A title-sequence cue for Charade (1963), Stanley Donen's Parisian caper of stolen fortune and shifting identities — where a train whistle opens the film the way a body is hurled from a moving train before the credits even roll, and the harmony never quite settles on who anyone really is.

NOTES

Scored for Flute, Synth (Train Whistle / Electric Guitar / Wood Chimes patches), Piano, Bass, and Drum Kit — a lean combo instrumentation echoing Mancini's own jazz-combo scoring language for early-60s sophisticated comedy-thrillers. Composed for Berklee Film Scoring 101 (Lesson 3 reharmonization assignment), the piece leans into old-school jazz vocabulary: secondary dominants (V7/V, V7/IV) and ii–V motion drive the turnarounds, while tritone substitutions (subV7, subV7/V, subV7/IV) slip in wherever a chord needs to arrive at its target by the "back door" instead of the expected route — a harmonic disguise that mirrors Peter Joshua's own parade of aliases. Walking bass lines and close 4-way piano voicings root the cue firmly in vintage cocktail-jazz territory, matching the sly, tuxedoed elegance of the film's Paris.

MOOD

Sly · Sophisticated · Suspenseful

VOICES

FluteSynthPianoBassDrum Kit

A 90-second opening cue for Mắt Biếc, following a young man's quiet bicycle ride through his village to a schoolyard alive with laughter — a memory that hasn't happened yet, and already feels lost.

NOTES

Scored for Sáo Trúc, Violin, Piano, and Cello. The Sáo Trúc melody is built on the D major pentatonic scale, grounding the cue in a distinctly Vietnamese pastoral voice rather than a generic Western folk sound. A string of secondary dominants (V7/V, V7/vi) keeps the harmony gently restless beneath the calm surface, while a single borrowed iv6 chord (Gm6) — placed exactly under the close-up of the protagonist's smile — casts a fleeting minor-mode shadow across an otherwise bright D major, mirroring the "hint of worry" hidden behind his warmth. The Violin's guide-tone line (3rds and 7ths) threads continuously through the changes, giving the harmony a held-breath quality that only releases once the scene cuts to the laughter-filled schoolyard.

MOOD

Nostalgic · Tender · Quietly wistful

VOICES

Sáo TrúcViolinPianoCello

An opening-credits cue for the 1951 MGM romance Mr. Imperium, tracing a prince's clandestine courtship of an American singer across a fading Mediterranean summer — and the long exile that follows.

NOTES

Composed for Flute, Violin I, Piano, Cello, and Drum Kit as the final scoring project for Berklee's Theory & Composition 2. The A section's lush Fmaj9 voicings and an early V7/VI conjure old-Hollywood glamour shadowed by a quiet unease; the B section pivots to D minor — the relative minor — to mirror the prince's years away, with borrowed bVII7 and bVImaj7 chords lending a wistful, nostalgic color. The returning A' is never a literal repeat: added #11 and 13 tensions plus a borrowed bIIImaj9 chord let the theme come home changed, the way reunited lovers do.

MOOD

Nostalgic · Lush · Bittersweet

VOICES

FluteViolinPianoCelloDrums

A 52-second cue written for a story of a lonely aviator and the little girl who reawakens his buried memories of the desert — where a mysterious drone from his past quietly bleeds into the warmth of an unlikely friendship.

NOTES

Scored for violin, piano, and cello as an excerpt for a Berklee Film Scoring assignment (OCWPR-260, Lesson 5). An A Aeolian line colored by a raised 11th and a French augmented sixth chord conjures the vast, half-remembered Sahara of the aviator's youth; a pivot modulation then thaws that modal haze into a bright C major waltz — Parisian in spirit, like a music box turning — for the present-day friendship. In the final bars, an Fmaj7(#11) chord lets the desert's color briefly resurface beneath the waltz, as if the old man's memory and his new friend's world had, for a moment, become one and the same.

MOOD

Wistful · Whimsical · Haunted

VOICES

ViolinPianoCello

A 1'15" opening-credits cue for Algiers (1938), where the line between Paris and the Casbah dissolves into a single chord — built around a solo voice singing in Arabic that opens onto the old quarter's Andalusian–North African musical heritage.

NOTES

Scored for piano and Violoncello. A Neapolitan chord and borrowed modal colors evoke a Phrygian sound close to maqam Hijaz; the cello holds a sustained pedal tone like an oud drone while a string of secondary dominants in the piano traces a restless harmonic wandering. Theory & Composition assignment, Berklee.

MOOD

Restless · Liminal · Yearning

VOICES

PianoVioloncello

My first game score — a cue scored to a God of War scene, where Norse myth, vengeance, and motion collide; harmonic shadows and shifting meters track a relentless momentum through a world ruled by gods and grudges.

NOTES

Built on C minor's composite minor scale (raised leading tone plus modal-interchange color), with borrowed bVI and bII (Neapolitan) chords lending a Phrygian darkness, and a single V7/V secondary dominant sharpening the cue's pivotal tension point. Shifting between 4/4, 7/8, and 6/8 mirrors the scene's unstable, combat-driven motion. Scored for viola, pad synthesizer, electric piano, and drum kit. First-ever game-scoring assignment, Berklee.

MOOD

Tense · Mythic · Relentless

VOICES

ViolaSynthElectric PianoDrums