Robert Holmes
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| Robert Holmes |
About
Robert Holmes is a composer, living in the US. Though he was at least partly responsible for the music heard in several other computer games, he is best known for having composed the music for the Gabriel Knight series of adventure games[1]. Some of his most memorable work can be found in the second part of the series, for the purposes of which he composed substantial portions of an opera, which played a pivotal part in the game's plot. Post Sierra games have included Gray Matter, Moebius: Empire Rising, and The 20th Anniversary Edition Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Holmes is the co-founder of Pinkerton Road Studio, a game development studio created with his wife Jane Jensen, and run from their farm in Lancaster County, PA. Holmes has a daughter from a previous relationship, with whom he performs in the band The Scarlet Furies, who has performed songs and voiceover for several games. He is married to Jane Jensen, the creator and designer of the acclaimed Gabriel Knight trilogy.
Robert Holmes[2] wrote:there's a huge amount of influences that shaped my musical bent. In an effort to be somewhat concise, I'd put them in four categories, each gifts I feel so fortunate to have been exposed to. 1) I grew up in a very liberal community church that was filled with wonderful traditional and more modern spiritual music. The hope and love in that music has never left me. 2) I had two older siblings both almost 10 years older than me. They would hand down all the wonderful single records and albums of the great pop and rock music of the 50's and 60's to me. I still have and treasure many of these records of American and British gems. 3) When I was very young my Mother was stricken with what at the time was considered terminal cancer. Thankfully she proved all the doctors wrong and went on to live for many years. My Dad bought an old 1922 Story and Clark player piano with hundreds of old rolls of great standards and film music songs from the 30's, 40's, 50's, and 60's. In an effort to distract me from my Mom's suffering, we would spend hours around that piano singing and playing these timeless songs. 4) Like most of the other Composers on this list, I spent many many years playing live and recording with countless bands in the 70's and 80's doing every kind of popular styles, from early roots rock, glam rock, British invasion, funk, pop, to progressive rock, and so on. The education in arrangements, style, textures, and writing structures from all those styles still inform how I approach music.
On creating his soundtracks:
Robert Holmes[3] wrote:I was never very focused on midi as a vehicle. Because of this, I would do all my writing "offline" then just use midi and sequencers as multi-track recorders, with a relatively low level of midi adjustment and tweaking. Then do various conversions as needed for other platforms. Some of the songs in early GKs were things I had written and not finished years earlier, and I just tuned them to the various scenes. All of this might of given my stuff a certain lack of technical quality, which is probably an honest and indicative representation of me as a player in general. I'm more concerned with the emotional impact and creating melodies that are memorable if possible.
Home Page
- robertholmesmusic.com/
- robertjholmes1@gmail.com
- Robert Holmes' YouTube Channel
- Robert Holmes on Facebook
Contributions by Robert Holmes
References
- ↑ The music and the mystery of Robert Holmes - Ingrid Heyn (Adventure Classic Gaming, accessed in 2006)
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/290216345394928/permalink/450650642684830/?comment_id=451302452619649 Sierra Music and Memories Facebook posting
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/290216345394928/permalink/450650642684830/?comment_id=451302452619649&reply_comment_id=451365629279998 Sierra Music and Memories Facebook posting
