Starting Point
I started around late December of 2024, picture lock didn’t happen until around March of 2025. So, there was a lot of concurrent writing while Juan was editing.
Juan had sent me the script for The Moth in May of 2023. I read it and thought it was cool, and that there was a lot of room for music. Juan came to the studio once or twice before casting. I wasn’t actively working on it for a year, but it was in my head. Having the ability to sit with the story for that long really helps; when you start writing, it’s not something you’re seeing for the first time—it’s been in your subconscious for over a year.
I remember thinking about that scene with the TV first—where he hears the TV calling him from behind the closed door. I was thinking of it like a siren in The Odyssey: this sound that’s so enticing it could draw in anyone. The original starting point was just one sound that was so beautiful that anyone would be attracted to it. We eventually moved away from that idea, but that was where it began.
A Rare Opportunity
The creativity of the script immediately stood out. It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill indie short. It felt big. There wasn’t a specific moment where I thought “there must be music here.” It was more the general energy and tone—it justified a bigger-sounding score than a traditional short where you write a couple transition cues.
Collaboration
Because Juan and I have worked together a few times, I know the general sound world and visual aesthetic he likes. That makes it easier because you can get to cues quicker. But it’s also harder because you can’t just do what you did before—you have to find something new that still fits the cinematic world. It took a while because there was a lot of music, but we were mostly on the same page, and once it locked in, I think we were both happy.
The Sound of “The Moth”
I viewed it as 1940s–1950s classical Hollywood blended with electronic and contemporary influences. Hybrid orchestral-electronic scores are trendy, but The Moth leans more into classical tradition than film-music tradition. The bigger influences were Rachmaninoff—late Romantic Russian music—and Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto. It’s more like a piece of classical music that fits a film rather than film music.
Romantic-era music meets Help Class meets Oneohtrix Point Never. Or maybe: a blend of a bunch of songs from my Spotify Wrapped. It’s a pretty personal score.
The Hardest Scene to Score
The hardest scene to score was the one where the Moth and Moth daughter age overnight. Throughout the film, the visuals and music mostly agree. But in that scene, they don’t fully agree. I saw the music and visuals combining to make something else. There’s a little dissonance between what you hear and what you see. Because you’ve heard the theme so much, when it clashes slightly with the visuals, I think it evokes an emotion you can’t get by fully matching the music to the visuals.
Work Process
My training is as a classical pianist. Because of that, I can’t write at the piano—I’ll fall into muscle-memory habits. A lot of composers play everything on piano and re-orchestrate it; for me, I sing everything. My philosophy is: if you can sing a melody, it’s good; if you can’t, it’s bad. That leitmotif just came from sitting in the studio, letting sounds come to my head, singing them until one stuck. I try to write music that’s catchy—something you can leave the theater humming.