Uncle Art | Gaming Music Documentary | Full Movie | Dave Lowe in Abbey Road Studio

(birds chirping) (footsteps) [Man] You could be taken to a completely different place. It's a gift if you can do that. If you can write that kind of music. I mean, that's time travel. (seagulls squawking) [David] If I look back now, it's weird, because it was just what I did at the time. Because that's the choices I was making. That's what I was doing, that's the music I was writing. I'm not proud of it as such, 'cause I can't relate to it. Apart from, I remember doing it. Well, the bits I do re

member anyway. It was just a kind of thing you did, at the time, you know? If I get a commission to do the music for an arcade game that already existed, music had already been written by the Japanese company that made the game, you know "Street Fight Two", "Formula One", F15, there was lots of 'em. For some reason I never really knew. They would never send a copy of the music on the cassette, or disc, or anything. I just had to find out how the music went. The only way to do that was to go down

to the arcade and listen to it being played on a machine. I'm not really good at playing those games. And so, you'd watch the kids in there who were really good at 'em and you'd get them to play the game but give them the money, say, "Can you play it again?" I need to hear it again. And they'd play it, 'cause they love it, 'cause you're paying for it. So they'd play it, and play it, and play it. So I could listen to it and listen to it. That's how I could learn it. Be much simpler if they'd sen

d us a tape of it. But, his music back then was really important. (tape rolling) [David] We weren't well off at all. We lived on a council estate and it was pretty rough. And the schools I went to, they were just a nightmare. I mean, it was a matter of survival at school. You just learned to either fight, and keep out the way, or get killed, basically. They were a nightmare, those schooldays. It was a good childhood. Although, it was a rough area. Home life was still good. I mean, it was only wh

en you went out... you had to wear armour. When I was 12 I wasn't really into music at all. What actually happened was, a kid next door, he had a acoustic guitar, and he couldn't play it. But he was standin' outside with it. And another kid from 'round the back, you know, where we lived, on this council estate, he came along and he said, "Oh, I can play that." And he stood outside my house and he played on this guitar. And it just blew my mind. I thought, that's absolutely brilliant. I can remem

ber it really clearly. Standin' there watchin' him play this. 'Cause he was older, he was about 17 or something, 18. And I badly, badly, wanted a guitar. In fact, I wanted that guitar. The kid next door, he took it back in. And I went on and on at my mum and dad to buy me this guitar, you know. And then eventually I talked 'em into it. I remember standin' at his gate and he brought it out and it was like in a film where, bing, the sun pinged off it. And that was it, I was just hooked completely.

And I spent every waking minute with that guitar. Learning it, tuning it, I would ride home from school, you'd get an hour for lunch. And I'd be on me bike, and I'd be home in 15 minutes. And I'd spend half a hour playing the guitar, and then bike back to school. Every evening didn't go out, just played the guitar, played the guitar, practised it, practised it. I was obsessed, absolutely obsessed with it. I managed to convince them that if I got a paper round, they would sign the hire purchase

for a electric guitar, which cost 33 pound. And so, for about two years, I got up every morning at 5:00 and then I got 21 and six a week for doing that. Virtually all that went on doing the HP for the electric guitar. [Male Reporter] The velvet cloak of night shrouds the London airport. All is quiet, all is serene. But this is the lull before the storm. Thousands of "Beatles" fans are bedded down for the night to await the arrival of their heroes. (crowd cheers) And here they are! Fresh from the

ir triumphant appearances in the United States. 12,000 young Britons roar a welcome. [David] I became a "Beatles" fan when this kid at school, called Alan Smith, he lent me their first album. He said you take that home and listen to that and I'll bet you'll be a "Beatles" fan. And I took it home and I turned it right up full and I laid with my ear next to the speaker, which was only about four or five inches. And I remember it going "One, two, three, four!" And McCartney counts that in, don't he

and it starts with "Saw Her Standin' There" And that just blew my brain. It was so brilliant and it was right in my ear, and it was deafening loud in my ear. Yeah, then I was a "Beatles" fan. And by the time I was 15 we were playin' three nights a week in local pubs. Doing "The Who" and "Beatles" tracks and stuff, earning really good money. More than me dad, when he was driving a lorry for five, six days a week. My mum really didn't want me to be a musician. And had massive rows with her. Big b

ad scene. I mean, that really culminated in the fact that by the time I was 17, I really left home. And I knew I was gonna be a musician and wasn't gonna do anything else. [Victoria] I was at dance college, Arts Ed, in London, in the Barbican. There's a few of us living in a hostel and my Mother thought I'd be in safe hands in a hostel run by nuns at the back of Oxford Street. No, don't eat off the plate. I'd had enough of the west end and I wanted to go elsewhere, explore London a bit more. So,

ended up going down the Old Kent Road. My friend Judy, sort of said, "Oh, wow", "there's a band playing." And she was like, "Let's go and listen." And I remember walking in, and it's like a horseshoe bar. It was packed, absolutely packed. Judy caught the eye of somebody and got talking and then they asked her to come back the next night. Came back, and then I got introduced to the bass player. And then we just talked, we just kind of hit it off. He said, "I've just got a really strong feeling",

"I'm gonna know you for an awful long time." "So, I don't know in what capacity, you know," "with you being a dancer and me being a musician." "But, I'm telling you, we're gonna know each other" "an awful long time." And I'll always remember that, 'cause it was just like, almost an epiphany he had. And he said, "I hope to see you again." [David] Me and my brother, Jeff, who's also a musician, we put together the "Scoby Smith" band. We were workin' in a pub, six nights a week. I think it was onl

y about 80 quid a week for that. (drums plays) ♪ Yesterday I was happy to play for a penny ♪ [David] We went on "New Faces" because the manager of a place we were working as a band, he knew the producer. ♪ Said we got plans for you [David] It was great to do. And we must've been quite good, 'cause we kept winning. ♪ You're a star ♪ Lovely suit and a new guitar ♪ And I know that [David] I've never seen the "New Faces" footage. ♪ You're a star Oh God! We dressed like that! We did. (clapping) [Vict

oria] Hey, really cool silver suit. [David] That's a cool suit. Same bass guitar. ♪ Safe is the fool ♪ He never gives his love [David] I wrote it when I was about 18. Was one of my first songs I wrote. ♪ He never feels enough ♪ Or blue ♪ Sad is the song ♪ Who sings of starry, starry nights ♪ ♪ Or tells of future's bright ♪ For two ♪ Whoa-Whoa ♪ Love me no more ♪ She doesn't love me no more ♪ I know she's closed the door ♪ Love me no more ♪ She doesn't love [David] I had the best hair. [Victoria]

The most! ♪ I know, she's closed the door ♪ ♪ Sad is the song ♪ Who sings of starry, starry nights ♪ ♪ Or tells of future's bright ♪ For two ♪ Whoa-Whoa ♪ Love me no more ♪ She doesn't love me no more ♪ I know, she's closed the door ♪ ♪ Love me no more ♪ She doesn't love me no more ♪ I know, she's closed the door ♪ (clapping) (TV Host) Noel Edmonds? [Noel] Yes, I like 'em, 'cause they've got a touch of class. [TV Host] I will leave you there with a touch of class. And to you, David? [David] Ter

rific. I mean, the guy sang the song for that girl. He actually did perform, absolutely wonderful, I was crying. (laughing) [TV Host] Ah, Lionel Blair? [Lionel] Absolutely great, that's a new record? [TV Host] Well, it isn't been made into a record yet, I don't think, no. [Lionel] Well, if it isn't, it should be, 'cause I wanna buy it. [Show host] There you are, you see, I got wrong information, you know more than I do about... [Lionel] I think it's tremendous. [Show host] They liked it, did you

audience? (Cheering) Yes! Yes! [David] That was Andy. [TV Host] The winning act tonight on "New Faces." You'll see them again on the 31st of July, Scoby Smith. (clapping) (upbeat music) [David] I'd like to go back and do the "New Faces" performances again. 'Cause, you know, I had really good hair then. (laughs) And now I can't fit in that silver suit. But, I don't think I could go back to doing six nights a week, gigging. They were long nights. We used to work from 8:00 till 2:00 in the morning

. And you'd get a few breaks in there, but they were long nights. But, you know, that's how you learnt. - [Narrator] Now Timex brings the power of the computer within reach of more people than ever before. Introducing the Timex Sinclair 1000. The first of a new generation of computers, designed to be easier to use, and to own, for $99.95. Power to learn at the speed of light. Power to organise with unfailing accuracy. The Timex Sinclair 1000. The power is within your reach. (beeping) [David] Vic

ky, my wife, used to moan completely about the fact that I'd come home from gigs and I'd be so restless till I go to the gig in the evening. She said, "can't you get a hobby", "you need to relax, get a hobby." So, I bought a load of electronic stuff and I was makin' electronic things. I was doing that when an advert came on the telly for the ZX81 and one of the lines said, "Eggs equals 12." You know, line 10 or something, went eggs equals 12. And that just, I thought, well what does that mean? T

hat's insane. Obviously it was apart of basic programming, you know. Eggs was a variable. It fascinated me enough. It was that line that pulled me into having to buy a ZX81. And so, learned to programme basic. [Presenter] When Peter was small, he played with these. They were a toy. And then he discovered they were helping him to learn to read. So, it is with microcomputers and the revolution in information technology. It's begun with play. "Space Invaders" at the pump. With circuits and chips on

the kitchen table. [David] After a couple of weeks I started looking at learning machine code. [Narrator] The hobby is to the forerunners of the microprocessor revolution, the nutcase micro-geniuses, who have to do their thing. And never mind the dinner getting cold. [David] You don't use basic, you go straight to the chip. [Narrator] People like David Woodfield and his friend Pumpa. [David] Poke the numbers into memory and it would run thousands of times faster. [Presenter] What is it? [David]

And that's how I learned to programme, basically. (beep) My brother-in-law, Paul, I convinced him that with machine code, we could earn some money out of writing some games. I was still gigging every night, but I was really fascinated by computers and the logic of the programming. So we wrote a game called "Buggy Blast", and we sold it to BT software division called Firebird. And that was on the spectrum and it didn't have a sound chip of any description, so that's why there's no music, there's

just sound effects. (beeping) That went out, and it did well, and they gave us a big advance for it. We earned quite a lot of money off that. (beeping) Enough for me to stop gigging if I wanted to. Paul went on to do another game, called "Rasputin." (game music beeping) He then came to me and said, "Would I do all the music for Rasputin?" Think I had two weeks to do it in. He needed about 15 pieces of music for the different levels. I wrote a few pieces quickly. But basically I just dragged out

a catalogue of songs that I'd written over the years and played them instrumentally. (game music) My brother and I, Jeff, we had a band called "Repro". Those songs, a lot of them ended up as instrumentals in "Rasputin" and other titles as well. ♪ Ring a ding time (upbeat music) [Charles Cecil] At the time, because the sample memory was so limited. What composers had to do was write their own technology and their own drivers and inevitably they wrote them in machine code. Which, you had to be a

pretty damn good coder to do that. [Man] Dave coded and wrote his own assembled code for his tunes. You can't use... Say for example you have a piece of Dave Lowe's music in its original Amiga format, you couldn't go and play it on an Amiga straight, unless you had the right code. Because he programmed all of that himself. [David] Unless you could write in machine code it wasn't possible. So you had to be a machine code programmer and a musician to be able to do the job in those days. There wasn

't proprietary software that would allow you to stick a load of samples in and it would play them. You had to be a machine code programmer and write your own software in machine code. And it would, basically, play the music. All the computers in those days were very memory limited compared to modern machines. The game and the graphics always had the priority on how much RAM was available. And so, you'd always end up with the smallest amount of memory that the programmer could spare to give you t

o fit the music in. You'd argue backwards and forwards with him a bit. You know, can't you give me six K? And he'd go, "no, you can have five." And you'd go, "okay." And you'd end up having to fit it in. To put that in perspective, the Twitter app on my phone uses roughly 100 Meg. So, that's about 20,000 times more space than I had available. That was the challenge really, to get it to work on the limited resource that the machine had. It was all groundbreaking stuff, really. That you just fough

t with again, and again, and again, till you got it to work. Once you got it working, you'd jump about. [Jez San] It was fantastic to be in a place in computer games where there was a lot of innovation happening both on the hardware and on the software. [Charles] We were there at the beginning and we helped form the medium. And because of the subtlety of the music, because of the subtlety of the graphics, because of the game design had to be absolutely focused. We collectively drove video games

in a certain direction. [Jez] No one had got samples coming out of an Atari before because the sound chip wasn't designed to do samples, it was designed to play beeps. And you could make the beeps different noises. But I opened up my Atari, and I, with a volt metre, I was on the audio pins of the sound chip. And I was playing different values from the software and seeing what voltage came out. And then writing a map of every possible tone I could make and every possible corresponding voltage. An

d then, when you drew that on a graph, you could actually, effectively do a digital to analogue conversion, a DAC, as they're now called. And so, through software, by manipulating the volume control on the three sound channels, you could make it play an analogue wave form. [Dave] The Atari ST doesn't have a sample chip like the Amiga does. But it has a speaker that responds to 16 values of volume. At nought, the speaker does nothing, and at 15, it moves forward as far as it can. So, you sample s

omebody singing and then you convert that down to a 4-bit sample and that gives you 16 values. And when you push those values to the volume control of the speaker, at the right speed, the speaker cone moves backwards and forwards, corresponding to the original wave form that you produced when you spoke on the mic. And so it produces the sample. [Jez] I had just got this to work. As far as I know, I'm the first person to do it. And then I needed some, for the first time ever, we needed some real

music with real vocals. Which no one had ever done in a computer game before because computer game music was always bleeps, and pings, and things. And so, we had the first sample sound, and the first real song, or mini song, that any computer game had ever had. ♪ StarGlider [David] We could only get 15 seconds worth of music into the actual machine. Because of the memory limitations. (game music plays) [Jez] I think I gave him full artistic licence, and, just knew we had samples for the first ti

me ever. It had to be something you couldn't play without samples. So it had to be vocals, it had to be a richer sound than you would normally do in computer music. But it also had to be short and sweet, it had to be very jingly. So, he came up with the goods. [Charles] I first worked with Dave back in 1988 on a game, which I believe was, "After Burner", which was a Sega Arcade that we converted. (upbeat game music) [David] So, on "After Burner", what I did was use that technique and then write

a piece of music that was 15 seconds long. It was written musically so I could grab sections out, going right down to hemi, demi, semi quavers, or whatever. And the computer knew all the values of them, so I'd write a string of data that it would grab sections from that piece of music and throw them at the chip. I think I did about six and a half minutes before it repeated. (upbeat game music) [David] We'd have a little guitar riff, and I could grab some vocals out, and I could put 'em all in di

fferent orders. That had never been done before. (game music) It was done in real time, so as it ran, the computer was grabbing the bits out of the one 15 second piece. Today it's much more sophisticated, but the concept is the same in dance music and pop music. I wasn't very keen on the original piece of music that came from the arcade machine. So I just took the standard rising and falling chord sequence, I just did my own thing with it. (upbeat game music) [Charles] Had they known that Dave l

istened to the music, didn't like it, and wrote something else, they would have gone absolutely crazy. But they never found out. Nor were they ever going to find out. So, now of course, you'd have the Japanese representatives in the UK, checking it. It was a different time. It was a very different time. [David] Activision liked the music I did so much that they gave me an award for it. (upbeat game music) [Man] Dave's music, as well as a couple of others, like, Raphaeël Gesqua, and Olof Gustafss

on. Are amongst the more unique styles in the game. You instantly recognise it's one of those types of games that they've worked on. (upbeat game music) I think primarily because they didn't just use the standard sound fonts that you could get for the Amiga or the ST. They actually digitised and used their own work, and gave it their own rubber stamp on it, if that makes sense. (upbeat game music) [Charles] What was interesting was that different composers, there were about three or four really

well known composers, of which, Dave was one of the top. They wrote their own technology and their own drivers and used that then to create the music. (car driving and upbeat game music) [Charles] And what was interesting was that then you could listen to a piece of music and you would know who that composer was because of the way that it sounded, because of the way that the technology was driving the creative aspect of writing music. (upbeat game music) So, those three or four people became rea

lly famous in their own right. Which is one of the reasons why Dave's work is now revered in a way that, I think, surprises him. (peaceful tones) [Man] The music that Dave wrote, that I know is the music from "Elite." It was the very first Atari, you had a block that you pushed in to the top of it to make it work. Then I got a Commodore 64, which I played "Elite" on. I probably should of been out and about doing other stuff, but I wasn't, I was absolutely besotted with this game. The second I pl

ayed that particular game, that was me done, that was just the escapism of it. I had a whole new universe to play with. I could fly spaceships. I don't want to think about how many hours I devoted to playing that. [David] When I was doing "Frontier: Elite", all the music in the game was classical music. "Ride of the Valkyries", "Blue Danube". I knew I had to write pieces that would kind of sit with that. So that was a massive challenge, really, 'cause they're fantastic pieces of music. That's wh

at I liked, it was the challenge of it, was what pulled me along all the time. [Man] If you take the music and you don't know the game, it still works as a stand alone piece. But, if you take the music, and you know the game, you can hear the game in the music. (game music) You'll hear the drama, and then you'll hear it calm down, and you'll hear the different themes that Dave's been able to evoke within it. (game music) But if it didn't exist within the game, I'm sure that I'd have still loved

the game. But the game wouldn't have been as full, or as colourful. It wouldn't have had the same depth to it, I think. (upbeat game music) (birds chirping) [David] The main thing that it did for us as a family, was it enabled me to move out of London because I had to live in London to be a professional musician, working six, seven nights a week. I was suffering exhaustion from playing, so we moved up to Yorkshire. She totally supported me. She helped me dig out the studio. She helped me set the

equipment up. She even wrote one of the pieces once when I was really stressed over and we had about half a dozen games on the go and their deadlines were in on the end of the week and it was like 3:00 in the morning and I still hadn't finished, and I said to her, "Can you write a piece?" And she went to the piano with her limited piano playing skills and knocked out this tune with one finger, and we used it. (imitates piano) [Victoria] Oh, god that's so embarrassing. (laughs) [David] And of co

urse she was the Green Head in the "Cybermorph" game. [Green Head] Well done. Portal now open. [Woman] "Cybermorph", yeah I remember that one. That one was an interesting game. [Victoria] I'm just trying to remember what it was I said. Oh, it's the, "Where did you learn to fly?" [Green Head] Where did you learn to fly? [Man] That voice, just never stops. Shut up. [Woman] Oh my god, every single time you smashed into a wall she says it. And then, because when you re-spawn, you're literally in fro

nt of whatever just killed you, so it's just like constant, "Where did you learn to fly?" [Man] Stop! [Green Head] Where did you learn to fly? [Man] Oh shit, oh shit. [Green Head] Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? (laser blasts) [Man] Where'd you learn to be an asshole. [Victoria] I absolutely hate my voice. [Man] Jaguar, I've had all I can take! [Victoria] So yeah, I'm with them. It's fine (laughs). [David] She did do the voice for that and she

did the voice on "Just Another Mission" on "Carrier Command." (upbeat music) I set up a studio here. And I had all the machines in it. The ST, Amiga, Spectrums, Commodore 64. Wherever there was, we had one or several of them. And I would get the commissions off of Rainbird and Firebird. (upbeat music) Y' know, I'd enjoy writing the music. I'd use a piano or guitar or something, to write a piece of music. 'Cause I was still writing what I considered good music. The compromise was putting it on th

e machines. That there was such technical limitations on the machines. But, it was still a challenge to make it as good as you could. Started getting calls from Activision. Electronic Arts; did loads of work for them. I ended up doing over 70 games in the end. Over about a 10 year period. (upbeat music) [Voice] I am Rasputin (laughs) be there. (wind whooshing) [David] I stopped doing it because towards the end of the 90s, everything went in house. They wanted the musicians, the graphic artists,

the programmers, developers, all to work in house. It went the way of everything else. The companies who were paying for it, they wanted to make sure they could see what everybody was doing from nine to five everyday. So, they wanted you to work in house, so they could check that you'd done this, you had a schedule to do this and this. That didn't really suit me. I mean, I'd always been a musician who worked in studio. As I did, I couldn't work in there, nine to five. You can't sit in a studio a

nd write music to order, I can't anyway. It wasn't for me. Eventually the technology moved on to the point where you didn't need to be a programmer. Anybody could knock together a load of samples, stick them on a CD, and the game would run them. Which you couldn't do in the days I was doing it. You didn't have to be a composer, you just stuck samples together. Really, the challenge went out of it, it became boring. I've gotta have a challenge in it. Otherwise, it's just a job and you might as we

ll go to a factory and pull handles. Now it's really good, for a musician, it's got really interesting again. [Charles] There are two types of people in the video games industry. Those that left for whatever reason, and those that stayed. [Holly Lowe] I don't feel like he gave up making music, but, he stopped doing the computer game music. [Charles] Had he gone into one of the publishers, he would have worked nine to five, he would of basically lost all of his inspiration. And, I'd hate to say i

t, but I think he's a lot better, having done what he did. [Holly] But nowadays, it's a shame, because nowadays the technology is completely unlimited. So, he could of been having, like, these pieces that he's written in the ways that he'd imagined and it wouldn't of been compromised by chiptune. So in that respect, yeah, I think it's kind of a shame. (piano plays) (train roars) [Man] I drive trains for a living. I hope to get through the rest of my career without having further tragedies. Four

incidents in 16 years. It's not good. One of the things that you're actually recommended to do is to pick things that can take you somewhere and they can be pictures, they can be music, they can be a whole host of things. (upbeat game music) Any piece of music which gives you that hook to an instant escape, is a go-to place. Dave's piece for "Elite" is my go-to place. (upbeat game music) [David] You kind of imagine it like a film, like you're writing for a film. Because obviously they'd use real

music, they didn't have the problem of putting it into a computer chip. They could use a recording studio and actual musicians to make that music as exciting, or sad, or whatever they wanted. And when I wrote the pieces, that's how I imagined them sounding, and being done. (upbeat game music) [Man] In my mind, it creates so many images. I think there's a simplicity and a purity to these older games. (intense game music) The sound was very limited by the technology, but your brain managed to fil

l in the colour and then make it so much more. (upbeat game music) [David] I suppose it's a bit like John Williams, or like you might get on "Star Trek", "Star Wars." That's how I imagined it, that type of thing. (upbeat game music) [Man] The power of music to move you is huge. To be taken straight back to, in effect, the room I was playing the game in 25 years ago, is an incredibly powerful thing. It gives you a hook that enables you to then use that journey to take that journey, without having

to look for exterior connections. And you can put the rubbish away. And just go back and enjoy that moment. [Charles] I get letters from people and they often start, "you know, I'm sure no one will read this, but..." And they talk about how important, when they were young, these games were to them, and the relationship. One young man talked about the way that it defined the relationship with his grandmother. Who passed away much earlier, but to him it was really important. He remembered playing

this game with her, running back from school. Another, I mean, terribly sad story, about a man who, his brother, they loved each other, and they were at school together, and they used to quote, quotes from "Broken Sword." And then, tragically, the brother died. So, again, the relationship that this man had with his brother was defined by the video game. And looking back, I am very proud of the fact that Dave and I were in many ways pioneers. We were pioneering this extraordinary medium that cam

e from computers with very little memory and very little processing power. And we were pushing them as far as we could. And one of the things that I'm sure that Dave would be very proud of, if not, he certainly should be, and I'm very proud of, is how many people come back and say how it's profoundly effected their lives. (guitar plays) (light humming) [Victoria] If ever I wished for anything, if ever, you know when people say, "Oh, what would you wish for?" I think, in my heart, is for him to h

ave success, to have that recognition. He's been nearly there, and somehow It's just within reach of making it, but somehow something happens or he just is, just, I don't know what it is. (seagulls squawking) [David] I'd come out of it doing the music and I never thought about it really. Just to me it had come and gone, something that I've moved off from. 'Til Holly, my younger daughter, she said "Dad, you're all out of the internet with your music." (upbeat music) [Holly] So I just remember my

brother, Adam, he just sent me a text out of the blue saying, "Did you know dad's famous on the internet?" I was like, "Uh, no." He'd gone on and he'd just found forums of people talking about dad and his music for the computer games and stuff. He left them messages saying, "Oh, I'm Adam Lowe", "I'm Dave's son, and I grew up" "with all this music literally in my bedroom and stuff." They were like, "Oh my god, this is amazing!" It was mental, and so we were like, "Jesus! You're famous on the inte

rnet." [Dave] And I thought, this is crazy. And I started looking into it, and I was completely unaware of that retro scene, and how big it was, and how important it was to those people who had played those games in those days. I couldn't believe that that music was still regarded highly by those people. (upbeat music) I was basically just a working musician, I didn't expect my name to be on the internet. Suddenly there was this whole world of people playing this stuff, and talking about these g

ames and the music. (upbeat music) If it hadn't been for Adam finding that and telling Holly, and Holly getting on to me, nothing would have happened. I'd still be completely in the dark. (upbeat music) [Holly] I knew he was proud of those tracks, but I know it always bugged him, because he told me the way the computer chips make them sound, it's just not what he intended, you know? He wrote big pieces, and it was kind of like this light bulb thing of, well, why don't we remake them? Why don't w

e remake them as the big pieces that they are. [Interviewer] So we have Dave Lowe, who is in England, I believe, and his daughter, Holly Jazz Lowe, who is in the Mediterranean on an island. Let's welcome them to the podcast. [Holly] Thank you. Thanks for having us. It's not like when I hear those tunes, I'm like, "Oh, it reminds me of my childhood." It's just kind of like I've just, I've grown up with it and listened to it all my life, really, so... And then I've been working hard on them in the

last year. [Interviewer] Dave Lowe is one of the most prolific game musicians in the history of the world. And currently you're working on making an album of this. Remastered with actual musicians and stuff like that. [David] That's right, yeah. [Holly] I think Dad would probably say himself, that he wouldn't particularly want to take this task on, on his own. It's quite a lot of work to it. And, it's just more fun collaborating as well. It can get really boring working on your own. It would be

really nice to have this album and sort of showcase, and well hey, if these were the games they were today, this is what they'd sound like. [Interviewer] When you composed for these machines, I imagine it can be kind of frustrating trying to translate the way that you hear music and the way that you want to do it, into what a computer can do. [David] It's quite limiting, yeah. When you've written a classical piece or something. Quite hard to put it over on a three or four channel chip, even if

it is samples, you're still limited by memory. [Holly] I don't feel like a baton has been passed. Maybe we're in like a three legged race together or something, though (laughs). [Interviewer] I would like to thank Dave and Holly Lowe for taking the time to sit down and talk with us. Again, check out their Kickstarter for a campaign, for "Uncle Art: A Temporal Shift." And become a backer if you haven't done that already. [David] I mean, I find it brilliant the fact that, you know, people have put

money up to get us to remake a lot of those tracks. Since I was like 16, working professionally and signed with record companies and stuff, he was always producing the albums I was making, and then we started co-producing together. So, we've worked together all the time. (Holly's music) [David] I don't see her as my daughter really, no. I just see her as a really good musician. She's a really good composer as well. It is a real professional working relationship. Even though she is my daughter.

(Holly's music) [Holly] It's kind of weird, like, in a way, I forget that he's my dad, it's just like, he's just part of me. Again, it's sort of like, I've grown up with him, and I've worked with him my whole life. And now we're working on this together. And it's just so cool, because he was the composer of it, and I know those tunes as little beepy, chiptunes. Even though I knew what they were supposed to sound like. And now it does sound like what it's supposed to sound like. Is there any chan

ce we can do one with the glockenspiel and one without the glockenspiel? [David] She has the same thing about it that I do, that it doesn't matter how you get to where you get, we just want it right. When I'm working with her, I can say to Holly, "That's just rubbish." And she can say that to me, "Dad, that's crap, you can't do that," "and, you know, that sounds awful." And we go, "Yeah, okay." There's no ego there. [Holly] ...through so much, I don't think you can hear it. [Dave] And what do yo

u want? [Holly] 'Cause it's such a high... [Charles] Dave was kind of legendary in the office. It was, if a project was really important, then Dave was the one that we went to. Now, of course I'm sure that he didn't realise, sitting in Scarborough, that actually, there was this sort of level of respect, particularly since he never actually met any of us. But Dave was very much the, you know, he was the most important person. If we could get him, we did. (upbeat music) Now, I founded "Revolution"

in 1990. And our second game was a game called, "Beneath the Steel Sky." Which we wrote with a comic book artist, called Dave Gibbons. And that was really trying to pull together the best of the best. And I went back and remembered that I'd worked with Dave and asked him to write the music for the intro. He did a great job. Dave Gibbons created a comic. And "Beneath the Steel Sky" has really gone on to be quite a cult classic. (upbeat game music) [David] I'd never actually met Charles in person

. Although, I've spoken to him on the phone, loads. (upbeat game music) I really hope he likes the new version of "Beneath the Steel Sky", we've done. (drums playing) (Beneath the Steel Sky theme plays) [Charles] We wrote the story with Dave Gibbons. And we had written the middle and we were kind of working out what happened at the beginning and the end. And I don't know how well you know the story, But, basically, it turns out that at the end you encounter a man that's connected himself to a co

mputer and they've basically corrupted each other. But somebody said, "It's his dad." Oh my god, it is, it's his dad. And that moment, it's his dad. And your brain goes back and you go, "Well if it's his dad, then his dad sent" "the helicopter, but he stopped the helicopter." And it's one of those incredibly serendipitous moments where everything falls into place. Based on that, Dave Gibbons went and drew the comic book. And that worked really well. (game music) I think fans of "Beneath the Stee

l Sky" are gonna be so excited when they hear this music. (game music) (woman singing) (saxophone plays) (music stops) [David] With "Frontier: Elite Two" it's the piece of music that's always stuck in my mind. I've always wondered what it would sound like with a real orchestra. You can use samples, but there's no comparison, between even the best samples and the real orchestra. (car driving) [Holly]} We chose to record here at "Abbey Road", because there's like three studios where they sort of d

o orchestral recordings that sound really good, and "Abbey Road" is one of the best recording studios in the world. [David] I wanted to go "Abbey Road" because it's "Abbey Road." You know, I've been to all the other studios, we've used them. Technically they're the same as "Abbey Road." They have all the same equipment and all the rest of it. But that's "Abbey Road." That's where the "Beatles" made all their stuff and that's where everybody else went, 'cause it's "Abbey Road." [Holly] I'm defini

tely excited to be here myself, as a musician and a fan of music through history, you know, of course I'm excited to be here. It's kind of weird, actually, isn't it? (laughs) [David] So we're going to "Abbey Road" too, which is where the "Beatles" made virtually everything they ever did. [Tom Player] Hello, how are you? [David] Tom, how are you doin? [Tom] Good to see you, man. [David] Yeah, and you. [Tom] Excellent. [David] Tom and Owain are the arrangers of the Orchestral score. [Victoria] Hi,

Tom. [David] They've done some amazing stuff, and I'm really looking forward to working with them. [Tom] All right, have a seat. [Holly] Look at the scores out. [Victoria] Yeah, that looks amazing. [Tom] Yeah, check it out. [Holly] If we spilled something on them, would we have to reprint everything? [Tom] It's just a quick trip back to Wales, isn't it? (laughing) [Owain Llwyd] Lots of cellotape would be required. [Tom] The "Frontier" main theme, if you listen to it, there's a trumpet-esque sou

nd, which carries the melody for the majority. And it goes up so high, you know, it's not playable by an instrument in the real world. Obviously in the synth world, you can do whatever you want. Which is kind of the fun. [David] There's some things that the computers did, you can't emulate with musicians. You know, the way it would handle, very, very fast stuff, that a musician couldn't actually play. You could do it on a computer because you're writing in hemi, demi, demi, semiquavers, you know

? And it could pitch-bend stuff around that musicians, you can't do with a real instrument. [Tom] Turning it into a real thing, is it turns it into a bit more of a challenge. So, you got to say, okay, the trumpet is gonna go up to here and then what instruments can we use to bring it up to this next level, to carry on the idea as it was originally intended, without distracting too much in terms of the colour change and things like that. So, so there were some of the challenges we had in it. I th

ink the reason this piece translates so well into a live orchestral piece is because it's probably, you can tell in the way it's been written originally, it's been composed in a way that works for an orchestra normally. And it feels like a march, it's like a sort of an "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Last Ark" type thing. There's a lot of energy behind it. And that still comes through on the Atari version. Because it works well on four tracks on a four bit Atari system, that's really dated and st

uff nowadays, and still works. When you put it in an orchestra, you know it's gonna come to life. And these musicians are gonna breathe life into it. You know, it's a really exciting process. [Owain] That's the spine tingling thing as well, when that happens, you know that you've done your work to the highest possible standard. And here, in the world's best studio with world's best musicians. (orchestra warming up) [David] The musicians are world class. It's a world class studio. It's got to go

right. (orchestra practising ) [Man] What it's like for you at the moment? (indistinct conversations) (flute plays) [Man] Couple of quick words before we start. Today we're recording an interesting project, with composer Dave Lowe. Who's gonna give us a quick wave. There it is, there we go. And I think Holly's gonna say something about the project, which is because it's been quite a journey to get here. We will have a name count, but first, Holly. [Holly] Okay. [Man] Would you like to say someth

ing about the project? Thanks. [Holly] If anyone had an Amiga or an Atari and used to play the "Elite" games, this is the... Yes? Okay! This is the theme from "Frontier: Elite Two", so, you might recognise it. (laughs) We're really excited. This has been a really long process to get here and to get all the funding and everything. And so, this is brand new for us to work with an orchestra. So, we're really excited to have you guys. And to be in "Abbey Road" and for it all to be filmed and stuff,

so, yeah, we'll just enjoy it. (clapping) Thank you. [David] Everything in the first hours build up to that first play, you know. That's the best bit. (birds chirping) [Man] That piece of music that was in that game has stuck. And I really want to hear what it should have been. (birds chirping) (orchestra music plays faintly) Ah, that's dragged me straight back to the room in which I was playing it. It's a gift if you can do that. If you can write that kind of music. I mean, that's time travel.

("Frontier: Elite Two" orchestra music) [Interviewer] What's it like to have written a tune in your head and then go into "Abbey Road" studios with a 50 piece orchestra, 30 odd years later and have them play it how you originally heard it? Can you describe how that feels? [David] Yes... er... It's just... Erm... I don't know what the feeling is really, it's just... I, no, I can't. (laughs) Actually, I can't. Apart from, you know, yeah, it's brilliant. What else can I say? It's just brilliant. (w

aves coming in) Interestingly enough, it was my Grandma, when my Mum was really, really going on at me about it. And she'd really hassled me everyday, you know, "Have you got a job? Have you been lookin' in the paper and get a job." And I said, "Mum, I'm gonna be a musician", "you know, that's what I'm doing, I'm doing it already," "I'm not doing anything else." One day, my Grandma, my Nan, pulled me aside and she said, "Look, you do what you wanna" do with your life." "Don't do what your Mum or

your Dad want to do, you do what you want to do." And kind of having that support was quite important. Funnily enough, I remember we were coming back from a holiday in my Granddad's car. We're all, you know, little kids crammed in the back seat, and to keep us quiet, 'cause we were all bored out of our brains, they're going round and they're going to us, "Oh, what do you want" "to do when you grow up?" When they got to me, just totally out of my mouth, came the words, "I want to be a singer." A

nd I had no intention of ever being a singer or anything to do with it at all at that age. And yet, I remember saying that. I really, really weirdly. And then thinking, "Why did I say that?" Maybe all fate is set. Don't know. Every event is the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one. So you can't do anything else than what you do. And every choice and decision you think you make, you have to make, you can't make it any other way because of what went on before. (upbeat game music) ♪ Stargli

der ♪ Starglider