About Ryan Materna

Ryan Materna is a video game composer and music designer who collaborates closely with developers to craft music that enhances storytelling, gameplay, immersion, and emotion. His work blends cinematic orchestration, immersive electronics, and layered soundscapes to create compelling, emotionally impactful musical experiences for games and interactive media.
 

In 2025, Ryan received the Distinguished Composer Award at the MCA Video Game Scoring Workshop and an internship with Night Signal Entertainment, where he composed music for the upcoming game Forbidden Solitaire. Since then, he has contributed music to a growing number of indie titles, including UAZO: Free As Birds, The Box Is Alive, Jet Scalawag – The King of Shooters, Astrobound, Celestial Sentinel, and Pharmini, a university-funded resource-management video game currently in development at Arizona State University. He also recently composed the original score for the upcoming documentary An Apple a Day, which follows four inspiring Arizona women as they navigate chronic illness, overcome barriers to healthcare, and find strength through their family and community.
 

In addition to his composition work, Ryan serves as a composer's assistant to award-winning media composer Peter Murray. He has also studied Wwise, interactive music design, and music implementation under Peter Murray through SCORECRAFT, applying these skills to provide music design and implementation support for projects such as The Box Is Alive.
 

Ryan has studied and shadowed with award-winning media composers Jeff Broadbent, Peter Murray, and Jake Lives, as well as concert composers Dr. Bill Clay and Dr. Benjamin Dean Taylor. He also studied Music Composition and Theory at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute, receiving instruction from faculty including Jody Rockmaker, Alex Temple, Fernanda Navarro, Christopher Norby, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Gabriel Balaños.