Meet Christopher Lane | Composer & Immersive Audio Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Christopher Lane and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Christopher, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I was working a full-time job at Apple in Cupertino, designing virtual instruments and sounds for Logic and GarageBand. It’s the best “jobby-job” I’ve ever had—great people, cutting-edge technology, wide reach, and excellent pay. But then my old friend and composer Ludwig Göransson called one day, asking if I would be interested in sound designing an immersive concert experience for Donald Glover / Childish Gambino. Donald’s team was organizing this special weekend music show/festival in Joshua Tree, featuring a huge inflated dome that fit a couple of thousand people. They would project visuals in 360 degrees on the dome’s surface around the crowd and deliver a surround sound sonic experience to accompany the live concert.

So what happened next? I took all of my accrued vacation days at Apple to escape to the desert and build this new immersive world. When I returned, I knew I wanted more. But to have the flexibility to work on a variety of these emerging immersive audio projects, from concerts to VR games to installations, I needed to leave Apple and break out on my own.

I’ve been working with immersive audio in one way or another ever since, and my return to being an independent operator also meant more time to get back into composing and collaborating with film composers again. So while there are days that I miss the regularity and reliability of the 9-5, starting my own business has opened the door to a very fulfilling variety of work and flexibility in my schedule that I truly love.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m pretty sure I hate the term “multi-hyphenate”. It feels pretentious and grandiose, like I should be able to calculate rocket trajectories while playing a violin concerto or something. However, the concept of integrating multiple disciplines into your professional process to unblock creative potential very much *does* define my story, so I embrace that label. The danger, of course, is settling for the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none”, which is unflattering on a good day, and capable of triggering a depressive episode on a bad one. I think in 2024 there are shrinkingly few people who can excel and succeed professionally by only being a master of one skill. Partly that’s because of the changing nature of the workplace, the brutal job market for creative fields, and the increasingly fast turnover of technology that threatens to replace heartbeats with algorithms wherever profit is possible. But, in less bleak terms, there’s also just so much incredibly cool stuff to do and learn out there, that for me it would be impossible to ignore VR or psychoacoustics or design, and only practice piano all day to *maybe* one day be an absolute master of playing the piano.

So I began as a musician and, along the way, learned composition, sound design, computer programming, game development, filmmaking, virtual reality, acoustics, electrical engineering, immersive audio, and even woodworking. In some form or another, all of these skills are part of my typical week.

I have something of a running theory that all creative fields share a common thread of good composition. I believe that the process and approach of an excellent chef and an excellent photographer are essentially the same. Music, painting, poetry, too. There’s subject and ground, melody and harmony. They all benefit from combining their respective elements in a way that allow the person experiencing them to follow a story, follow an idea. Some things must be in focus while others are supporting. The more fields I explore, the more I find this to be true. This approach expands your process from “what chord can I use for evil here” to combining the sounds of car engines and synthesizers and dropped books and punching bags to tap into more visceral sonic feelings. When I look back at my best work, it’s usually the projects where I can combine multiple interests. It requires stepping back to a more holistic and sometimes abstract creative process that asks “how can I express this idea?” and you can put together pieces of different mediums for maximum impact and creative possibility.

This year, I helped Royal Caribbean launch an entirely new immersive dining venue that is part five-course meal, part theatre show, part motion simulator. Guests dine in a recreation of a turn-of-the-century steam train while moving through virtual environments seen out the high-definition “windows”. Accompanying these visuals were live actors, period and original music, and immersive surround sound custom-tailored to the unique space, utilizing more than 50 channels of audio and haptic effects to feel the rumble of the train on the tracks. Leading that kind of project as the audio and music director meant wearing easily half a dozen different hats. For me, that variety and complexity keep it interesting, and I’m excited to see more venues, theme parks, and cruise lines explore these high-tech immersive experiences that guests are loving. I’ve had the pleasure of designing immersive sound and music for installations worldwide, from Coachella pop-ups to New York galleries, Hollywood premieres to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

My studio has probably three dozen different instruments scattered about or stuffed into closets, and I’m not sure I could play a complete song on just about any of them without some refreshing. But when a project comes along looking for new and interesting sounds for their music, I might pull out one of my guitars and say “what *else* can a guitar do other than play guitar notes?”. Pretty soon I’m scraping and scratching new beautiful or terrifying sounds out of traditional instruments by wearing a different hat. A hat that acknowledges that I can’t play scales on a guitar, but I could excite the resonance of the wood by hitting the strings with an electric massager at different speeds for different pitches. I never had the patience for scales anyway.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’ll give you one food and one experience:

You’ll find plenty of lists for “Best Breakfast Burrito in Los Angeles”, but my slightly modified vegetarian version at Fred 62 diner in Los Feliz is unbeatable. By default, this monster burrito comes with pork chorizo, but ask to sub that out for hash browns inside, add avocado, and you’ll be in breakfast heaven in no time. They serve these “wet”, with a sauce covering the outside, and whatever is in that Fred 62 sauce is far from a typical salsa or enchilada sauce. It’s got a smooth heat and a rich creaminess that I’ve never tasted anywhere else. I used to live within walking distance, and it was a daily battle to resist the temptation, like a burrito siren was singing their song down Vermont Ave.

For an experience, I would rush to take any open-minded friend to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City. It’s just so impossible to describe without ruining the magic, but suffice to say this is not a typical museum. It’s something between a love letter to museums and a critique of them, with exhibits that are as beautiful as they are confounding, hilarious as they are serious. If you like the satirical reality-warped almanacs written by author/performer John Hodgman, then you’ll absolutely adore the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’m going to Shoutout a longtime friend, collaborator, and Los Angeles local, Jonathan Ade. When I landed in LA fresh out of school, we were introduced and I became his sound designer for a beautiful series of short films. Jonathan is a Filmmaker with a capital-F. A writer, director, and editor, he helped me break out of my musician bubble by being one of the first professional collaborators I worked with where we talked creatively about characters, about story, about pace, about colors, about vibe. Far more “why” than “what”, and that fundamentally shifted my young mind’s perspective on how to communicate in creative endevours.

As musicians, we often start out surrounded mostly by musicians practicing and playing music. Middle school band is a few dozen 11-year-olds honking on clarinets and trumpets together, and that type of community really continues for years and years. You play in bands, you compose with an orchestra, maybe you assist with producing in a studio. If you’re lucky, you end up with music and sound so deeply embedded in your bones that it becomes the lens you see creativity through. We go out into the world and surround ourselves with other musicians where it’s easy to connect over this shared love and shared experience.

However, you’ll find yourself voiceless when collaborating with those who don’t share that language and lens. To work with producers, directors, and editors on movies, games, or the stage…you must return to that original shared human conversation about the characters and story, then apply your music and sound skills as your creative tool. Working with Jonathan taught me to approach all my professional collaborations first with a focus on the who and the why, rather than anything specific to music or sounds.

Website: http://christopherlane.studio

Instagram: @chrisofthelane

Image Credits
All photos are taken and owned by Christopher Lane.