W: All of us thought it would be wonderful to hear a little of the backstory from you because we love the music!  The game wouldn't be what it is without the music.

RP: Fantastic; that is so wonderful.  The beginning of digital recording was around the time period I recorded that.  It was done with a MIDI file, and I was actually laid up in my basement, so I didn't walk very far.  I was using a Macintosh with 8 megs of RAM, had one little speaker to hear the music out of.  I think I did have a couple of monitors set up, but anyways, it was a Roland keyboard and a Macintosh Performa 475 with 8 megs of RAM.  I was running Free Style sequencing software.  I don't know if you'd be interested in all that.

W: Oh I am.  So you did everything through a MIDI keyboard into the computer?

RP: Oh yeah.  Yeah, it was very primitive, and it was the beginning of the digital recording age so that was the top of the line, at least that I knew of.

W: Well I know Ambrosia was at the forefront of kind of the digital release era because most of their games were downloaded from online, and at the time, I remember spending half an hour to download a 7 megabyte game, so I know they had to keep the size down.

RP: Exactly, I had dialup.  I had a 14.4 modem; I'm sure you had something similar.

W: Yeah, it took forever.  My dad always described it as trying to suck a milkshake through a coffee stirrer.

RP: Oh you know it!

W: I'm so glad we have broadband.

RP: It sure is nice to have it that way; get a lot more work done.  I'm sending huge WAV files and MP3 files up now that I could never have done before.

W: Oh I know; back then you had to send tiny files!  Well I was reading about the old format, and that it was in a MIDI format, and it made me wonder how many songs you actually composed for them that you sent in?  Did you send in a bunch of different songs, and they just picked a few?

RP: Well, this is how Glenn and them worked that out.  They wanted a song for a specific part of the game.  They wanted one to be. . . wonder if I still have the original email, that'd be nice if I did.  They wanted one to be melancholy and sad; they wanted one to be enthusiastic and regal, perhaps even partially, I think the wording they used was "royalty".  I can't remember exactly how they said it, but they wanted specific moods for specific parts of the game.  And I just tried to write in order to make that happen as best I could.  Songs just kind of come to me as I write them; I write on the fly.

W: Well I do think you're very talented because in playing the game, I can hear a lot of different styles that go into it.  Like one part is heavily woodwinds, and the next part is all guitar.  It's a very broad range because you have the royal sounding theme and majestic music and then something more peaceful.

RP: Oh yes.  Majestic was one of them.  And actually guitar they might have revamped the music a little, which is okay, because I couldn't have put a guitar in.

W: It sounded like a guitar strumming, I wonder what it actually was.

RP: It could have been the MIDI keyboard with it's guitar sound.

W: That must have been it.  I don't know much about music; I'm more into the computer programming side.  I'm actually a computer science student.

RP: Wonderful!  I've been online through Kaplan.

W: So you've been doing online stuff for a while?

RP: Yeah, music just drove me into this, because I'm 52 years old, and I did not grow up with computers.  And once I realized that I could record the music on the computer and redo it without having to splice tape or redo the whole song, ah man, I had to have it!  The last twenty years of my life, since about that time period, has been devoted to collecting these new technologies.  Some of the equipment is expensive, and I'm not really famous or anything, I don't have a lot of income.  But that's where I want to go with it, I want to go into film music.  And I don't really want to be famous or anything; I just want to be able to pay the bills off.

W: Well, it's nice to be recognized for your work, too.  I know a lot of us who play this game, and it's like 12 years old now, there are a few of us who love everything about it, and we just love hearing about your experiences with it.

RP: I think that's wonderful; I just love it!  In fact, I wish I still had a copy of it.  I don't have a copy of it.  It probably wouldn't work on my new Mac.

W: Yeah, it doesn't play on the new Macintosh's unless you emulate it.  Ambrosia was actually considering updating the game to work on newer Macs a few years ago, but Glenn Andreas just didn't have the time or resources to do it.  But that sort of thing happens.  They move from the classic Mac OS to Mac OS X, then they move to Intel processors.  In the game development business, it's really hard to keep up.

RP: I can imagine.  I took a little programming, and I admire you guys.  It went a little over my head, but I got a glimpse of it.  I probably won't retain any of it, I can't even remember the terminology, but I think it's amazing.  If you ever need music for anything, you should call me; I'd be happy to help out.

W: I will, and I'll also put in a plug for your website, I'm sure the publicity would be good.

RP: Yes, the website design is something I do know how to do; that's my home-made website.  I'm glad you found that.  And you can direct anybody that's interested in this to my email.  As a matter of fact, I should put a little something on the website about it.  That's what I want to do with that site, I want to give people a little history about how I worked my way into the industry.  It's been a long road, I've done a lot of research and studying.

W: That makes me think of something else I've been wondering: how did you happen to find Ambrosia Software in the first place?  Did they find you or did you know about them?

RP: I went to a website that listed all the different game companies on it, and I just sat there and wrote emails to different production companies.  Some of them I never heard from again, and it just seemed like Ambrosia just hit.  I can't tell you how many cassettes I've sent out, cassettes and CD's I've sent to different places, but you just never hear from them.  Now I'm working on production quality.  On my website there is some music there, it's a collection of stuff I've done so far, and you guys are welcome to listen to it, it's all free.

W: Yeah, I'll have to put up a link to that.

RP: Actually, just like a needle in a haystack, it was a miracle that I found somebody [Ambrosia].  Nowadays, I believe most businesses have in-house production, musicians within the company, so it's a pretty hard business to break into.

W: Yeah, I imagine so; I know the music industry has changed a lot.  It used to be all bleeps and bloops, then it progressed to the MIDIs, and now everything is audio CD quality music.

RP: You bet.  I've got two different types of software that I use for my orchestration now.  They use gigafiles; it takes gigs of information to make the violin sound like a real violin, and it's very realistic.  I use EastWest and GigaStudio.

W: Those make it sound really lifelike?

RP: Oh yeah, it sounds like there's a real musician in the room with you.  And all the effects are included, you can make it sound like you're in an airplane hangar if you want to.  And the drums they have now are just fantastic.  Back when the MIDIs were the only thing you could use, the cymbals didn't really have any sustain, and it wasn't very realistic.  As a matter of fact, the drums they didn't even want there, it was too busy.  The first few songs I gave them, I had drums with them, and even though the drum parts were nice, they weren't realistic enough.  And they just decided they didn't want the drums.  Most of them actually don't have drums, if not all of them.

W: I think some of them do, I can think of a couple.  In my opinion, they're all very good songs.  To be able to look at a list of the themes they wanted and then be able to create all those various themes amazes me.  It's truly a wonderful thing that you've done.

RP: Well thank you.  And I've played in country bands and rock bands, and I'm starting to listen to some newer music too, and I'm really starting to enjoy some of the electronic stuff.  And I'll probably try to touch on every genre that there is.

W: I see, so you enjoy a broad variety of musical types?

RP: Yeah, I like it all.  And I can't wait to get the studio done so that I can get out there and do some work that way.

W: So you've been working from your home all these years?

RP: Oh yes, I've even got stuff in my bathroom!  It's in my living room, my dining room, and some wires are hanging up there in the bathroom!  And my wife would really appreciate getting some of it cleared out.  The studio's gonna be nice.  Well, I gotta go play tonight with the Grey Matter band.

W: You do live performances as well?

RP: Yeah.  We do that once a month anyway.  Most of my time is devoted to school and my little girl now.

W: Okay, well I'll post a link for people so they can see your website and email you too, if you'd like.

RP: That'd be great.  And I have some new music that actually made into Brett Perry's library.  Brett Perry did all the Fox shows; he did That 70's Show.   Through the company Taxi I was able to have some music sold to Brett Perry, and I got to talk to him in Burbank.

W: So you've had your music appear in other stuff too?

RP: Yeah, some of my music ended up Homeward Bound 2, It's Pat the Movie, The Man Next Door, and Phat Beach.

W: I see, so you've done a little bit of everything: video game music, movie music, and live performances, too.

RP: Yeah.

W: I think that's great, it means that you're working really hard for what you want, and that's wonderful.

RP: Yes, and we're gonna continue to do that.  I suppose I'd better let you go.

W: All right, well I appreciate your time, and it was very nice talking to you.

RP: You too.  Take care.