Paul Webb
| Paul George Webb | ||||||||
 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
Paul Webb is an American composer and sound designer. He was the lead audio designer for Sculptured Software. Webb attended the Mannes College of Music for Classic Guitar from 1978 to 1981. He originally wanted to teach music but ended up being interested in computer programming, and that is when he decided he wanted to make video game music. He later joined Sculptured Software in 1985 and left in 1997. During his 12 years at Sculptured, Webb did all of their NES games and then during the SNES era, more composers joined Sculptured Software which he worked with, mainly Mark Ganus and Kingsley Thurber. His best known work was for the Star Wars games on SNES. Webb's music mostly consisted of rock or jazz. When the Nintendo 64 came out, Webb quit the video game music industry since he thought there was no more need for his expertise.
Ever since 2007, Webb has been working at CleaOne as a Technical Support Engineer.
When there was a Sega port of a Nintendo game, Neuromantic Productions would usually convert Webb's music. However, Webb composed the music to some Genesis games as well.
Contents
Audio Development
Commodore 64
Webb's music for Scooby Doo: Microillusions (C64) is in the same driver as Rob Sisinni's for Main Frame (C64). Both games were programmed by Peter Ward and published by Microillusions. Ward programmed Scooby Doo at Sculptured Software.
Genesis / Mega Drive
Most of Webb's music utilized the GEMS sound engine, except for Pac-Mania. Because of how much time has passed, Webb doesn't remember exactly how he developed music for the Sega Genesis.
NES
Webb had this to say about his NES music:
His Nintendo music sounds similar to that of Michiharu Hasuya's in terms of style and instruments. According to Webb, the sound engine was by Ken Moore.
According to Mario Gonzalez, the driver required the music to be entered in assembly.
SNES
Webb had this to say about his SNES music:
The instruments were taken from an Ensoniq EPS workstation. Coincidentally, Bobby Prince who did the original DOS version of Doom (DOS) used this keyboard, and Webb did the SNES conversion.
Webb says that when he was working on the Empire Strikes Back SNES music, he was given the original handwritten scores from John Williams.
Mark Knight, who used the driver while working for Mindscape, recalled a sound system called "Berlioz", so this is most likely what the B stood for.
Gameography
The game Hoversprint for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST credit a "P. Webb" for music. It is currently unknown if this is Paul Webb or someone else.
Links
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,4593/ - MobyGames.
- linkedin.com/pub/paul-webb/4/10b/430 - LinkedIn.
