder, i.e., nature’s best pink noise

• That disgusting, wet, visceral, squelching sound of running one’s hands through mac n’ cheese or something slimy on the Foley stage; absolutely perfect for mud, gore, or monsters

• The ear-splitting screech of the Nazgûl and their Fell Beasts from Lord of the Rings. It turns out this was the manipulation of two ordinary styrofoam cups grinding against each other, coupled with the screaming of the director's wife!

Inspirational Sound Designers

Randy Thom, Walter Murch, Suzanne Ciani, Frank Warner, Ben Burtt, Skip Lievsay, Jack Foley, Richard King, David Farmer, Gary Rydstrom, Mark Mangini, David Acord, Ren Klyce, Wendy Carlos, Alan Splet