Background
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You came to Yosemite Entertainment with an impressive career in music. Tell me a little about your background before coming to Yosemite Entertainment. |
I grew up in a very musical home and had the opportunity to learn several instruments. I started writing songs when I was 10 or 12, and by the time I was 14 made the incredibly mature decision to become a rock star. But after failing to become either rich or famous by my early twenties, I decided to go to college and get a degree in music. I spent a few years touring the world as a performing musician, and then opened up a recording studio & music production company. Most of my studio work involved writing and producing music for commercials, short films, and videos. |
Have you done music for anyone we might have heard of? |
Sure… McDonald's, Nissan, Tupperware, Mall of America, Blue Cross, the NBA's Utah Jazz, the Salvation Army, etc… |
McDonalds? They've got quite a reputation for memorable jingles, "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…" |
The Big Mac does have quite a lyrical tradition [Laughs]. Working on the McDonalds account was a lot of fun. I did a bit of music for their Sausage McMuffin. |
What were your favorite projects? |
A few years ago, I scored a series of mini-documentaries sponsored by Nissan as a part of their "Hometown Heroes" campaign. There were eight vignettes in all, each of them highlighting a person who in some special way gave back to their community. There was a man in South Central Los Angeles who helped troubled young men, a nurse who adopted crack babies, a teacher who set up a school for the homeless… It was incredibly rewarding to work on those shows. Another one of my favorites was a commercial for the "Smash Factory" at the Mall of America. It's a hydraulic simulation thrill ride where you drive a Hummer upwards of 150 miles per hour through an indoor obstacle course. It's a total adrenaline rush from start to finish. I loved it. |
Recording music for television, have you ever heard your work in unexpected places? |
Oh yeah - in my car, at hotels, at other people's homes… I even heard one of my tunes coming from another guy's car while we were stopped at a traffic light [Laughs]. One time I scored an ad for a new LCD projector from InFocus Systems. A few months later I was standing in line to board an airplane and I heard this familiar strain of music drifting through the air. There was my commercial playing on the TV monitor. As it turns out, the CNN Airport Network had the spot playing every hour, 24 hours a day, for 365 days straight, in airports all around the world. That was pretty cool. |
What prompted your move into interactive entertainment? |
It was two things: First, I woke up to the fact that interactive games were going to be the next "big thing" in entertainment. Rapid growth had been going on in the gaming industry for quite some time, but it seemed like it was poised to reach a whole new level. Secondly, I realized that there were many great movie soundtrack albums, but hardly any game soundtrack albums, and I smelled an opportunity. I believed that the time would come when these types of albums would be just as popular in the music industry as traditional soundtracks.
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| Page 1 | Professional Background | |
| Page 2 | The State of Computer Game Soundtracks | |
| Page 3 | The Making of the Quest for Glory V Soundtrack | |
| Page 4 | Technical Info | |
| Page 5 | Future Plans
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| Interviews | Design | Heroes | Macintosh | Timeline
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