Marshall Parker
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Marshall Parker is an Australian composer and sound designer, known for his work at Beam Software.
In his youth, Parker played in bands with former Beam Software musician Gavan Anderson, who succeeded their previous musician, Neil Brennan. However, Anderson ended up with too much work at Beam, and had to take care of his family, so he had Tania Smith come in as Beam's musician, while Gavan worked on sound. However, she ended up touring with Kylie Minogue as her keyboardist, and was forced to leave Beam. Smith was also a friend of Parker and asked him if he would like to start working on music for games and Parker started his work at Beam in November 1990, when he was 38. His first work was for Lucasfilm Games' Star Wars for the NES. Like the composers before him, Parker was not only a composer, but also tasked with arranging music from other games that Beam was porting to home consoles. Some of these games include Smash TV (NES/SNES), the aforementioned Star Wars (NES), and even arranged some music from NARC for Beam's Game Boy version of Terminator 2.
Parker's work grew in popularity around the SNES era when he scored the music for Shadowrun (SNES). He is also known for his work on Nightshade (NES), both of which have received several remixes by fans. He would also occasionally write completely different soundtracks for ports of games. For example, International Cricket (NES) and Super International Cricket (SNES).
When Beam Software's UK division, Teeny Weeny Games, was formed, the company didn't have any composers working there for their Nintendo games, so they had Parker send his music from Beam Software to them. Some of the titles he composed for TWG included Choplifter II and FireFighter for the Game Boy, as well as their only NES game Last Action Hero.
In 2007, Parker left Beam Software (then Krome Studios) and started working at RealU in June the same year and then left in February 2013. Parker is currently working at Ubisoft's Singapore division as an audio director, and has worked on their popular Assassin's Creed series with his son, Gavin Parker.
Contents
Interview
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VGMPF |
Marshall |
| What was it like composing for the NES and GameBoy? | It was interesting and of course challenging.
I was working at the time doing record production and writing songs and advertising jingles with my friend David Briggs in his full blown recording studio, and was going in to Beam 3 afternoons each week and composing music and SFX for their titles. Composing with the limitations of 1 noise channel, 2 square waves and a triangle wave was certainly something new! |
| How were the improvements of composing on the SNES and Mega Drive? | The SNES.... we could use samples of real sounds and we had 8 channels so of course it was a huge improvement at the time.
Memory was very limited of course, but it was still a huge step forward. Mega Drive were FM synth sounds with 1 channel for samples... but we could compose using midi.. and directly using the Mega Drive sounds, so that was actually quite cool. |
| How did you come up with the music for a game? Did you play/see the game first or just wrote whatever came to your mind? | I would always see the game first, and discuss with the game director as to what we were trying to achieve.
Style, emotion etc was always discussed. Then I would try things, get them in the game and see how they worked. Keep going until we were all happy. |
| How was the staff at Beam Software? Were they fun to work with? | Yes, lots of fun people. You must be able to relax and have fun making games.
If you are not having fun making it, then it will probably not be fun to play. In the early days it was a lot more relaxed than it is now. These days production values and costs are so much higher so there is a lot more at stake. |
| In earlier Beam Software games, I have seen you and Gavan both listed for music and sound. Did you both make music and sound or did you just make music while Gavan did the sounds? | I did it all, as I recall. Gavin had worked on music in his earlier days at Beam, but then he moved into I.T.
He did help a little at times, as he is a fine guitar player, so every now and then I would get his contibution. |
| Shadowrun is considered possibly your best work on the SNES. Do you agree with this? | Well it is the game that I am best known for I guess, but best is subjective.
It was a good and well received game for sure. |
| What is your favorite game so far in your career? | Probably Tranformers for PS2...that was a great game and done in a very short time frame.
My son Gavin actually did all the music for that game. I worked on SFX and direction. That game was quite an achievment at the time. Le Mans 24hr on Dreamcast was also excellent. And of course I have just finished working on Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag. I was Audio Director on the levels done here at the Ubisoft Singapore studio and it really is great to be working on AAA titles. |
| How do you react to your fans? | Do I have fans? :)
I try to be courteous and answer any questions that they may have as best as possible |
| You are currently working on the new Assassin's Creed game and doing sound design. What is it like compared to when you were doing music at Beam? | I am actually enjoying working at Ubisoft a lot.
It's a big developer, but has a lot of great people that are really good to work with. Very professional but still a lot of fun. I have an excellent Audio Team here so life is good. |
Audio Development
Because of the two composers using similar instruments for their Game Boy, NES, and SNES work, Marshall Parker's music sounds similar to David Wise. The Game Boy and NES drivers have a similar sound to Rare's sound driver while Marshall used many similar instrument samples as Wise in his SNES works.
Game Boy
Parker wrote in Music Macro Language using Beam Software's Game Boy sound driver which was programmed by Brian Post.
Genesis
Parker wrote his music on his sequencers which were converted to the Maxmum sound driver by Trevor Nuridin.
NES
Parker wrote the music in Music Macro Language using Brian Post's version of the Beam Software sound driver.
SNES
Parker sequenced his music and it was then converted to Andrew Bailey's sound driver. The instrument samples were taken from Parker's Roland MIDI devices. Mainly the MV-30, but also the MC-500, D-550, and S-550. In True Lies, the game uses real guitar samples by Domenic Morabito.
Many of Parker's instrument samples are identical to the ones David Wise used for his music to Battletoads, as well as his SNES music. Both composers sampled instruments from Roland devices.
Parker used an Ensoniq VFX synthesizer for MIDI recording. Before that, he used a Roland JX-1.
Gameography
Aliases
In FireFighter, he is listed as Beam Software. This was most likely due to the developer Teeny Weeny Games outsourcing their sound to Beam Software. They were probably never aware of the composer's name.
Picture Gallery
During the development of Aussie Rules Footy (NES), International Cricket (NES), and Super International Cricket (SNES). [1]
Beam Software (standing row, second from the right). Manual of Blades of Vengeance (GEN).
During the development of Radical Rex (GEN). [2]
From his Facebook page.
Cropped image from his Facebook page.
Links
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2770/ - MobyGames.
- facebook.com/marshall.parker.58 - Facebook.
- sg.linkedin.com/pub/marshall-parker/39/5a0/66b - LinkedIn.
