I’m an Italian-born, UK-based composer and sound designer who loves crossing the border between music and sound design. I love orchestras, synthesizers, guitar pedals, field recording, interactive and generative audio, microphones and cassette tapes.
My credits include feature films, TV shows, video games and advertising campaigns. I’m also the owner of Sonora Cinematic.
Ever wondered about the career path of a musical sound designer? In this blog, I break down the opportunities, income potential, and essential insights for turning your passion for sound design into a sustainable gig.
Ever since hearing Holst’s The Planets Suite for the first time, the magical mystery of space has been deeply connected to music in my mind.
I have been lucky enough to have had many occasions to write "space music": from my appearance in Bleeding Fingers' Space Tones series to an upcoming real-time RPG to writing the official demo for Arturia's Minifreak Stellar
While my love for ambient music has deep roots, my fascination with cassettes is more recent. A few years ago, I watched a video of Alessandro Cortini touring with Nine Inch Nails and performing on a 4-track cassette recorder: I was floored by that demonstration of creativity and I bought a broken Tascam Portastudio shortly after.
Several services and circuit modifications later, a corner of my studio now looks like the bedroom of a teenage musician in the ’90s.
Writing orchestral music is, at the same time, the most difficult and most rewarding part of being a composer.
Every time I approach this eternal and universal language I face this challenge with honour and love for music.
Larger than life, cinematic pads and fragile textures are some of the most interesting tools in a composer’s palette: I love their ability to set a mood with only a few notes and evolve over time, morphing into something beautiful or terrifying.
Every synthetic or organic pad tells a story with sound.
The bread and butter of the true crime and investigative composer.
After having written over 200 cues for shows like The Genetic Detective, 20/20, The DNA of Murder, In Pursuit with John Walsh and many more, I started to grow bored of the pre-canned, tired sounds that plague our composing tools and became obsessed with creating interesting yet perfectly usable synthetic pulses from scratch. There is a real art in making simple sounds that continuously evolve over time and keep the listener engaged while not drawing attention to themselves. Unless you want them to...
As a lover of tapes and ambient music, crafting fragile and grainy keys and plucks fills me with joy. Verticale was one of my favourite projects to work on and we sampled an upright piano prepared with four layers of felt, passed on to cassette.
As much as I dislike arms in real life, I do have a soft spot for the challenges that come with sound-designing fictional weapons.
From realistic swords and firearms to completely imagined tools of destruction, sound can tell a story about the fictionsl world we want to immerse the player in.
I grew up adoring Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 10 (Why did I skip 9? Vivi was a fine example of great character design) and the sound of 5th and 6th generation RPG magic is forever impressed in my ears.
Today, I love creating magical sounds for the tonal quality you can often embed in them.
Is there a sound designer (and synthesiser enthusiast) who doesn’t love sciience fiction?
Alessandro’s been a really valuable addition to our sound designer roster over the past year—with high-quality presets in the cinematic and sci-fi genres on V-Collection and Minifreak—and it’s a pleasure working with him.
Lily Jordy. Sound Design Manager, Arturia