Allister BrimbleBack in the early ‘80s he was heavily inspired by the early 8-Bit game composers such as Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Ben Daglish.
Soon after buying an Amiga 500 computer, he started to experiment with music and sent some demos to the public domain games company 17-Bit Software who, to his surprise, decided to publish them. One of his early experiments was in attempting to transcribe Rob Hubbard`s music to work on the Amiga, and from then on, Rob’s music became a part of him. He went on to produce music for many games such as the early Team 17 range, “Project X”, “Alien Breed”, “Superfrog”, and later “Screamer”, “Driver” & “Rollercoaster Tycoon”. Today, his portfolio stands at over 400 titles spanning four decades. |
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“I was so pleased to be asked to mix 8-BIt Symphony Pro, especially as it meant meeting and working with Rob for the first time! The mixing process took about a month for the first album, including the week just before lockdown that I spent in the studio with Rob, Chris and assorted guest listeners!
The first task when the stems were finished was to work with Chris and Rob to isolate the best takes for each section, then to composite them to provide the best performances across the board. After that, each track needed to be mixed: not easy considering that each microphone contained “bleed” - noise picked up from instruments nearby: which means a very smooth audio field, but also makes controlling the
volumes of individual instruments difficult: which of course is why a great conductor like Robin Tait is essential!
Little did I know how much I would need to learn in attempting to make the end result as perfect as I could, from de-bleeding tracks to adding new percussion (the bass drum in the recordings was quite boomy, for instance). I also had to remove unwanted noises such as chair squeaks, page turns, and any number of cello clicks. The process was much more demanding than I expected, though very rewarding. It also left me with the unenviable skill of being unable to listen to live orchestral music recordings without hearing the flaws.
In the end, with Rob’s & Chris’s input, as well as additional help from Damian Manning, Ian Flory and Russell F. Howard, we got there, and I’m very proud of my part in this historic project.”
The first task when the stems were finished was to work with Chris and Rob to isolate the best takes for each section, then to composite them to provide the best performances across the board. After that, each track needed to be mixed: not easy considering that each microphone contained “bleed” - noise picked up from instruments nearby: which means a very smooth audio field, but also makes controlling the
volumes of individual instruments difficult: which of course is why a great conductor like Robin Tait is essential!
Little did I know how much I would need to learn in attempting to make the end result as perfect as I could, from de-bleeding tracks to adding new percussion (the bass drum in the recordings was quite boomy, for instance). I also had to remove unwanted noises such as chair squeaks, page turns, and any number of cello clicks. The process was much more demanding than I expected, though very rewarding. It also left me with the unenviable skill of being unable to listen to live orchestral music recordings without hearing the flaws.
In the end, with Rob’s & Chris’s input, as well as additional help from Damian Manning, Ian Flory and Russell F. Howard, we got there, and I’m very proud of my part in this historic project.”