Gamasutra - Game Audio Gallery: Bill Brown


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	Bill Brown Composer and Director of Music for Soundelux DMG (Design Music Group) Home: Hollywood, CA http://billbrownmusic.com
Current Projects:
Games: Return to Castle Wolfenstein (Activision/id/GrayMatter)* Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Redstorm/Ubisoft)* Rogue Spear: Black Thorn (Redstorm/Ubisoft)* Film: SCORCHER (Action-adventure) — HBO, Director, Jim Seale CineTel Pictures* * = full score by Bill
Credits (Games, Films, Television, Advertisements):
Music for Film: Trapped — Director, Deran Sarafian, USA Network* Any Given Sunday — Director, Oliver Stone, Warner Bros. Finding Forrester — Director, Gus Van Sant, Sony Pictures Entertainment/ Columbia Pictures We Married Margo Writer/Director, J. David Shapiro The War of The Angels — Director, Jim Sonzero* Miramax Films 20th Anniversary Film Trailer* The new Columbia/Tri Star logo in 5.1 surround sound for home video/DVD* Original Game Soundtracks: Return to Castle Wolfenstein* Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon* Rogue Spear—Black Thorn* Bio-Strike* Arcane Online* Clive Barker's Undying* Michael Crichton's Timeline* Anne McCaffrey's Freedom: First Resistance Rainbow Six Covert Ops Essentials* Rogue Spear — Urban Operations* Anachronox QUAKE III Arena Shadow Watch* Villains' Revenge Xena — Warrior Princess PSX Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear* Rainbow Six — Eagle Watch* Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six* The Lost World: Trespasser* QUAKE II Dominant Species* Heavy Gear Trailer Tom Clancy's Politika Requiem Trailer *Music for Television / Live Theatre / New Media:** Microsoft Windows XP operating system — Music and System Sounds (recorded with live orchestra) Discovery Channel ABC Sports Major League Soccer ESPN2 World Cup Soccer Kodak ScreenCheck Video CineComm Digital Theater Trailer The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad — Universal Islands of Adventure Dr. Seuss Street Show — Universal Islands of Adventure Nagasaki Dust Blue Sphere Alliance — Live Theatrical Play Killer Tracks BMG Entertainment Kennedy Space Center Video Wall *Music for Television Commercial Spots:** ARMY — Army of One campaign Nintendo Perfect Dark Near East Captain Crunch Resolution Jenny Craig Au Natural Mercedes 2000 CL Class & owners video manual Nintendo Boy To The World Nintendo Pokemon Thunderpunch Kraft Miracle Whip E-greetings.com Budweiser Airwalk Nike BMW Nokia DISCOGRAPHY: Soundtrack CD — shipped with limited editions of games; Music of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear Michael Crichton's Timeline * = full score by Bill Additional credits: billbrownmusic.com/credits.htm
Press:
"The music is, quite possibly, the best I've ever heard. Very celtic flavored and varied, you will never be bored. I played levels over for the sheer beauty of the score. If EA brings a soundtrack for this mother, it's got one seller." —PC Game Review "... the music is outstanding. A fantastic orchestral score by Bill Brown has been integrated into the gameplay..." —GameSpy "BEST MUSIC - PCXL 1998 ALL-STAR AWARDS: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. The epic soundtrack that nearly brings tears to TK-ers eyes is easily the most memorable score in all of gaming." —PC Accelerator March 1999 issue "Musical Score: (five stars) Bill Brown, composer and music producer, should win an award for the work he's done here — it's simply the best I've heard from any title. Like the John Williams of computer game scores, Brown has put together a collage of tracks you'll find yourself humming long after you've put Rogue Spear to rest..." —AdrenalineVault Additional music reviews: billbrownmusic.com/reviews.htm
Bio:
Composer Bill Brown is Director of Music at Soundelux Design Music Group, Hollywood, California. Some of his recent composing and arranging highlights include director Oliver Stone's feature film Any Given Sunday, director Deran Sarafian's Trapped, Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester, Clive Barker's Undying, Michael Crichton's Timeline, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear, Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Trespasser and numerous television commercials. Bill was born in San Diego, California in 1969 and grew up living on both the West and East coasts, and settled in the town of Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey after age 10. He received his bachelor of arts in film scoring and song writing studies in August 1991 from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. In 1991, he moved to the city that never sleeps to pursue his career composing for film and television. While in New York City, Bill wrote music for numerous television commercials. For two years he sharpened his composing skills at Grayscore Music, a studio that he also took part in designing and building in Manhattan. In 1993, Bill composed and produced themes for ABC Wide World of Sports, and music for BMG's Killer Tracks libraries with Not Just Jingles Music, NYC. Several of Bill's tracks can be heard now on Fox Sports News, Access Hollywood and other television shows nationwide. In the summer of 1995, Bill moved to Los Angeles, California. Concentrating on both sound design and music for television and films through 1996, Bill worked with top Hollywood directors including David Lynch (on Lost Highway), Jeb Stuart (on Switch Back) and Bill Duke (on Hoodlum). In 1996 Bill garnered a Golden Reel nomination for his work on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (Renaissance Pictures / Universal) and in 1997, another Golden Reel nomination for In The Presence of Mine Enemies (Showtime Pictures), while working at Digital Sound and Picture (DSP), in Culver City, Los Angeles. In December of 1996, Bill joined Soundelux, where he has written and performed music for many projects in addition to those mentioned above. Some of his other projects include Universal's Islands of Adventure's The Eighth Voyage Of Sindbad, recorded with a 70 piece orchestra, Disney, Miramax, Columbia/Tri Star, ESPN2, Kodak, BMW, Mercedes, Kennedy Space Center, Discovery Channel, Nokia, Nike, Airwalk and a quickly expanding list of exciting music projects. "To sum it up, I want to work on a project that inspires people. I really love cinematic music. Projects I've scored including Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday, Clive Barker's Undying, Dream Work's The Lost World: Trespasser, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Michael Crichton's Timeline have allowed me to do what I love the most — create an atmosphere, a mood to engage the listener and inspire them the same way I feel inspired by the project." —Bill Brown
Tools I Can't Live Without:
GigaStudio Macintosh G3 with dual VGA monitors (dual processor Mac G4 coming soon!) Logic Audio (Platinum) Pro Tools Mix + system with DSP farm and bit3 PCI expansion chassis (TDM & VST plug-ins!) Access VIRUS analog modeling synth Various keyboards and instruments, more of which can be found on my Studio page
Advice for Game Audio Artists:
I would recommend trying some theory or composition courses at your local college campus, or looking on the web for books on the topic of composing. Two of my recent favorite books on the subject are "Knowing the Score" by David Morgan and "The Score", which contains many interviews with top film composers. There are so many avenues you can take for learning and absorbing composition, the most important of which I think is listening to scores and reading along if you can find the score in printed form. I believe it is important to learn all the rules, so you can break them.
Favorite Quote:
"There are only twelve tones. You must treat them carefully." — Paul Hindemith
Most Frequently Asked Question:
"When are you going to come out with a compilation or soundtrack CD"?
Inspiration:
There are many composers who I deeply admire and have studied. I could go on for hours, but let me just name a few — Thomas Newman, James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal, Mychael Danna, and of course, John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. There are so many more, I'll just say thank you to each and every one of them for all of their inspiration and I hope to give the gifts of my soul as they are doing every day.

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Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Still one of my favorites from the Rainbow series. I wrote this for the original Rainbow Six back in 1998. [MP3]

Rainbow Six — Rogue Spear: As Red Storm was putting together a promotional CD for the release of Rogue Spear, I decided it would be fun to do a dance remix of the themes from Rainbow and Rogue — this tune is what happened. (btw — that CD is no longer available.) [MP3]

Rogue Spear — Urban Operations: I remember just toying around with some ideas for Urban Operations — a mission pack to Rogue Spear. This was a lot of fun, I started with a new remix of the Rogue theme with a big Bonham drum feel and I love how the
Rainbow theme just lands like a (friendly) bomb as the piece begins. I thought that the "B theme" in this piece might weave it's way into the game, but as it turns out - this is the only place it exists! Because they had asked for a middle-eastern flavor to match the locale of the missions, I experimented with Armenian Duduk (the wind instrument you hear at the beginning of the opening cinematic — you can hear that music on my site as well) and a phat all-acoustic middle-eastern meets techno vibe processed through this little effects box I use called the KAOSS PAD. (That's where all the cool sweeps and filtering come from in this piece.) [MP3]

Shadow Watch: The challenge of this game was to meet the intensity of the situations with the flavor of the locations of each mission — which varied greatly. We visit Rio, Hong Kong and Russia as the game unfolds, and the music really excelled here in helping form that story. [MP3]

Clive Barker's Undying:
I was set to record a live chorus for a Gameboy commercial spot a couple years back and had just started talking with Dream Works about Undying which later became Clive Barker's Undying. The day that we were going to go record the chorus, I wrote a few ideas down that seemed to fit the mood of Undying drawing from both Latin and Gaelic text that seemed to fit and brought them along just in case we had time to fit in a few lines. We recorded in big church in the valley, which was noisy, but had a big sound to it. I just sang the 4-part harmony to the separate sections and then conducted them all wild to DAT (with no accompaniment.) So I brought those tracks back to my studio and experimented with them. I arranged orchestra accompaniment around the vocal parts using my synths and samplers here. A year later, I was finally working on the project, and it all fell together in about three weeks of writing. This is a very good example of the wonderful results that can happen just by involving your composer as soon as your project gets the green light! [MP3]

Michael Crichton's Timeline: I really had a great time with this project — after I finally found this Main Theme! I wrote something like 12 minutes of music searching for the right feel for Timeline and then as soon as I hit this cue — the rest of the score just poured out in a few weeks. This is still one of my favorites, I was able to infuse most of the score with the original motif from the Main Theme. Okay, so maybe it's got "Bruckheimer" written all over it — it just seems to work.
[MP3]

The Lost World: Trespasser: I got an email from a fan last month asking me if I could put this piece from the Dream Works game The Lost World: Trespasser up on my site. He couldn't remember the name of the piece, but described it in massive, unrelenting detail. I think that's worth sharing it, wouldn't you?
[MP3]

Quake III Arena: What a great way to finish this project with id up. Working with id has been fantastic, and we have grown really close during the production of Quake 2 and Quake 3 Arena. What a great company — I wish they were here in LA! Well, we're working together once again as I write on Return to Castle Wolfenstein — definitely the next generation of gaming, in every respect — check out how the music works interactively in the this new title if you get a chance, it is really fun and interesting gameplay.
[MP3]

Arcane Online: Although I do not know the status of the release of this game, I do know that I enjoyed writing the music for it. The intro cinematic (trailer) was really interesting graphically and sonically — very cinematic. I originally intended this piece to be the Main Theme but then another theme came to me which you can hear on my site, Arcane Main Theme, that seemed even more appropriate for the feel of the game. It's great how each project's score can have such meaningful and resonant quality all it's own. It reminds me how there is abundance everywhere if you just open to it.
[MP3]

Disney's Villains' Revenge: This game is wall to wall music! Better yet, it's all in the style of the classic Disney animated films. I had a fantastic time working with the entire staff over at Disney on this project and I have to say they were so dedicated to this game. The game itself was created using real cell animation (people painting each cell by hand!) then digitizing the cells and rendering them into a 3-D world with 2-D real-time animation — like in the movies, but interactive! The score is also one of my favorites and gave me a chance to do some lighter stuff like, Enchantment, as well as my trademark big orchestral stuff including this cue, The Magical Book.
[MP3]

Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday (Film): This actually came from a demo I did for the Rain Game sequence in Oliver Stone's edgy film. This particular track didn't make it into the film, but I really enjoyed working on it, and that is meaningful in itself.
[MP3]