Brian Salter

Background and History

What follows is an informal narrative resumé to which I have added some of the more important details about various technologies, media, and businesses that my work has brought me in contact with. My professional experience can be generalized in three areas:

• Original music composition — games, soundtracks, music libraries, etc.
• Interactive audio — music and sound design for online and mobile apps like multichannel music remixers. My history with Headspace / Beatnik Inc. is notable here.
• Ringtones & mobile audio — I have many years of experience working creatively with Beatnik technology, which has become a widely recognized industry standard for mobile audio used by manufacturers like Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, and Siemens, in addition to a growing number of mobile chipset manufacturers.

This is followed by a link to my standard resumé/CV at the bottom of the page.

1992: AB (Batchelors) degree in Music from University of California, Davis. A rigorous classical education from a small but world-class department (which has now become the heart of northern California's most vital new performing arts scene, thanks to the new Mondavi Center, the brainchild in part of one of my college mentors, D. Kern Holoman). My studies included composition, orhcestral conducting, electronic studio, and mixed-media theatrical production, as well as a great deal of performance in various groups (my native instrument, incidentally, is clarinet).

1994-5: Composer and sound effects editor for Presage, Inc., SF Bay Area software developer which focused on games. A notable title for which I contributed music and sound effects was the multi-award-winning hit "Lode Runner: The Legend Returns" (1994) and its sequel "Lode Runner Online" (1995). One of Presage's specialties was porting PC games to Mac. Because Macs didn't have built-in midi sound cards like PCs did at that time, these Mac ports utilized a sample-based software synthesizer called SoundMusicSys. This software had been developed a few years earlier by two legends of the early gaming industry, Steve Hales and Jim Nitchals, who shared a special passion for bringing a richer musical experience to software. It would soon be adopted by Apple as the basis for QuickTime Music Architecture (QTMA), and a later version would become the Beatnik Audio Engine, now widely used in mobile phones and other mobile digital devices.

After leaving Presage, I continued working in games development and related areas as a freelancer. In 1996, I was contracted by Hales and Nitchals, along with another Presage alumnus, Michael Pukish, to create music and sound content for a SoundMusicSys-based interface in the new 'WebTV', one of the first set-top TV web browsers, released by Sony and Phillips in 1996 (after being bought by Microsoft in 1997, it became MSN TV). This project involved creating music and sound effect themes, as well as consulting on the specs for a major re-design of the SoundMusicSys synthesizer engine.

Thomas Dolby, who had just founded his new company Headspace, also composed music for WebTV, and was so impressed with SoundMusicSys that he bought the technology and set about adapting it for the web, resulting in the groundbreaking 'Beatnik' plugin and authoring technology. For the first time, high-quality, fully interactive and freely mixable music and sound could be integrated and synchronized with web pages and online multimedia content. This web 'sonification' utilized the new 'structured audio' file format, RMF or "Rich Music Format", deveoped by Headspace (later, Headspace would be re-named 'Beatnik'. Thomas Dolby later left Beatnik to form the highly successful company, Retro Ringtones).

At around the same time, I had met Thomas and his first-class crew, and would soon very happily be hired on a Headspace employee, working in their production department as in-house compser and producer. To be able to work for a legendary producer and electronic music pioneer like Thomas was an endlessly rewarding and educational experience. My primary task was to create a wide variety of original compositions for the Headspace Music Library, designed as a comprehensive pallette of musical styles and elements which could be licensed by web developers. This music library was later converted into CD format and relased by music library giant FirstCom Music in 1999. I composed music for four full CDs and contributed to a number of others released by Firstcom. Another interesting Beatnik project which caught the interest of major music labels and broadcasters was eMixes. This was a web-based interface derived from 'Mixman' software, which allowed fans to create their own custom interactive "remixes" of hit songs from various artists. The sounds were taken directly from the original multitrack recordings which had been cleverly edited and compressed into small, easily downloadable .rmf files, thanks to Beatnik's structured audio system. I created a number of eMixes for Beatnik clients such as MTV.

I left Beatnik as an employee in 1998, but would continue a close working relationship. Over time, as it became clear that interactive structured audio for the web was not going to evolve beyond a niche market for Beatnik's technology, Beatnik re-tooled the Beatnik Audio Engine for embedded use in mobile phones, PDAs, etc. First, the BAE was modified into a more compact miniBAE, then it was redesigned from the ground-up, resulting in mobileBAE which was launched in 2002. The RMF format was replaced by the new open-standard XMF ('eXtensible Music Format). To date, more than a quater of a billion phones and digital devices worldwide have been shipped with BAE embedded. Makers include Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, and Samsung.

Nokia Fashion line (7260, 7270, 7280)

In recent years my work with Beatnik technology has involved creating embedded ring tones and interface sounds for phones which use BAE. One example is the high-concept "Fashion" line from Nokia. I have also created and edited soundbanks (the multi-sample instrument sounds used by the BAE to synthesize polyphonic ringtones) to fit the memory limitations and speaker characterstics of specific handset models, for optimal sound quality. Creating and fine-tuning soundbanks to achieve high-quality output with a very small memory footprint is a specialized skill I started to hone more than a decade ago when I started working with SoundMusicSys at Presage, and continue put to use as the BAE becomes installed an ever-widening range of devices.

at Sony Music Online, 2000

In 2000 I traveled to Japan and lived in Tokyo for a year and a half. During that time, I was able to do some interesting work for Beatnik's Japanese clients. These projects included in-house training in Beatnik technology and web sonification at Nippon Columbia and Sony Music Online, eMixes for Space Shower Network (a Japanese 'MTV'), composition and sound design for online promotions by Olympus, and others. I also produced a conversion of the Headspace Music Library into SMAF ringtone format for the Japanese market. Based on hearing these ringtones, the producers at SonyEricsson contacted me in 2001 and hired me to create a set of polyphonic ringtones for inclusion in their first broadband mobile phone model for Japan. Living in Japan provided an exciting opportunity to become familiar with Japanese mobile technology and ringtone industry, which were already far ahead of the US in a number of ways. During this period I also continued doing various scoring projects for video and online media. My latest projects in the mobile realm have been a series of games for the Danger Hiptop smart phone, also known as the T-Mobile 'Sidekick', working with the in-house games team at Danger, Inc. The Hiptop / Sidekick uses the BAE.

Meanwhile, my personal musical activites were also moving along — I joined up with the Italian underground techno-pop act Bochum Welt (aka Gianluigi di Costanzo, who is incidentally also an active ringtone producer and experienced with Beatnik). The first product of our collaboration is an 8-song EP, Elan, just released by Darla / Fuzzybox.

In 1999 & 2000 I was sideman for Thomas Dolby in two private concerts which were recorded and self-released as Forty, his first release in eight years.

[this page last updated 1 November 2005]