Scoring a Podcast Through Time

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) interviewed Samantha Lucker, a research geologist with ERDC’s Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory, about the organization’s impressive Sand Boil Filter on the August 2023 episode of its podcast.

To emphasize the importance of the technology, podcast hosts Chris Kieffer and Megan Holland tell the story of river erosion along the Mississippi river throughout time.

I was tasked with scoring the podcast introduction, which begins in Kaskaskia, Illinois, at the end of the 19th century and ends in a modern ERDC lab.

Using a minor chord progression and a combination of banjo and fiddle, I was able to evoke the sounds of those early days. From there, I used the chord progression as a foundation to modernize the instrumentation and support the hosts’ story.