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 and 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. My specialty is post-production editing and mixing with an emphasis on thoughtful sound design and implementation. I have a proficient grasp of the post-production audio pipeline for film and animation using Pro Tools 12 HD and am well versed in sound effects and background editing, dialogue, music editorial, the ADR and VO recording and editing process, and have experience re-recording mixing using D-Command and Control 24 control surfaces. I have ten years of self-taught and industry-taught Pro Tools experience in addition to having Avid Pro Tools Post and Music Production Expert Certificates. I often use programs and plugins such as Soundminer, OBS, Adobe Premiere Pro, Frame IO, iZotope RX7, Kontakt, Logic Pro, and Finale/Sibelius to supplement and iterate various kinds of audio work. On the game side of things, 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.” I was fascinated at 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 actually 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 certain genre of music? Why did this horror movie become innocuous when put on mute? Down that rabbit hole, I went…

I prefer the rare instances where the sound guides the picture instead of the other way around. When I was in college, I began to experiment with multi-phonic effects by singing and playing into my tuba at the same time. 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 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

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

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

That disgusting visceral squelching sound of running one’s hands through mac n’ cheese or something slimy: 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