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He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career. He is best known for his work in The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars series, and several other top-selling titles such as Total Annihilation, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Harry Potter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid, I would load up many of the C64 games just for the title screens & leave the music playing. Favourite ones were: turbo outrun, the last ninja. Good old times! LOAD "*",8,1
I used to work with Ben Daglish, the composer of the Last Ninja tune I think. He was a programmer, but mainly did it to make money so he could make music... his real passion. Funny guy...
Quote "If you wanted to be a videogame musician in the early 1980s, having a fantastic tune and even a Royal College of Music diploma meant nothing without some lateral thinking and a significant amount of programming skills, because the SID chip needed special software routines to turn its potential into sound. You had to know how to compose both melodies and machine code."
https://theconversation.com/the-sound-of-sid-35-years-of-chi...
David Wise and his Donkey Kong Country tracks are really something else as far as ambient music goes.
Yes! Particularly the Underwater-Level-Tracks.
Are there any AAA games that use voice-stealing for their music? Old games would drop voices-- like the melody or rhythm track-- when there were lots of sprites on screen. I think it would be great if a Hans Zimmer score cross-faded to an arrangement with just low brass or something when the action starts to ramp up.
In Nier: Automata there is a hacking mini-game which you do in the middle of character action combat. When you enter the mini-game, full orchestral track is replaced with a chiptune version. Devil May Cry 5 does the opposite where vocals and instruments get added as you reach higher Style ranks.
I've heard plenty of examples like what you mention with Devil May Cry. In fact, back in the day Strider for Sega Genesis had a grand reunion of themes in the final level that foreshadowed the sequence of fighting each boss from the previous levels.
Just seems like the voice-stealing technique[1] could be really a really effective way to add emphasis to a big, climactic moment in a game with an orchestral soundtrack. I suppose the risk is that if it's not done artfully the player will just interpret it as jank and call the game devs ugly names. :(
[1] Now that I think about it, maybe "voice stealing" isn't the correct term for this. With voice-stealing one starts with a static number of voices. Then when the synth player tries to add an additional voice the system typically drops the oldest sustained note (or even the oldest one that isn't the bass or percussion track to get fancy about it). Thus the system "steals" from a voice that had a note which already got its attack/decay time. But in those old NES games an entire melody or accompaniment voice gets dropped to accommodate the extra sprites.
So voice stealing retains the same static number of voices to "imply" a greater number of voices. What I remember from those NES games was a reduction in the total number of voices to keep the game from freezing.
Edit: clarification
The soundtrack of OlliOlli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NgIruZo7Bg&list=PLzlvNJXL3o.... I didn't listened atm the one from OlliOlli2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA2XhIy78_I&list=RDhpLdTcBso...
Jet Set Radio: https://youtu.be/RGA4PilHdr0?list=RDhpLdTcBsoK4&t=1032
Mark McMorris Infinite Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jTc2Rw7XCU&list=PLBNLMIUVFQ... (whose contains also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P09rxVaQAM)
Last but not least, GTA London 1969: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KVZEJUqCYY https://youtu.be/Bz3b-P1jrBo (and GTA 1961): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe_yDYGyFa4&list=PLffQpMcmLc...
Sectret ponchos: https://secretponchos.bandcamp.com/album/secret-ponchos-orig...
The Flame in the Flood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQTPAb2Np3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k92Bgqz-p_8&app=desktop :)
Whells of Aurelia: https://santaragione.bandcamp.com/album/wheels-of-aurelia-or...
The Fikle Hands of Fate: https://youtu.be/qT9-oFyYNos?t=457 Cyborg Seppuku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnERHTvalhY
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to work with Ben Daglish, the composer of the Last Ninja tune I think. He was a programmer, but mainly did it to make money so he could make music... his real passion. Funny guy...
Just found out he passed away - this sucks - way too young. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Daglish Ben Daglish Remembered: Wastelands loader (Underworld, 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6Amy1Bmeo He is also in the "From Bedrooms to Billions" documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRsLOUYL3mk EDIT: he wasn't just funny, I remember him as a very positive spirited guy.
Here's my tribute to Ben:
10 PRINT "BEN IS GREAT"
20 GOTO 10
I grew up with a C64 and a big part of the charm, for me, was the sound chip and the noises/music it made. I can understand why that chip has such a cult following. Back then, when we had nowhere near the fidelity in graphics that we have today, these basic sound chips were used to add a lot of character to those early games. Today you have high profile composers like Hans Zimmer doing work for video games and everyt…
People still make music using C64, NES, GameBoy, etc. Some pretty decent stuff out there if look around. For anyone else interested see https://chipmusic.org which is a forum for posting and talking about chiptune-related things, or http://www.8bitpeoples.com a label run by chiptune artists most of which I believe can be downloaded for free at 192.
I enjoy listening to Indie-Game-Soundtracks, especially while working. Artists like Austin Wintory (Monaco, Larry), C418 (Minecraft), Jim Guthrie (Sword & Sworcery) and Disasterpeace (Fez). I made a Spotify-Playlist with those, and numerous other indie-tracks. [1] [1] https://open.spotify.com/user/115694390/playlist/6nfksYi3hJx...