Mike Caral specializes in creating unique musical scores and sound designs for film and video projects. With a multi-decade background playing creating music that includes rock, jazz, electronic, and hybrid orchestration, Mike crafts differentiated soundscapes making him the ideal choice for producers and directors seeking a unique sonic identity for their projects.
Mike "plays well with others" and previous to focusing on music full-time in 2020 enjoyed a long technical and business career that was rooted on creative and insightful problem solving, collaboration, continuous learning, and adapting to changing and evolving business and technical environments.
Since 2020, he has taken curses in copyright law, jazz piano voicing, orchestration at OSU, In January 2023, he completed an intensive 6-month Cinematic Composing Program that included interactive master classes and critiques from illustrious film composers Javier Navarrete and Christopher Young, video game music composer Lennie Moore, and director Doug Campbell, in addition to a succession of critiqued exercises with multiple production music coaches.
In April 2023, he composed, recorded and orchestrated an original score for a 40-piece orchestra played by the FAMES project in Macedonia. Post-production he added virtual elements, mixed the Protools audio files with the hybrid elements and edited video captured during the recording. The resulting music video placed 3rd in the music video category at the 2024 International Indie Gathering Film festival.
In his quest to add new things to his bag of tricks, he is currently studying with the Music Interval Theory Academy to learn and expand the use of new compositional and orchestration techniques.
Best Original Score #ISA14 Indie Series Awards
(2024)
Finalist Indie Gathering Film Festival Scoring Contest
(2024)
3rd Place Indie Gathering Music Video Contest
(2023)
Finalist Indie Gathering Film Festival Scoring Contest
(2022)
Finalist Horror Hotel Film Festival Scoring Contest
(2022)
Finalist Horror Hotel Film Festival Scoring Contest
(2021)
Music Interval Theory Academy
(2024-2024)
The Ohio State University
(2021-2023)
Cinematice Composing Momentum
(2022-2022)
Ohio University
(1975-1976)