Q&A w/Andrew Barnabas - One of three Composers for Frogger3D
Nov 8, 2017 19:39:36 GMT -8
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Post by Mr. Frog on Nov 8, 2017 19:39:36 GMT -8
In October 2010, I discovered www.bobandbarn.com - a website owned by Paul Arnold and Andrew Barnabas. Paul and Andrew were video game music composers for Frogger: He's Back! along with Peter Murphy. I sent them an email and expressed my interest in the music they composed for the game and how much of a positive, nostalgic impact it had on my childhood before ending the message with a few questions. I received a swift reply from Andrew Barnabas on October 22, 2010. Below is the email with some minor edits to protect identity, but the questions and answers remain unchanged.
Response from Andrew Barnabas on October 22, 2010:
Question 1: When you were commissioned to compose music for "Frogger: He's Back!", what were some challenges that all three of you ran into during the production run?
Question 2: What was the average time from start-to-finish the completion of just one track for the game ?
Question 3: What zone or zones did you enjoy working on the most? And if any, which ones were the least enjoyable to create?
Question 4: I'm taking a Piano class for my Junior year in my high school now and I'm interested in playing
some of the tracks from the game. Do you happen to have any sheet music?
Question 5: Were there any tracks that any of you had or HAD TO scrap during Frogger's production?
Question 6: Do you both have any plans on making remixes for any of the game's music?
Question 7: Seeing that you two are still working alongside one another, what ever happened to Peter Murphy? Any contact with him or the rest of the people that worked on the game?
Last one, Question 8: Hasbro Interactive came out with "Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge" on October 10, 2000 and Andrew Morris was the chosen composer for the game. If you three composed the music for the levels in that game, how different would you compose the tracks from Andrew's work to yours?
Response from Andrew Barnabas on October 22, 2010:
Hi [redacted],
It was wonderful to read your story about Frogger, thank you for sharing. It's lovely to hear things like this, it makes doing it for a living that little bit more enjoyable.
Alas we're rather busy chaps so can't really spend a lot of time answering questions. So my deal is this, I'll answer your queries this time, but probably won't have time to answer any others, and I'm sorry I can't write much, I've got another deadline to hit for the end of today... We're in the midst of scoring the final sequences to the game 'Brink' so things at Bob & Barn towers are a little busy!
It was wonderful to read your story about Frogger, thank you for sharing. It's lovely to hear things like this, it makes doing it for a living that little bit more enjoyable.
Alas we're rather busy chaps so can't really spend a lot of time answering questions. So my deal is this, I'll answer your queries this time, but probably won't have time to answer any others, and I'm sorry I can't write much, I've got another deadline to hit for the end of today... We're in the midst of scoring the final sequences to the game 'Brink' so things at Bob & Barn towers are a little busy!
Question 1: When you were commissioned to compose music for "Frogger: He's Back!", what were some challenges that all three of you ran into during the production run?
Updating the musical style to something more befitting digital audio as opposed to chip music from the 1981 Sega arcade game but retaining the same feel of the original. We came up with the formula for what we called 'cute funk'. Boppy silly little ditties that would fit in well with the rest of the graphical style. It needed to bounce a lot! I'm a big fan of funk in general so it was something I was leaning towards from the outset, fortunately, everyone else seemed to like it.
Question 2: What was the average time from start-to-finish the completion of just one track for the game ?
Probably no more than 2 days.
Question 3: What zone or zones did you enjoy working on the most? And if any, which ones were the least enjoyable to create?
Our faves were Sewer & Cloud. Our least favourite were the industrial tracks.
some of the tracks from the game. Do you happen to have any sheet music?
Alas not, they were written on Logic Audio so no sheet music ever existed.
I don't think so. The first track written to set the style was the level choose screen, originally it was s'posed to be an in-game track, but since we'd not seen anything other than stills of the game at that point, once we saw the game moving, the track was clearly too fast. The rest seemed to fall into place quite nicely.
Alas no.
Strangely enough I saw him last night. Pete was our boss, the AV manager and didn't really compose any of the tracks per se. He popped in every now and then, sat with us for a while, made the odd suggestion here and there and played bass on a couple of tracks but he was off doing other things for most of the time.
Most of the team have gone onto other things, but I did see Kevin Mullard the producer in July, he's now a producer for Codemasters.
Most of the team have gone onto other things, but I did see Kevin Mullard the producer in July, he's now a producer for Codemasters.
Sorry, we didn't see the sequel so have no idea.
