HTTX 1.1b

Title: MYSTORY


MY STORY

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The most common question I get asked is "how did you get into writing
computer game music ?" Well it had a lot to do with being in the right place
at the right time !

I come from a musical family anyway and as such was given piano lessons from
the age of 7. Later on i began to get interested in computers and was given a
Sincalir Spectrum for my birthday. I learnt to program in basic as many
people have done by typing in programs from magazines and learning how they
work in the process. I started to play around with sound, using the spectrums
pathetic BEEP command to produce a series of tones which vaguely resembled a
tune ! Later on in the life of the spectrum a music composition utility was
produce called "WHAM! The Jukebox." This allowed 2 notes to be played
simultaneously and gave me the scope to experiment further.

The Spectrum 128K was then produced. I sold my old spectrum and saved for 6
months to buy it along with a game called "Glider Rider!"First thing i did
was to load the game and listen to the new sound capabilities of the 3
channel 128K machine. I could not believe my ears! David Whittaker had
produced a soundtrack which at the time was breathtaking to me. It used what
Dave Whittaker termed "single channel chords" which alternated between the 3
notes of a chord on one sound channel to create the illusion of more than 3
notes playing simultaneously. I went on to compose a few very basic tunes
using the 128`s PLAY command.

I then bought a second hand Commodore 64 as i had heard of its great sound
capabilities. Rob Hubbard was the guy responsible for producing some
incredible tunes on the C64 and has probably been my biggest influence. I
continued to experiment and sent in some tunes on a cassette tape to ELITE
software. They returned them saying that although the tunes showed much
promise, they were not quite up to todays commercial standards. Soon after, i
was left £100 in a will, and come to think of it, if it wasn`t for my Aunty
Anne who left me it I would not be in the possition i am now ! I sold all my
equipment and bought an AMIGA !!!!!!..........

I produced several tunes on the Amiga and sent them to a newly formed public
domain software company called "17 BIT SOFTWARE." Martyn Brown who ran the
company (and now TEAM 17 !) loved the tunes and released them on a PD disk.
After several other 17 BIT releases I gradually built up support from many
Amiga users until i was known enough to send out a demo to a real software
company.

I wrote the soundtrack for my first game in 1988 for Codemasters software,
run by the famous Darling brothers. The game was Nitro Boost Challenge and
didn`t do particularly well. I went on to write music for many other
codemasters games, including the now famous DIZZY series. I did work for
other companies too such as Thunderbirds for GRANDSLAM which was a big hit.

Martyn Brown from 17 bit, decided to set up a software company called "TEAM
17 LTD", which is now one of the most successful games companies in Europe. I
produced the music for their first game, "FULL CONTACT" which received rave
reviews for the sound in all the magazines, although the game was not quite
up to TEAM 17`s subsequent releases. Next up was ALIENBREED, one of the best
selling games ever for the Amiga.


Enter the TEAM 17 web site and read all about TEAM17

I am now Europes most successful freelance game musician and sound effects
producer. I support many other machines, such as the PC, SNES & MEGADRIVE and
made enough from my TEAM 17 work to build a home studio which i use to write
music for CD ROM games and my own CD releases.


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