Was David Whittaker the laziest musician on Amiga?

[gazj82]

Whoever wrote the in game music for Moonwalker was lazier in my opinion

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by gazj82

Whoever wrote the in game music for Moonwalker was lazier in my opinion

How dare you associate that drivel with the word "writing"! A 2-year old could have done that work.

[gazj82]

Considering it's a game about a "Musician" it's awful. How did they dare release it!

[chip]

Old thread, but when i read the name David Whittaker, i immediately think to Weird Dreams

I simply listened to the title tune of this game a billion of times ..... really love it

[Shatterhand]

Moonwalker music wasn't "written", it's just a very small sample from real music from Michael Jackson.

[S0ulA55a551n]

For my opinion. Not heard most of the games you are talking about so can't comment on that specifically. But if I was getting paid to write music I would 100% phone it in.

Do I do my best, expressive work from my soul for my employer. Nope

[Shatterhand]

I believe David Whittaker was more of a programmer than a musician, but when he begun getting offers to do music for other people games... why not?

He had written Lazy Jones and that game had some smart use of music. But yes, though some of his music sounds great, they are all built the same way.

[dirk_the_daring]

I was reading another post about spectrum music, and someone linked a youtube video with some ZX musics... And I when I heard this Whittaker's ZX music from BraveStarr game...
[ Show youtube player ]
My head connected it instantly with Speedball theme...
[ Show youtube player ]

[LeCaravage]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

David Whitaker's tunes certainly all sound far too similar to me. Another artist that I don't rate (and certainly can't think of any top-100 C64 tune composed by him) is Martin Walker.

Consider Armalyte, Citadel, Hunter's Moon etc - almost the same boring intro "music" made up by playing almost random notes with some warbling effect an no melody to speak of. I really don't see why anyone rated him as a musician. I enjoy C64 cracktro tunes more than his stuff.

When you have a smash hit like Armalyte on your hands, why not get Rob Hubbard or Maniacs of Noise to pump out a decent tune for the game?

Anyone else agree with me on this one?

I tend to differ. The ingame sound in Citadel is very subtle, giving a nice atmosphere to the game.


I always thought DW was a high price musician and that's because of that Reflections choose Tim Wright instead for SOTB2 musics.

[ImmortalA1000]

I don't think Whitaker is in that category on Amiga personally, his remix of Panther C64 for Amiga/ST for Sidewinder by Mastertronic is pretty cool and completely unique and the music in NY Warriors sounds very similar to 'Whitaker electric guitar' that's just how it is when your computer has 4 DACs and nothing else as a 'sound chip'. Menace has awesome music, etc etc.

The biggest problem for me was most Amiga game music used the same crappy samples from those PD libraries (taken from crap synths and sampled in a crap way), hated that when some lazy git used an ST-?? instrument disk to shove in some lame sample for an instrument using a MOD tracker, THIS is the problem with Amiga musicians, poor taste and 'couldn't give a rat's ass' attitude to finding/using appropriately atmospherice/suitable unique instruments.

You are on to a loser with Amiga game music for this specific reason IMO and David Whitaker didn't disgrace the Amiga with cheap/naff synth instrument samples like many of the others on Amiga games dev scene so I voted no. Musical note arrangement 'talent' is just one aspect of Amiga game music, the worst crime for an Amiga game development was those horrible naff instrument samples (also in 90% of demo MOD tunes in the 80s too).

Very few Amiga games were done with proper, unique and atmospheric instrument samples to be quite honest and Shadow of the Beast was one of the first batch of games where owning a decent amp and speakers for your Amiga 500/1000 was absolutely essential.

If you compare that to Dunn's arguably best game soundtrack, Batman, there is no goddamm treble on his instrument samples, my hi-fi's spectrum analyser is not even producing bugger all above 5-6khz midrange. THAT is goddam lazy, 28khz Amiga with flat samples that sound as bad as ST software sample playback? lol no thanks

[Adropac2]

he certainly had a very recognizable style which he tended to use rather a lot but I rather liked his sound on the C64. He rolled out that same stuff quite a bit but even in his same style his tunes could also stand out. Glider Rider is absolutely flippin brilliant and he's done some killer tracks in his time. Especially like Sidewinder, Sentinel and Archipelgos

A tad lazy yes in a couple of ways but sometime his music was a joy and very distinct

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The biggest problem for me was most Amiga game music used the same crappy samples from those PD libraries (taken from crap synths and sampled in a crap way), hated that when some lazy git used an ST-?? instrument disk to shove in some lame sample for an instrument using a MOD tracker, THIS is the problem with Amiga musicians, poor taste and 'couldn't give a rat's ass' attitude to finding/using appropriately atmospheric/suitable unique instruments.

You are on to a loser with Amiga game music for this specific reason IMO and David Whitaker didn't disgrace the Amiga with cheap/naff synth instrument samples like many of the others on Amiga games dev scene so I voted no. Musical note arrangement 'talent' is just one aspect of Amiga game music, the worst crime for an Amiga game development was those horrible naff instrument samples (also in 90% of demo MOD tunes in the 80s too).

Very few Amiga games were done with proper, unique and atmospheric instrument samples to be quite honest and Shadow of the Beast was one of the first batch of games where owning a decent amp and speakers for your Amiga 500/1000 was absolutely essential.

Yeah, Whittaker almost singlehandedly defined the first phase of Amiga music, together with the Cinemaware titles, but - despite agreeing with you in most of the sound critique - i want to do a partial defense of the ST-01 users: i want to remind that at the time having a sampler was kinda luxury so was easier for those wannabe musicians - most of the time teenagers on in their 20s - to use and rip samples from other songs, i know because was one of them!

[ImmortalA1000]

The entire home computer game publisher industry was a bit market stall budget attitude though.

Jay Miner and co. designed the Amiga hardware to be capable of reproducing any sound, to choose rubbish sounds and charge £25-35 a game was a slap in the face I thought back then. YMMV

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The entire home computer game publisher industry was a bit market stall budget attitude though.

Jay Miner and co. designed the Amiga hardware to be capable of reproducing any sound, to choose rubbish sounds and charge £25-35 a game was a slap in the face I thought back then. YMMV

You guys were paying for games?
[well, actually i did buy some, and my pus-er, software provider wanted around 5000 italian lire (more or less two UKP of the time) per disc]