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Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard [5-User Family Pack]
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Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard
Lee JacksonInterview by Brian Cowell. Computer game music has come a long way in the last 10 years. Going from the bleeps and pops of a computer chip to full blown musical scores. Music has come a long way in the computer industry. The "elite" few who have the job of scoring computer games these days realise they must help create an atmosphere to supplement the graphics and gameplay. Forging his way on some of the PC's most identifiable games is APOGEE/3D REALMS Music Director Lee Jackson. Sonikmatter had a chance to catch up with Lee in the midst of scoring for Duke Nukem Forever. LEE : I worked several small jobs during high school and college, the most notable of which was a job at a jewelry and collectables store called Villa de Plata. This was a very small store in a mall in Austin. My grandmother worked there, and she taught me quite a bit about jewels (especially diamonds), gold, and some of the artwork that we sold. As a result, I may not be GIA certified, but I can tell when someone's trying to pass off a crappy diamond to me. ;-) After that, I moved on to the Internal Revenue Service, where I worked until May of 1994, almost 10 years total. During my time there, I worked several different positions, ranging from clerical to returns examination to accounting. I wrote my first useful C program there, using a copy of MSC 5.1 for which the manual had been lost for quite some while. Unfortunately, this happened while I was stuck in the accounting department. I only managed to get my hands on a computer because I'd been appointed as a security officer for my particular accounting unit. I wound up being caught in the IRS seniority trap, where time in grade counted more than raw knowledge, and that kept me from getting any of the full-time computer jobs that I applied for within the agency. I eventually hooked up with Joe Siegler and Steve Quarrella at Apogee, who got me an interview for a tech support job and eventually helped rescued me from the pit that I was in SONIK : How did you get into doing music for computer games? LEE : I worked hard and got a bit lucky, to put it bluntly. I'd been "tinkering" with music since I was in junior high school, trying to teach myself how to write for concert and marching bands. I studied music theory like crazy in high school, and even won the Texas State Music Theory Competition my senior year. I put in two years of study towards a Music Education degree at the University of Texas at Austin, but had to leave when my funds (and my patience with the instructors) ran out. That's about the time that I got the IRS job and eventually got married to my wife of almost 17 years, Brenda. I continued to play around with band, brass, and drum corps arrangements of classical works during that time, even though I only managed to get one work publicly performed. There just wasn't much of a market for the kind of music I was writing, especially for a freelancer. Brenda and I had a son in 1986, and that slowed me down for a little while as well. Still, I kept messing with music, hoping that "the Big Break" would come one day. Sure enough, it did, shortly after Joe and Steve helped me get the tech support job at Apogee. By this time, I'd managed to get a computer, a Sound Blaster 2.0 card, a Yamaha PSR-300, a Music Quest PC MIDI Card, and a copy of Music Printer Plus together. I was just beginning to learn the ins and outs of using MIDI as a composition medium. A few months after I began doing tech, Apogee brought a bunch of programmers in-house, including Tom Hall, Mark Dochtermann, and eventually Jim Dose'. These guys were working on a game that was to become Rise of the Triad (a.k.a. ROTT). I started bringing up MIDI compositions for them to hear, and with the help of the late Dennis Scarff, I eventually got a copy of Cakewalk Pro for Windows and a Gravis Ultrasound card. That's when things got serious. One day, I brought up a MIDI file that was an interpretation of the fanfare played at the start of all of our games. Bobby Prince had written the original fanfare - I just did my own take on it. Scott Miller and George Broussard heard it and thought it sounded a bit like something John Williams would do, so it was thereafter known as the "John Williams" version of the Apogee Fanfare. George bought the rights to it from me for future Apogee games, and that marked my first professional music sale. Never mind the fact that I was still working in the tech support room - I was a pro now! ;-) I kept on bringing up music for people to listen to, especially the gang working on ROTT. I found out as much as I could about the game, and I started writing songs that would fit as level music. One day, George called me in and offered me the job of doing music for the game. There were only three catches - I only had six weeks to write the music, I still had to come in and do two hours' tech support during the other techs' lunchtime each day, and I would go back to doing tech support full time after all of the music had been completed. No problem, I said, and I proceded to crank out 28 MIDI files over the next 6 weeks. I still don't know how I did it, and I don't think I could ever duplicate that feat. Once I was done with ROTT, I started in on the guys who were working on Duke Nukem 3D. I'd visit them during lunch and breaks, find out about the game, and give them MIDI files I'd written on occasion. They liked my stuff, and eventually mixed it in with some of the music that Bobby Prince had done. By the time episode 4 was done, I'd done the majority of the songs for the game, including the theme song (Grabbag, a.k.a. the Duke Nukem theme). During this time, I was also trying to convince Scott and George that I was worth more to the company as a full-time musician than I was doing tech support. I kept on bringing up MIDI files, and even threw in a MOD file for them to hear. It took a long time to convince them, but they eventually agreed, on the condition that I took on sound effects duties as well. I'd never done a sound effect in my life, but I wasn't about to let that stand in my way. So, on January 15th, 1996, a few weeks before the release of Duke Nukem 3D, I became the first Music and Sound Director in Apogee/3D Realms history. SONIK : What games have you worked on Lee? LEE : Here's the quick list: Rise of the Triad : (principal composer, plus a little voice acting) I'm currently working on Duke Nukem Forever, handling all music, voice, and sound issues. I'm also working on Max Payne, doing all voice casting, editing, and directing, and even some acting. Once Prey fires back up, I'll be doing sounds, voices, and music for it as well. SONIK : What instruments/equipment do you use? LEE : My current studio layout is as follows: KEYBOARDS/MODULES: SONIK : What software do you use? LEE : For all MIDI chores, I use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.03 (latest version at this time). I've couldn't do my job without Cakewalk. For multitrack recording and mixing, I use SAW Pro. I usually set SAW Pro to generate SMPTE as master, and by connecting the 2port/SE's SMPTE out directly to the 8port/SE's SMPTE in, I am able to slave Cakewalk to SAW Pro and record as many or as few tracks as I want from each synth/sampler/module. I also have a lot of DirectX and VST plugins, including the Waves Native Power Pack, both packs from TC Works (Native Essentials and TC Native Bundle), all three Cakewalk CFX packs, and the Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction plugin (DirectX version). I also have all of the Fxpansion plugins, Opcode's fusion:VOCODE plugin, and several from AnalogX. SAW Pro works natively with my VST plugins, but I use the Amulet VST Adapter when I need to use a VST plugin in a DirectX environment. My main soundfile editing tool is Sound Forge, again with tons of plugins. I use Square Circle's WaveSurgeon for loop slicing. When I need to sync something up to an AVI, I use a program called DDClip. It's written by SoftLab-NSK in Russia (http://www.softlab-nsk.com/ddclipro ), and I recommend it highly. A complete list of all of my hardware and software can be found on my web site at http://gameaudio.3dportal.com, in the Articles section. I don't use any softsynths per se, but I do use the SoundFont capability of my Sound Blaster Live! card quite a bit. There are quite a few decent SoundFonts available on the Internet, and I've created a few of my own using either public domain samples or samples ripped from CD-Audio only sampling CDs. I mainly rely on the SBLive to play back samples that I'm not going to tweak during playback (i.e., just play the note, don't worry about adjusting filters or whatnot). This frees up voices on my K2500RS and other gear for instrument-specific sample CDs, things that require realtime adjustment, and so on. SONIK : What sound libraries do you use? LEE : We recently made a rather large investment in sample libraries. I'd like to go into detail here, but this would involve information on Duke Nukem Forever, and I'm under Area 51 rules on that project. Sound effect CDs are another story. We've got just about everything that Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge sell, except for the DeWolfe, BBC, Digiffects, and Producers libraries (we've got the Digiffects Clickshop, however). I don't get the chance to get out and do my own sampling very often, so I rely on what I've learned (especially my editing, mixing, and plugin manipulation skills) to get the most out of the CD libraries. I engineer almost all of the more "important" sounds (i.e., sounds you're most likely to really pay attention to, like explosions, ships, sequences, and so on), and occasionally I'll fire up the K2500RS for some of the more musical sound effects. SONIK : How does your K2500RS fit into your sound compositions? LEE : The K2500RS is the star of the studio. It has and always will play a major part in my works. I'll admit that I fall into the Instant Gratification category, though - most of the sounds that I've used in my past music projects have been K2500RS ROM sounds. The last game I worked on, Shadow Warrior, used mostly K2500RS ROM sounds, with a few samples thrown in on top of sounds from my other modules. However, my work on Duke Nukem Forever is taking me far beyond just the ROM sounds. Again, I'd like to say more than that, but like I said earlier, Area 51 rules apply. ;-) SONIK : Do you sample any of your FX? LEE : Barely. I've done a few, notably sound effects of bullet casings being dropped to the ground (used in Shadow Warrior) and of a pinball table (used in Balls of Steel). I don't really have the time or opportunity to do in-the-field sampling, but I have done it on rare occasions. If I absolutely cannot come up with a proper sound by editing/mixing/trashing or otherwise screwing around with existing sources, I will then resort to sampling. SONIK : What is a typical day for Lee Jackson at work? LEE : No such thing. The closest thing I can compare my job to is that of a soldier - periods of not much going on, punctuated by days of sheer terror. On slow days, I'll usually get my Internet stuff out of the way, and then work on music, either playing around, composing, or doing R & D on sounds. There's a lot of grunt-work maintenance involved in the studio, like keeping track of voice session files, cataloging things, and archiving things off of my hard drives, so I do that when I have to. When I get sound effect requests, they usually take priority over other projects. The real terror comes in when I get a DAT of a Duke Nukem voice session. Those are almost always needed yesterday, so I have to kick into high gear and get the voices edited immediately. SONIK : Are your soundtracks/music predetermined by management? LEE : The game determines the soundtrack. George Broussard usually has his own idea of how the music should sound for a level, and I've usually got my own idea. We've got a pretty good track record when it comes to reaching some sort of agreement in these cases, although the process can be somewhat ... erm ... fun ... at times. ;-) Seriously, we've both had fun with this. I've incorporated suggestions of his that I absolutely did not think would work at the time, and then found that they did in fact work when they went into the game. On the other hand, he's heard pieces that I've written which he thought were total crap, until he heard them in the game and conceded that they really did work. You never know what's going to work until you put it in the game, and that's half of the fun of the process. In short, I'm not always given a list of specific types of songs to write. I get suggestions all the time, and the occasional specific request. Still, the songs have to start somewhere, and I'm responsible for finding that starting point within myself. Things always end up getting modified along the way, of course. SONIK : What are your musical influences? LEE : You name it, almost. I grew up with music that I really don't like nowadays - stuff like Floyd Cramer, Johnny Cash, and Charlie Pride on my father's side, and 70's AM Radio "top 40" on my mother's. That influenced me, of course, even if only to keep me from ever writing anything that remotely sounds like it. ;-) Joe Siegler, our web guy here at 3D Realms, said a lot of my music sounds like it's pretty heavily keyboard-artist influenced. I'll grant that. Aside from the drek mentioned earlier, I did grow up listening to one of the all-time greatest keyboard albums ever: Switched On Bach. That got me hooked on electronic keyboard music the moment I first heard it, and I still listen to it for inspiration now and then. That, plus a record by Rick Wakeman called "Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record," are my two biggest influences of all time, and yes, they're both very, very heavy on the keyboards indeed. Finally, I take a lot of ideas from marching bands and Drum & Bugle Corps. I'm not talking John Philip Sousa here, marching from end zone to end zone, although that does have its own appeal on some odd level. No, I'm talking about in your face, 160 beats per minute, full bore, horns to the box, blow your guts out field music. Stuff like Phantom Regiment's Shostakovich show from several years ago, the Madison Scouts' 1987 DCI finals performance of Malaguena, or the 1984 Garfield Cadets' West Side Story show (or the 1984 Suncoast Sound show). A good Drum Corps or marching band performance can really set my emotions on edge, mainly because I know what's required of everyone involved in order to get such a good performance. (Can you guess that I'd really love to write for the field? If you really want a list of artists and CDs, here's one for you. Brace yourself. Thomas Dolby Keith Emerson Rick Wakeman (esp. "Rick Wakeman's Criminal Record") Philip Glass John Williams James Horner Stevie Ray Vaughan Igor Stravinsky Gustav Mahler Paul Hindemith Anton Bruckner Jean Sibelius Percy Grainger Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Christian Bach P.D.Q. Bach Richard Wagner Bela Bartok Frankie Goes To Hollywood Willie Nelson John Barnes Chance Buddy Rich Spyro Gyra Maynard Ferguson Jim Wren Gustav Holst Ralph Vaughn-Williams Antonin Dvorak Leos Janacek Vincent Persichetti The Prodigy (early stuff more than later vocal stuff) Daft Punk Pearl Jam (early stuff) Aerosmith Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) Spike Jones Myron Floren (yes, the polka master himself) Jethro Tull Queen Gone Jackals Bobby Prince Pink Floyd Aaron CopelandThis isn't all-inclusive. I could go on for weeks. I probably already have. ;-) SONIK : What tips would you pass onto people looking to get into computer game music? LEE : First - don't quit your day job. Not until you've found a full-time paying job in the industry, which may or may not come. Finding a job in this industry is like finding a diamond in an empty field. It's next to impossible, but if you can pull it off, the results will pay for the work you had to do. Just make sure you've got something that will pay the rent until the diamond turns up. Second - don't stop composing. Ever. Work on trivial stuff, anything that comes to mind, even if nothing comes to mind. If you don't have a gig, pretend that you do and keep writing anyway. Writing music is NOT like riding a bicycle. If you put it off for a while and then try to get back on it all of a sudden, you're going to fall flat on your ass for a while until you can get your groove back. Finally - when opportunity knocks, ANSWER THE SMEGGING DOOR!!! If you really want to get into writing music for games, then don't pass up any opportunity to get into any aspect of the gaming industry. I started off in tech support and worked my way to where I am now. I had a lot of luck on my side, but I supplemented this with a lot of hard work and a truckload of persistence. Get your foot in the door, keep it there, and keep pushing on the door until you get inside. SONIK : What do you get up to in your spare time Lee? LEE : Spare time? What's that? ;-) Seriously, I've only got one hobby right now, and that's cooking. I'm trying to keep up a 4th generation Central Texas tradition of barbecue (mainly beef brisket and sausage), and the lack of decent barbecue in North Texas gives me a lot of incentive to keep practicing. ;-) My wife and son tell me that I'm the "serious" cook in the family. If a recipe is involved, I'm the one who cooks the dish. I watch shows like Iron Chef and people like Jacques Pepin, and I wish I could cook one tenth as well as they do. As for sports, I'm like Chance the Gardner in the movie "Being There" - I like to watch. ;-) Since I'm a native Texan, football (the American brand of the sport) is #1 in my book. I live and die by the University of Texas Longhorns, and I can't wait until Houston gets an NFL team again. I'm also a huge hockey fan, which used to be rather odd for a native Texan. The first game I ever saw was a game on TV in the late 60s or early 70s involving the Minnesota North Stars, who are now the Dallas Stars(!). I followed the days when Gordie Howe and sons were part of the old WHA champion Houston Aeros in the early 70s. You could say I had a bit of a head start on my fellow native Texans, but since the Stars brought Lord Stanley's cup home to Dallas last year, I've been joined by quite a few other people around here. As for other sports, like basketball, baseball, or soccer, if a Texas team isn't involved (more precisely, if a Houston or Austin team isn't involved), I could usually care less. I follow the Houston Astros baseball team and the Houston Rockets basketball team, but I'm nowhere near as rabid a fan of either of those sports as I am of football or hockey. There are a couple of other sports I watch, regardless of who's involved - auto racing and Aussie Rules Football. I love watching Indy cars, and I never miss the Indy 500. You could say I'm just as rabid about Indy as I am about football, especially since I grew up in the heyday of the great A. J. Foyt of Houston, Texas. Now, as for Aussie Rules Football, I caught a broadcast of a Grand Final (Essendon v Hawthorn, don't remember which year) on ESPN in the mid 80s, and I've been hooked ever since. My son and I barrack for Carlton, but we can survive if Essendon win a few games now and then. We're probably the only owners of a Carlton throw pillow and can koozie in the entire city of Garland, TX. ;-) SONIK : MAY 2000 |
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