// Tell us about yourself
I'm a 19 year old living in Irondale, Alabama, just outside Birmingham. People know me as a big nerd when it comes to music--a fact that I'm slightly proud of. Music is all I do and all that I'm good at doing, so it lets me know that I'm doing something right.

// Where did you study, what is your musical background?
I started out playing viola on accident in 4th grade--never really cared much about it until it allowed me to go to a fine arts high school that allowed me to major in music, where I was suddenly immersed in all kinds of great music--classical, contemporary, world, and popular music alike. I realized that performing other peoples' music was not enough for me, so, I began making my own. Just before graduating, I landed my first big job scoring a full play, a job that allowed me to fly to Italy the day after I graduated to see the performance. I realized that I was really beginning to enjoy both the process and the benefits of being a composer, so I decided to keep it up. After graduating from high school, I came to Birmingham-Southern College as a music composition major.

// How do you compose music? How does it work from start to end?
I get most inspiration from cinema and literature, sometimes dreams. I get on a piano and tinker around a little bit until I find something fitting the mood or the ideas, and then I sit down and write it all out as sheet music in Sibelius, attach Sibelius to several monstrous soundbanks I've collected over the past few years, and record it into another program. It is a very, very lengthy process, but I always find it's worth the time. All the composing, orchestration, arrangement, realizing, recording, mixing, and mastering are taken care of by yours truly.

// Do you have an specific method when you sit down and write? How do you like to work?
I like to work for hours. I can't sit down for 5 minutes and work a little bit, I usually try to tackle a full piece or half a piece (if it's larger or more complicated) in a day, and once I've gotten my laptops set up, they stay that way for a long time. I'll usually work nonstop for 6 hours, and I find it's the best way to get a great workflow going. Ideas begin snowballing and I pick up new ideas as I go along, usually keeping the melody very much the same throughout all the editing, but I'll often change accompaniment and background voices drastically. I like dead silence if possible--I can't listen to music or a TV, it distracts both my ear and my mind. If I'm writing for a specific movie or visual, I'll watch it over and over again while writing so that I can time things out and keep the mood and the full aesthetic very clear in my thoughts.

// What's it like in your hometown, what do you do when you're not in school or working?
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama, which doesn't really mean anything. At the same time though, it's a nice place to live--not too big, but there's still stuff to do when the power's out at home. When I'm not writing music or taking music classes, I generally mess around on a piano and end up writing music anyway, or play Guitar Hero 4--which has a great song-writing addition. Honestly, I don't do too much but things music-related except for play video games--and pick up tips on writing music that way.

// Where does your interest lie in the future?
My future, I know, will be with music. It's going to be the be-all end-all of my life. Specifically, I hope to support myself by writing music for video games and movies and things like that initially, but my very final goal is to be able to write music for my own reasons and still live comfortably. I want to push music itself forward and introduce new ideas into the music world as a whole.