Mark Knight, also known as TDK and Madfiddler, is a British musician, video-game music composer and

sound designer In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

. He started out writing chiptune and module-file music in the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

demoscene The demoscene () is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off computer programmi ...

, and began his games-industry career as a composer in 1992. He continued until 2000 when he moved to sound design, and since 2014 has had a split role as a sound designer and composer culminating by going self employed in 2017.

Biography

Born in 1973, in

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

, East Sussex in England, his grandfather started teaching him the violin when he was 6. At 10 years old he was given a

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

home computer and took an interest in

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

. Whilst studying in college he began writing music on the Amiga, releasing music within the demoscene. Having been refused a university place to study Music Production in 1992, he was given the opportunity to arrange the

Wing Commander Wing commander (Wg Cdr or W/C) is a senior officer rank used by some air forces, with origins from the Royal Air Force. The rank is used by air forces of many countries that have historical British influence. Wing commander is immediately se ...

soundtrack to the

home computer which led him to full-time employment with the developer Mindscape. Having left Mindscape in 1997, Knight wrote the soundtrack for Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown before accepting a position at

Bullfrog Productions Bullfrog Productions Limited was a British video game developer based in Guildford, England. Founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, the company gained recognition in 1989 for their third release, ''Populous (video game), Populous'', ...

, a development company owned by

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

, working on games such as

Dungeon Keeper 2 ''Dungeon Keeper 2'' is a strategy game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1999 for Microsoft Windows. In the sequel to ''Dungeon Keeper'', the player takes the role of a 'dungeon keeper', building and defend ...

, Populous: The Beginning and Theme Park World – which won a BAFTA for Best Sound. In 2000, Mark changed career direction and lead the sound-design team on the

EA Sports F1 series ''F1'' is a racing video game series by Codemasters under the EA Sports banner since 2021. The series holds the official license of the FIA Formula One World Championship, with the FIA Formula 2 Championship available since the 2019 game. A to ...

, stating that "If truth be told however, it was a simple choice of either F1 or Harry Potter". He left EA in 2003, and after spending time at Visual Science he joined

Codemasters The Codemasters Software Company Limited (trade name: Codemasters) is a British video game developer and former publisher based in Southam, England, which is a subsidiary of American corporation Electronic Arts and managed under the EA Sports ...

in 2007 working on their

DiRT Dirt is any matter considered unclean, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty. Common types of dirt include: * Debris: scattered pieces of waste or remains * Du ...

, F1 and

GRID Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

franchises. Knight has performed on the electric violin with the folk-punk band Tricks Upon Travellers (1994–2000), K-Passa (2000–2001, 2008–present),

Blue Horses ''Blue Horses'' (German: ''Die grossen blauen Pferde'') (''The Large Blue Horses'') is a 1911 painting by German painter and printmaker Franz Marc (1880–1916). Background In 1911 Marc was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider ...

(2002–2003), 4-4-2 (2004), Laura Kenny (2006), Silver Dogs (2006–2007), Bleeding Hearts (2009–2011) and has worked as a session musician for bands such as

Pepe Deluxé Pepe Deluxé is a Finnish electronic music-oriented band, formed in 1996 by DJ Slow (Vellu Maurola) JA-Jazz (Tomi Castrén, formerly Paajanen) and James Spectrum (Jari Salo) in Helsinki, Finland. They started to experiment with sounds of hip hop ...

, The

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' (, ) is an Italian narrative poetry, narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of ...

, C64 Audio.com, and

Frost* Frost* are an English neo-prog supergroup, formed in 2004 by Jem Godfrey and members of Arena, Kino, and IQ. Frost* released their first studio album, '' Milliontown'', in 2006, before splitting up. In 2008, Godfrey reformed Frost*, adding ...

. He also administers the Fiddle and Alternative Strings Forum. In 2012 Knight released his first TDK chiptune album, and continues to compose music in this style and in 2015 Knight announced his return to video-game composition with F1 2015. He was nominated for Best Western Game Composer (2015) at the Annual Game Music Awards. Knight resigned from Codemasters in September 2017 and is now running his Audio Production company, SONiC FUEL. He contributed demo music and patches to the Commodore 64 SID-chip emulator, inSIDious, from Impact Soundworks in 2020 and in 2021 he returned to the demoscene by contributing the music for the Melon Design demo, Cortez.

Personal life

Knight lives in

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...

, England.

Discography

Video games

Music releases

*''Cyberspeed Unleashed'' (2011) *''FortressCraft Credits'' (2011) *''Reawakening'' (2012) *''D/Generation HD'' (2015) *''The General'' (2019) *''Project Hubbard: Escape to New Rob'' (2019) *''ME!'' (2019) *''Retrospect'' (2020)

Violin sessions

*''4-4-2 – Come on England'' *''

Bjørn Lynne Bjørn Arild Lynne (born December 31, 1966) is a Norwegian sound engineer and music composer, now living and working in Stavern, Norway. He was also known as a tracker music composer under the name "Dr. Awesome" in the demoscene in the 1980s an ...

– The Gods Awaken'' *''C64Audio – Back in Time 3'' *''Frost* – The Dividing Line'' *''Frost* – Falling Satellites'' *''James J Turner – How Could We Be Wrong?'' *''Ian Livingstone – Big Fat Gypsy Weddings'' *''K-Passa – Born Again'' *''Michał Cielecki -

Shadow Warrior 2 ''Shadow Warrior 2'' is a 2016 first-person shooter game developed by Flying Wild Hog and published by Devolver Digital. The game is the sequel to 2013's ''Shadow Warrior'', the reboot of the 1997 original. It was released for Windows in Octobe ...

'' *''Pepe Deluxe – Beatitude'' *''Press Play on Tape – Home Computer'' *''SilverDogs – SilverDogs'' *''The Divine Comedy – Casanova'' *''The Giallos Flame – House at the Edge of the Dark'' *''This Morning Call – Deserted'' *''Tomorrows Ancestor – Live at Stainsby'' *''Tricks Upon Travellers – The Last Fish Supper'' *''Tricks Upon Travellers – Where the Skeletons Dance'' *''Tricks Upon Travellers – Acoustic Live and Uncut''

References

External links

* *
TDK websiteSONiC FUEL websitemadfiddler websiteGamesounds website

AMP profile website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knight, Mark 1973 births Living people British rock violinists British male violinists Chiptune and tracker musicians Demosceners British sound designers British video game composers Video game musicians Musicians from Brighton 21st-century British violinists 21st-century British male musicians