Musical worldbuilding.
Composing music shaped by the internal logic of fictional worlds — games, animated films, tabletop RPGs, and original fantasy settings.
Music as a Worldbuilding Tool
Every world has a sound before it has a map. The way music treats a setting — the instruments it chooses, the themes it builds, the silences it leaves — shapes how that world feels to the people inside it. Composing for a fictional world means making decisions that become part of the world’s identity: this culture sounds like strings and low brass; this environment feels cold and synthetic; this character’s theme starts uncertain and earns its resolution.
The projects below are cases where that process happened in collaboration — a writer, game master, filmmaker, or developer brought me a world, and I composed music for it. Each one is a different approach to the same problem.
Browse the full album catalog or get in touch about a custom commission if you have a world that needs a sound.
Featured projects.
Worlds I've helped find their sound — across film, games, and original settings. Each one a different approach to the same question: how does music tell a story before words do?
Dinosauria
Two films, two completely different approaches — a score that travels through a century of film history for Terrible Lizards, and a live-musician cello concerto for Hunted by Moonlight.
Read the case study →Shepherds of Haven
Character themes, faction identities, and over 40 minutes of orchestral music for a dark fantasy visual novel — how every instrument choice maps to the world's logic.
Read the case study →Sauria
A prehistoric world. From the raw, ancient sounds of Blood for Blood to the minimalist solitude of Winter Weathered — finding the minimum indispensable in a score where silence does as much work as the music.
Read the case study →The World of Adoan
Ivan's own worldbuilding project — a fantasy setting built through music. The album introduces the cultures, places, and emotional texture of a world developed from the ground up through composition.
View album →Galactic Chronicles
A sci-fi worldbuilding soundtrack for an original universe. A behind-the-scenes look at how musical decisions shape the identity of a setting that starts with no existing visual reference.
Read the case study →Rise of the Runelords
14 distinct themes for virtues and sins — how I scored the classic Rise of the Runelords adventure path for Michael Ghelfi Studios, building a leitmotif system from the narrative logic of the world.
Read the case study →Svilland
Scoring a Norse mythology, not a scene — tagelharpa, frame drums, and deliberate restraint for a gritty, low-fantasy 5E setting. How instrument choice does the worldbuilding.
Read the case study →Bloodpunk
Two cities, two sound worlds — a Victorian, blood-fuelled dystopia scored with a leitmotif system and one string palette pulled into jazz refinement and vampiric dread.
Read the case study →Your world.
Working on a setting that needs a sound? Custom commissions are open for tabletop RPG campaigns, games, films, and other creative worlds.
Get in touch →Learn music worldbuilding.
I work one-on-one with a small number of composers who want to write music shaped by a world's logic — character themes, leitmotif architecture, cultural instrumentation, and collaborating with writers and developers. It starts with a short call to see if we're a fit.
Start with a fit call →