Brian Schmidt
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Brian Schmidt is an American composer, sound designer, and sound programmer. He mostly composed for pinball and arcade games. He started in 1987 at Williams as a sound designer and programmer for arcade and pinball games. At the same time, he was also working at Midway. His first arcade game soundtrack was for NARC. In 1989, Schmidt left Williams to make his own company (Schmidt Entertainment Technologies). At the same time, he was working as a consultant for QSound Labs. As a programmer, Schmidt has developed at least one audio driver for games. Schmidt is also known for creating the BSMT2000 which was a very innovative audio device used in many pinball and arcade machines, allowing for the use of digitized speech and instruments. From 1999 to 2008, he worked at Microsoft and created most of the audio architecture to the Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles. In 2008, he opened up his own studios. Ever since April 2009, he has been working at SoundCon as an executive director, also working at his studio. Schmidt is also a part of G.A.N.G. (Game Audio Network Guild).
Music Development
GEN
Schmidt used a modified version of the GEMS sound software, originally created in 1991. He used Z80 processor chip and 68000 sound processor and wrote down his own MIDI files to his sound driver.
NES
While Brian never composed for the NES, his music from the arcade version of NARC was arranged on the NES by David Wise.
SNES
At first Brian Schmidt used a sound driver that was programmed by Scott L. Patterson as a variant of the Electronic Arts driver, which in turn as a variant on the Kanichi-Kun sound driver used by Nintendo. Only two games used his driver. Then Schmidt used Visual Concepts' sound engine that was programmed by John Schappert and Jason Andersen.
32X
Schmidt himself created their own 32X audio engine, and used a MIDI conversion tool and using a Z80 processor chip and 68000 sound processor.
Gameography
- Note: Though Brian is credited in Zoop (GG) and Zoop (PS1), he was not involved with either of these titles. Therefore, they do not appear on his Gameography.
Links
- brianschmidtstudios.com/Pages/default.aspx - Official.
- facebook.com/brian.schmidt1 - Facebook.
- linkedin.com/pub/brian-schmidt/4/49/619 - LinkedIn.
