Gavan Anderson

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Gavan Anderson
Gavananderson1.jpg
Born September 14, 1950 (Age 60)
Birth Place Melbourne, Australia
Nationality Australian   Australia.svg
Website www.tarahall.com/gavanandersson

Gavan Anderson was the original in-house composer at Beam Sotware. He is best known for composing the music to Back to the Future. Gavan not only did music for games but also did some digitized voices in them, too. He got Tania Smith to work for Beam Software since he was swamped with so much work he needed another musician to help. He knew Tania through Marshall Parker, a friend of his that he toured and played with in bands. When Gavan wasn't doing music or sound effects in video games, he was usually doing voices for them.

History

Gavan: I had been working as a professional musician since around 1966. I had also worked for the ABC as a tech/tape op in their recording & broadcasting studios for about three years around 1969. Analog and Digital Electronics had been my hobby and I had been writing assembly code for sprinkler systems and designing computer control interfaces in my spare time. When my daughter was turned 2 in 1988 my wife said she needed me home more often and the touring would have to be scaled back, so I applied for a job at BEAM software as an assembly language programmer. They had just employed a guy as their music programmer and had discovered he couldn't read or write music. They then found out who I was (a professional working musician who could read and write and play various instruments) so they gave me the position. As I had all the electronics background I got the hardware & engineering positions as well. Then when they found out I knew about modems and BBS systems I got the communications position added on to what I was already responsible for. Later on when we networked the company I wound up as the System Administrator/Network Engineer too. By mid 1989 my workload was out of control and the directors agreed that I needed assistance. I was still playing some local gigs and needed a keyboard player. I had toured with Marshall as part of the support band on the Kenny Rogers Australian tour in 1984 and I asked him who was available. He said there was a young lady from Tasmania who was fantastic and would like a playing gig as she had only recently come over to the mainland. She was fabulous so I asked her if she wanted to write some games music, offered her the job and she said - YES.

So from mid - to late 1989 we both worked on things but she eventually took over the whole lot. We were reverse engineering the GameBoy and the NEC PC Engine so that side of things was keeping me occupied. I had also written and implemeted the BBS system for the company using Frontdoor and Remote Access so that the US clients such as LJN, Activision, etc. could call in and pick up the latest versions of their games development ROM files. As the company kept expanding and employing more staff, I just didn't have the time to be involved in the music side of the games titles that BEAM was producing.

Gameography

Released

Title

Sample

1989/09/?? Back to the Future (NES)
1989/09/?? Bad Street Brawler (NES)
1989/10/?? The Three Stooges (NES)
1990/01/?? RoadBlasters (NES)
1990/03/?? Fisher Price: I Can Remember (NES)
1990/11/?? The Punisher (NES)
1991/??/?? Aussie Rules Footy (NES)
1992/??/?? International Cricket (NES)