A Chat with Kurt Harland Larson
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- a chat with Kurt Harland Larson about InSoc, writing game music, games in general, music in general, and more
sections:
0:00 Intro
0:26 Information Society and collaboration
2:23 The Role of Producers
8:12 working with Fred
13:33 Getting in the Games Industry
21:11 Age for Games
25:15 Mark Miller / working from home
28:47 Devkits
31:16 Limitations
37:09 Dynamic Music
38:20 "Listening" to game music
40:29 Making Sega Tunes
43:00 BALLZ3DO and C-A-D
46:01 "Hollywoodification" of games
48:27 Slipgate Ironworks MMO
51:59 Technical Sound Focus
55:48 Working with GEMS
1:01:23 (End)
links / citations:
[1] www.discogs.com/master/17880-...
[2] using GEMS • How to make Sega Genes...
[3] www.discogs.com/release/72210...
[4] web.archive.org/web/199802091...
[5] super secret coded message • "Super Secret Coded Me...
[6] www.discogs.com/release/29420...
[7] web.archive.org/web/199802050...
[8] iasig.org/pubs/journals/news01...
[9] kurt larson speaks • Kurt Larson Speaks
additional footage from...
space invaders vid
• Space Invaders 1978 - ...
asteroids vid
• Arcade Game: Asteroids...
pacman
• Arcade Longplay - Pac-...
searching youtube for "biggest fl studio project"
• Jumble [FLP DEMONSTRAT...
Soul Reaver Soundtrack (pls listen to Cathedral and think about 500KB)
• Legacy of Kain: Soul R...
Horizon Zero Dawn
• Horizon: Zero Dawn - (...
Information Society can be found at...
informationsociety.us
/ informationsociety
/ informationsociety
/ insoc
/ informationsociety_off...
GST♥ can be found at...
/ gstdaisuki
gst-3.creator-spring.com/
/ gstdaisuki
gstdaisuki.tumblr.com/
/ discord
This video is a freebie but please consider supporting this channel on Patreon!
I've been deep diving into Kurt's discography since your incredible video on his work and I've had a real blast listening to it all! Thanks to Kurt for making all this wonderful music.
X-Men 2 on the Genesis was one of my favorite games and the music was so unique in it. Then I discovered the arranged album online and it blew my mind. I'm sure I listened to it 30 times.
Love his enthusiasm for games music. Interesting talk.
Thanks for doing this interview Kurt! I loved all your music for the Legacy of Kain games, and the first Soul Reaver especially, considering the limitations you overcame, just incredible! Still one of my favourite soundtracks today!
It was supercool to hear all the stories! Thanks so much for the interview!
This guy did some great work.
Also best Kurt Harland interview on the platform.
def saving this to watch later. x men 2 on genesis is one of the most influencial things in my childhood.
thanks for doing what you do!
Great interview!
omg, no way! LoK music is my favorite thing ever, my inspiration forever. thank you for such a cool guest!
The circular timers for each topic/subtopic is very very neat :)
This is such a great Channel!, thank you so much for this!
That was very cool. Keep it going!
absolute legend
To correct Kurt a bit when he said to go back and listen to Genesis music and realise that there would be typically less than 6 voices at once because of sound effects, what usually happened in most old games, even on the NES with its 4 (or 5 if DPCM is used) channels is that they cut out 1 or more channels, played a short sound effect, then once the sound effect ended, the music portion would resume. That was the case for the Genesis, the SNES, you name it. Only here and there would composers deliberately leave out channels and dedicate them specifically for sound effects.
One crazy example I always think of is in the Sonic games, the crumbling ground sound effect that played when Sonic would stand on some ground that would collapse, that sound effect would cut out about 3 or 4 channels of music before then resuming afterwards.
I can comment on Genesis and SNES soundtracks specifically, since I've mixed a lot of them: it's surprisingly common to leave a channel blank for SFX in the 16 bit era. Not ubiquitous, but far from rare.
The second most common technique (and a feature specifically built into GEMS) was to have a channel dedicated to an echo or chorus effect, and any SFX that play would cut into that channel instead of something important like melody.
Kurt applied both of these techniques in his Genesis music.
@@GSTChannelVEVO Yes, I didn't mean to make it sound like it was a rarity. I suppose the logic was that since there were more channels, they felt like they could leave some empty in the 16bit era going forward, but as far as I've seen, it's most definitely the less common practice, especially on the Genesis as opposed to the SNES.
I'm not completely familiar with GEMS' way of doing things, but I know about certain features like its dynamic channel allocation, mailbox system, and a few other things. Dedicating specific channels to specific functions was not one of those things.
Oh yeah, you're correct. And I'd say that it *is* more common to just have 6 channel music that cuts notes for sound effects.
There are some more tracker-like interfaces that can keep a channel blank, but with GEMS, you just have to count the notes yourself. ;)
I love Kraftwerk. I love Joey Beltram. I love Information Society.
Awesome interview, although I'm slightly disappointed you didn't ask him about Nightmare Circus and what he actually composed...
true! there was a lot more that I wanted to dive into but we simply didn't have the time 😔
Did you take the "GST Channel" SNES intro tone and make it FM for this? I like it!
yeah, it's the sort of sound logo for the channel a Gsus2maj7 chord. instrumentation can vary. (though one time I accidentally transposed it to the IVth, whoops)
Work with limitations force you to be creative.
Hey, not saying you're wrong or anything, but you mention that Martin Iveson composed his first game at age 17, yet I can't find any information about his age, how were you able to come to that conclusion?
That's the story as he tells it, though looking again...
when I interviewed him (see: "An Interview with Martin Iveson: from Demoscene to Core Design to Atjazz"), he said he started working at Core at age 17. it's possible that he didn't start composing immediately. I guess it's also possible that he misremembered the year or something?
@@GSTChannelVEVO I see, Martin himself said that in your interview, I'll have to check it out.
It's less a question of "did he start at 17" and more of a "how do we know how old he is" (since if we know the latter, it's not complicated to figure out how old he was when he composed a game)
@@lordjackson oh yeah, I guess I don't know. doing the math, he joined Core in 1991 at the age of 17, which places his birth year at 1974, but discogs lists his birthday as 1 May 1968. idk which is right :\
I am a Sound design guy ,So i agree with Kirt on not using default sounds on a synth!
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The older I get, the more I appreciate presets, especially for "vintage" synths. there's definitely a time and place for them though!