Was David Whittaker the laziest musician on Amiga?
 

In recent years i've been going through games I either didn't play back in the day or just for nostalgia sakes, loading up a game I hadn't played very often and didn't remember very well.

Now, David Whittaker has done some very memorable tunes, don't get me wrong. Speedball, Xenon 2, Shadow of the Beast to name a couple.

He's actually done a tonne of tunes on Amiga, but i'm afraid Mr.Whittaker is in my opinion, a completely lazy bastard that was basically 'phoning' his tunes in.

When you hear Shadow of the Beast, those sounds the music uses are so distinctive, so definitively Beast, that imagine my horror at hearing the same ones use in Wrath of the Demon!

And not just that game either, theres several other games he's done that all use Beast samples, and it just reeks of lazyness. I don't hear the tune itself, all i'm thinking is "thats Beast, why has he used that?".

As for his chip tune style music like Speedball, obviously Speedball being one of his first tunes to use those instruments, it still sounds like a fresh tune, but then you listen to all the rest of his chiptune style music, and its all the exact same instruments!!!

Every one of his chiptune tunes sounds like bloody Speedball!

How the hell did he get away with it for so long?

Most musicians on Amiga go through a natural progression, using stuff like the ST-01 sample disk to make their music, and then quickly outgrowing them, and seeking out cleaner and more 'modern' and contemporary samples. You wouldn't for instance find any musician still using ST-01 stuff in 1993, but David Whittaker is essentially doing a variation of that.

Anyone agree / disagree?

as a musician myself, i have no problems with the same sounds being re-used, as long as it doesnt sound stale. With chiptunes, you'll barely notice. with samples... a few arent so bad, if the application suits the requirements... even big names of music production do it.

however, with regards to Whittaker, his strength really is in composition i feel, and so almost anything is forgivable.

there are still sounds on the early ST-xx disks which, when used right, can sound lovely, and have an 'essence' of Amiga about them (i suppose that's nostalgia), but I personally would never use them alone unless it was a deliberate effort to sounds pre-1990 Amiga.

I think it's a fair enough point though the use of the same multi can be ok if you like that overal sound - Killing cloud for example seemed to use the exact same instruments as Total Recall and i was rather glad it did

The worst culprit was Dave Lowe i always thought and certainly compared to his awesome Starglider2, Carrier Command, didn't ever seem to measure up to this brilliance

I would guess that DW didn't always push himself quite as much as he did with his very best work and was maybe just glad to get them down and done - that's the impression i got but it didn't stop me enjoying even this work regardless

I often thaught the same of his c64 tunes. Would often hear a few bars that sound the same or similar across different games. I bet he could wip up a few tunes on demand in no time at all (reusing previous work) which braught the money fairly quickly ;)

The authors of Wrath of the Demon ASKED for music like SOTB.

Well it might as well have been the same music then.

Piss poor in any case, by all means have a game inspired by another, but not so theres less distinction between the two.

I thought his music for WOTD was bullshit, cheap and disingenuous.

Given the number of games he composed music for, I can't say I'm too surprised that there are a few of his tunes that sound like he slept through their production... most other musicians would be proud to have anything like the number of classic compositions that DW produced over the years.

Exactly, Brimble is probably as prolific, and all of his tunes are very different.

i disagree with Galahad, with the note i'm not a musician, to be kept in mind.

my idea is that, no matter if the project is a work for hire or a personal audience masterpiece, if not specifically requested/needed whatever the reason an artist should concentrate also in the consistency of his works with a common style/drive/concept whatever.

an artist, whatever the discipline, conveys a message also with the entirety of its works. He may decide to do each time a substantially different and new piece, but it's a debatable choice for many reasons that i will skip to tell here: i have nothing against that either, but it requires a sense that too (and skill).

so i don't see anything bad in that, but since you asked not about the ethical value of this, but of its laziness, my answer is that laziness is not a factor, it's non relevant imho, meaning, he could be the most lazy author in the world, and stillyou could not see it by this re-utilizing thing.

Sorry, totally and utterly disagree completely with that.

He is lazy in my opinion, having virtually no alteration in his samples/instruments from 1988-1993.

I know of no other musician that has done that commercially or for demo work on Amiga.

Don't be too hard on him Sir, he had a poor upbringing. :D By which I mean I get the impression that game music was considered and tacked on at the very end of a gamedev project back then, by most except a few of the developers. Also, musicians weren't paid much if they weren't on the team.

Bit silly really, since sound is half the game (hehe, sometimes more than half considering the short projects to release games the first years, especially conversions).

So with a few exceptions like Team 17 and Digital Illusions later on, all but a few games were low budget, especially the years when David made the most tunes.


About the samples I agree - although it might be a product of the memory budget for the sound. 200K for a module in 1987? No go! So he might have 'settled on some percussion sounds that occupy minimum space' and above all share samples between level songs.

You could also call it his 'style', but that's another excuse I think. Maybe I just like his style and he WAS an early musician making music before Soundtracker etc came.


And about samples, quite a few famous musicians wanted to sound different from ST-01 but had no studio full of sources to sample, so famous non-computer-musicians got their work re-used also.

Trying to find the song that Whittaker sampled heavily for SOTB... I noticed it just the other week... was it Vangelis??

Strangely enough, I read this thread some days ago:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28240

I must admit that I love his WOTD tunes.
They fit perfectly.

Check out the new HD longplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq3VxbAfEWI
The gfx and his tunes create an incredible atmosphere!

I don't, just reminds me of Beast, would be better to be able to mute the music frankly.

Well yes. ;)
The samples are brilliant for a fantasy style game.

But the James Bond theme was CACK!

Quote "Was David Whittaker the laziest musician on Amiga? "

No.

I was. I wrote nowt and released less ;)

The laziEST...well there's a certain care to be taken with those superlatives...

But at least he has a colleague, this is a damn fact:
Haiko Ruttmann!

Listen to the TwinWorld music. Some of his "key" lead instruments he would always reuse in the other games. Or it's actually me to have some problem with my aural organs ;)

Talking about this... I dont want to create a flamewar or offend anybody, but Richard Joseph also only re-arranded somebody else's work in few games.

I wonder what speed the WOTD music should be playing at... the Amiga version plays the music slower than the Atari ST version (wich i am used to) judging from the youtube longplay videos?

Here are two recordings from the Atari version:
wotd-the_dark_tower.ogg (used at level 1 in Amiga version)
wotd-title.ogg

I don't have an issue with Whittaker or Joseph doing reworks of other peoples commercial music, that actually still takes a bit of skill to get right, i'm largely referring to Whittakers 'original' music he composed himself, in my opinion, there just isn't enough variation in his music.

mah... it's not the ingredients imho, it's how you mix them.