David Whittaker (born 24 April 1957 in

Bury Bury may refer to: *The burial of human remains *-bury, a suffix in English placenames Places England * Bury, Cambridgeshire, a village * Bury, Greater Manchester, a town, historically in Lancashire ** Bury (UK Parliament constituency) (1832–1 ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

C64.COM interview
/ref>) is known for numerous

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

music which he wrote in most of the 1980s and early 1990s, for many different formats.

Career

He is known for some of the work he produced in the late 1980s/early 1990s. While making music, he often programmed music directly, instead of using any music composition tools, using just a "machine code monitor"—and then an 'assembler' system/program—including SuperSoft's and then Commodore's tools. Commodore 64 was the format that he composed for most frequently. He was more impressed with the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

's more developed technical sound capabilities, but used a few of the same instrument sounds, in several of his works, for Amiga. These days, he works mostly in the field of computer game sound effects and voices rather than music. Although he does not compose much at present, he is still involved in the implementation of music, ambiences, sound FX and his admitted forte, dialogue (hence, his current moniker: DialogueGuru). His most successful compositions appeared probably in

games such as '' Shadow of the Beast'', ''

Obliterator ''Obliterator'' is a side-scrolling arcade adventure computer game published by Psygnosis in 1988. It was released for Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and MS-DOS. The game was programmed by David H. Lawson and its graphics were mad ...

'', '' Beyond the Ice Palace'', and '' Speedball''. On the Commodore 64, his most popular compositions include for example ''

Glider Rider ''Glider Rider'' is an isometric action-adventure game published by Quicksilva in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. The music was composed by David Whittaker. Plot The criminal Abraxas Corporation must be destroyed. An ...

'', ''

Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstorm), ...

'', '' Street Surfer'' and '' Armageddon Man''. His subtune 21 of ''

Lazy Jones ''Lazy Jones'' is a platform game for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX and Tatung Einstein. It was written by David Whittaker and released by Terminal Software in 1984. The Spectrum version was ported by Simon Cobb. ''Lazy Jones'' is a colle ...

'' was the basis for the dance hit "

Kernkraft 400 "Kernkraft 400" (English: Nuclear Energy 400) is a song performed by German techno artist Zombie Nation and the first single from their album '' Leichenschmaus''. Released in 1999, it peaked at number 22 in Germany in February 2000 while becomin ...

" by Zombie Nation. Many of his other tunes can be heard on internet radio stations such as

SLAY Radio SLAY Radio is a 24/7 internet-only radio station dedicated to playing remixes and tunes based on music from the Commodore 64 computer, as well as the Amiga, popular in the 1980s and 1990s The owner of the station, who started it in 1999 or 200 ...

. Other formats he has composed for include

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the S ...

, Atari ST,

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE ...

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...

and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

. Many of his old songs are these days remixed by video game music enthusiasts. After 8 years working in the US for

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted th ...

at their Redwood Shores studio, he joined the British video game developer

Traveller's Tales Traveller's Tales is a British video game developer and a subsidiary of TT Games. Traveller's Tales was founded in 1989 by Jon Burton and Andy Ingram. Initially a small company focused on its own content, it grew in profile through developi ...

, at their studio in Knutsford, Cheshire as Head of Audio in September 2004.

Games with music by Whittaker

References

External links

Photograph of Whittaker at Lemon64.com
* Whittaker's Amiga music at UnExoticA
David Whittaker
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Artist profile
at

OverClocked ReMix OverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-commercial organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs, both with new technology and software and by va ...

Remix64 Interview with David Whittaker
Carr, Neil (2 October 2001) {{DEFAULTSORT:Whittaker, David 1957 births Living people Amiga people British composers Video game composers Commodore 64 music