Tré Carden is a composer, sound designer, pianist, producer, and songwriter.
Scoring plays a pivotal role in storytelling, as it evokes emotions and helps the audience tie what they’re viewing to their emotional memories. As a composer, film scorer, sound designer, and songwriter, I use these skills to add dimensionality to visual stories.
My specialty is the same as my philosophy, which is to make sure story and meaning are central to the process of composing music for visual media.
Scoring
CLIENT: VADA (2022)
The Story: To celebrate the launch of their new eyewear color ways, beloved Austin company VADA created a horror short based on 80’s giallo films. I worked alongside a dream team, with Emily Elizabeth Thomas directing, ArtClass content in post, illustrator Kaiman Kazazian, and stylist Margaret Williamson Bechtold. Founder and Creative Director Katie Caplener reached out to me to make an original score, sound design, and foley. The brief? “smokey Berlin basement club post fashion month party bender vibe; pulsing, dangerous, sexy”. I prepared by watching Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy and listening to Jeff Mills, Objekt, and Berlin house music. I started by designing the spooky campy carnival sound that lays the horror groundwork. Then I carefully crafted the sound design of the screams and laughs, followed by the beat and bassline.
[Some fun facts on my foley: the shark bite is crunched up foil; the glasses plunking into the water and hitting the floor of the aquarium were made by coins in a bowl; and the arm sliding down the slide…windexing my bathroom mirror!!]
CLIENT: NEST (2024)
The story: Working with a Latinx filmmaker and tasked with telling the story of these artisans and why supporting them makes a difference, my goal was to elevate the voices of the people involved with the video.
[Fun elements: The underlying rhythm is sampled from the sculptor in the beginning, and the vocals are taken from the director’s humming along to the melody I wrote, captured in a voice memo, with a harmonizer.]
CLIENT: ELLIOT & MAE (2023)
The Story: An excerpt from a queer short film I composed and scored. Around 28 minutes in length and centering around the struggles of a queer couple across (and a time travel element), each character has a different theme. Every shot that signifies time travel or memory is demarcated by a recurring chime. The director asked for pain and emotion, and I captured this with wind-chiming piano and sound.
[Proud moment: I used the heartfelt, sweet major theme from the intro to the film in the climax, but turned it into in its minor mode for an extra heart-piercing, nostalgic effect.]
CLIENT: URZULKA (2023)
The Story: Ears Ringing is a visual poem by filmmaker Urzulka based on their experiences riding a motorcycle around the world. The task was to create a score that disappeared into the environment like a fleeting memory. I tapped into my experience in Tibetan Buddhist communities in Nepal and India, where monks taught me that the moment when a bell stops ringing but its resonance lingers is a glimpse of enlightenment. The challenge was to create a sound that felt the same as your ears ringing. Lessons learned: mixing overtones is challenging and critical.
[Key elements: many hours of this score were spent crafting and capturing the motorcycle’s engine sound. No stock sounds were quite cutting it, so I rode on the back of Urzulka’s motorcycle with my Zoom H4n to get the right sound. Many, many more hours were spent reshaping and sculpting the motorcycle]
CLIENT: VADA (2019)
The Story: Austin-based jewelry company VADA produced a short art film for their "Shatter You" advertising campaign, inspired by poetry from Katy Shayne. Set against the enigmatic backdrop of the elusive Bloomhouse and vintage yet timeless cinematography, the composition and sound design were crafted to mirror the mystical, intriguing nature of the poem and align with the choreography. Study materials included Clara Rockmore, Suzanne Ciani, Linda Perhacs, and Vashti Bunyan. Sudden transitions in the score were deliberately composed to mimic vintage editing techniques. Woozy Ondes Martenot, Mellotron, sudden and a hyptonizing arpeggio anchor the film in an era that feels both familiar and out of reach, suspended in timeless ambiguity.
[Fun moment: I sampled empty noise from my dusty 1976 Fender Rhodes layered onto digital tape effects to make the sound as irreplicable as the film]
CLIENT: GIDDY (2022)
THEME SONG COMPOSITION
CLIENT: HIMS (2022)
CUSTOM SOUND DESIGN, MOTION GRAPHICS
CLIENT: CAPTAIN BLANKENSHIP (2019)
DEMI IN MONTAUK — Commercial scoring for Captain Blankenship’s sea-inspired haircare products.
CLIENT: URZULKA (2018)
EARTH TO EARTH — Art film, collaboration with photographer and art director Cydney Cosette.