Matt Furniss
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Matt Furniss (not to be confused with the graphic designer of the same name) is an English video game musician. His work can be heard in many Sega video games. Matt Furniss started by frequently playing video games at a shop in Sheffield called Just Micro. Upstairs from the game store was Gremlin Graphics. One day while Furniss was at the shop, developers from Gremlin came downstairs and asked for playtesters, and Furniss got to be one of them. At the time, he was a big fan of the works of Ben Daglish, and was given the chance to meet him. When he went into Daglish's studio, he saw synthesizers and an Atari ST. Daglish showed Furniss Pro24 from Steinberg and gave him a copy of the software. Furniss took the bus home and started using the software as soon as he got home.
Matt Furniss later heard about the Demoscenes, and he sent out his music to other companies, but nobody seemed interested at the time, which he says could have been due to his age. Then one day, Krisalis Software hired him since they were looking for a composer and sound designer. He was then interviewed and tested and by 1989 he was hired and started doing music for games.
Furniss started working at Krisalis Software with Shaun Hollingworth. Since Furniss didn't know programming, Hollingworth coded the sound drivers for his games. In 1994, he started working at Psygnosis and left a couple years later and started work for Disney. In 1998, he worked at Sony Computer Entertainment America. From the beginning of 2001 to March 2007, he worked at Health Net as their senior web application developer. From April 2007 to March of 2010, he worked at Fox doing the same job. Ever since then, Furniss has been working at Gakai, a part of SCEA, as a lead developer and web technical expert.
Furniss was also the main composer at Teeny Weeny Games for their Sega video games, while Marshall Parker was their main composer for Nintendo games.
Audio Development
To compose his video game music for almost all consoles, Furniss used drivers written by Shaun Hollingworth. To utilize the drivers, he used an untitled tracker program for the Atari Mega ST which was also programmed by Hollingworth. Unfortunately, neither Furniss or Hollingworth have the source code for it. Furniss created the Genesis instruments. Furniss used this method for the following platforms: Sega Master System, Game Gear, Sega Genesis. According to Furniss, the music plays correctly in 50Hz.
Commodore 64
Furniss switched between:
- Future Composer V2.0,
- a driver also used by Ben Daglish and others at Gremlin Graphics, and
- a driver only used by Furniss and tuned at 424 Hz.
One of the latter two was programmed by Peter Harrap. Furniss's 2001 interview suggests that he never owned a C64 himself.
Gameography
Aliases
Most of the time, he used the alias "Krisalis".
Picture Gallery
Sent by someone to composers.c64.org on July 15, 2000.
Uploaded by Doommaster1994 here on July 29, 2010.
Circa 2012, contributed by chirinea to MobyGames on January 19, 2017.
With the Legacy Music Hour; July 24, 2013.
LinkedIn, September 3, 2018 or earlier.
Links
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2230/ - MobyGames.
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facebook.com/mattf - Facebook. - linkedin.com/in/furniss - LinkedIn.
- twitter.com/mfurniss - Twitter.
- youtube.com/user/mfurniss - YouTube.
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vimeo.com/44765252 - Video interview. - archive.org/details/Aktueller_Software_Markt_-_Ausgabe_1991.06/page/n71 - Interview from ASM 6/91 (in German).
- amp.dascene.net/detail.php?view=4688&detail=interview - Interview from April 2001.
- www.legacymusichour.com/2013/07/episode-143-matt-furniss.html - Audio interview from July 24, 2013.
- arcadeattack.co.uk/matt-furniss/ - Interview from August 9, 2019.
