My Composing Process: House (2025)

In late July 2024, I was in Skylight Books in Los Feliz, Los Angeles browsing the graphic novels. This has become a past time of mine since arriving to LA in March 2024 and I have amassed quite an eclectic collection. On that particular day, I came across the graphic novel “House” by Josh Simmons. The cover was arresting: a decrepit hallway. It felt visceral, eerie and surreal. I picked it up and read it cover to cover. It didn’t have any dialogue and instead communicated the terrifying tale entirely through visuals. The graphic novel medium at it’s very essence. Visit for more information Drew House Slippers

I immediately thought to myself: “this would be fun to compose music for”. So I reached out to Josh the next day via email and pitched the project. He agreed and we had a phone call to discuss his vision for the graphic novel and his musical influences. These are some of the excerpts from my notes from that call:

So I listened to some of the musical references,. Suicide’s self titled first album from 1977 was quite a listen. It was discordant, at times disturbing, and very momentum-heavy.

On August 13, 2024, I sat down with my mini banjo and started improvising the theme that would become the main theme for “House”. You can hear my first recording of the demo below:

This theme (the “Idyllic” or “Pastoral” motif) came to represent the above-ground world. It has a wonderful folk quality to it. Centered around G major, it creates these lovely dissonant moments (like with the major 7th note F#) but eventually resolves to the G chord almost with a sense of relief. This melody also starts on the four chord (in this case C major) which in itself makes the melody feel without a center. You can see the notated melody below:

The idyllic, pastoral theme

A few weeks later I recorded a short demo of this theme on my Godin acoustic electric guitar. This demo helped set the course for the entire score.

Once I performed this demo, the beginning of the score and the end of the score seemed more in focus. I knew that the Idyllic melody would bookend the track. It would be played in a folk manner at the very beginning and then return at the end this time sounding distorted, slowed down and dissonant. In the final track, you actual hear this early demo mixed in, run through an amplifier and screeching away.