SeaWorld Abu Dhabi

Populating a brand new theme park with sound

We were honored to be asked to help create the sonic enviornemt for this groud-breaking indoor theme park. The largest indoor aquarium in the world, since it's opening in May of 2023 SeaWorld Abu Dhabi has already won several prestigious awards including a 2024 Thea award.

The scope was so large, over 33 hours of original music composition, sound design and production, that we partnered with Thinkwell (now Tait) and worked together to produce this epic soundscape. On the Thinkwell side everyone was a dream to collaborate with, particularly my counterpart producer Jon Baker.

As DRRP had realms with some world music requirements, I got to flex my love of ethnomusicology in the Tropical Ocean and Abu Dhabi Ocean realms of the park. Abu Dhabi Ocean was a particular challenge as it needed to truly embody the culture of the Emirates so I spent over a year studying Arabic and Emirati music and composed hours of music for this realm myself which I then got to record in Dubai with some incredible local musicians. And I coerced Gregory Smith into joining me to compose two shows in the realm as well.

This project was so huge I could go on and on but suffice to say that this was one of the most enjoyable projects of my career...

• Musically challenging not only because of the specific styles and regional musics required in park each area or show, but also because Miral fully embraced our design to use adaptive scoring techniques where sound isolation from one area to the next was not always possible, yet scenic and storytelling elements require a change in soundscape.
• Technically challenging as we had to organize, design for and manage 9 composers and a team of sound designers (the wonderful EarsUp) to create over 11.5 hours of soundscape. We also had to produce and mix a spectacular in a 360 degree hub with an imax-sized video screen and a glorious D&B 10-array plus system.
• And uniquely rewarding from a project management standpoint as it demanded constant collaboration for several years with over 40 persons who were each wonderful and truly brilliant.
• Project Planning and Management
• Music Composition
• Show and Spectacular Score Production
• Multi-layer adaptive BGM Production
• Orchestration
• Session and Print Copyist Services
• Musician Contracting
• Recording Studio Services
• Music Production and Recording Engineering
• Mix Engineering
• Onsite Mixing and Integration