Peter Drescher

Peter Drescher, also known under the alias of pdx, is a composer and programmer. He was employed at Danger from 2001 to 2008, then Microsoft from 2008 to 2009, as Microsoft acquired Danger so his employment was transferred. At Danger he created many ringtones and sounds for Danger Hiptop devices as well as its original soundbank, while at Microsoft he worked on various mobile-related sounds, as well as other projects such as the Windows Media Center startup sound in Windows 7. He runs a company called Twittering Machine, which has provided music for Beatnik, as well as many of the ringtones and other sounds found in Android 2.3 Gingerbread and Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Other clients include Sprint and AT&T; he composed a phone startup sound for the former, while his involvement with the latter is unclear but his work did not get used.

WebTV and Beatnik
Drescher was contracted by WebTV to create and optimize soundbanks intended for use on WebTV devices. He also composed a few tracks, but none of them were used. Igor's Software Labs, which provided the SoundMusicSys engine for WebTV, was later acquired by Beatnik, which led to him doing years of contract work for the company, such as writing library tracks.

Regarding how he developed soundbanks, he wrote: "each project utilizes its own creative development techniques, and can range from original recordings to synthesized sounds to musical clips to library pulls to [that idea's so crazy, it just might work!] personally, i'm fond of using bird calls as the basis for UI sounds, and have my credo when writing digital music: 'i promise never to program a computer to play something i can't'."

Danger and Microsoft
Unlike most other companies Drescher did work for, he worked in-house at Danger, but still did contract work for other companies via his own Twittering Machine company. He created all of the ringtones and system sounds for Danger Hiptop devices as well as the first soundbank, which appears to be based on Nokia's small bank, which was originally created by Brian Salter for Beatnik. He also created music and sound effects for several Hiptop games, as well as testing the software and hardware and creating documentation. As well as the built-in ringtones, he managed a catalog of downloadable ringtones and co-ordinated content creation by many large record labels.

In 2006, he was contracted by Microsoft to work on some of Windows Vista's system sounds. Following Microsoft's acquisition of Danger in 2008, his employment was transferred to Microsoft. He continued working on Hiptop-related sounds, while working on Microsoft's own products such as the Windows Media Center startup sound in Windows 7, Xbox UI sounds, soundtracks for demos and development of audio tools. However, he left the company in October 2009 along with several other ex-Danger employees who were disgruntled with Microsoft's Hiptop server failure, which led to all user data being wiped although most of it was later recovered.

Google
Drescher also worked on around half of the sounds found in Android 2.3 Gingerbread, while the other half were created by Ali Spagnola. His involvement has been comfirmed as his sounds list the artist as his alias, pdx. He is also known to have worked on some of Android 3.0 Honeycomb's alarms; it is uncertain if he worked on the sounds for later versions of Android too, as those do not feature artist metadata.

Sprint and AT&T
Regarding his work with Sprint and AT&T, Drescher wrote: For quite some time in the 90's, whenever you turned on a Sprint PCS phone, it went "beedee-beep!" yep, that was one of mine. it was supposed to be a fully digital synthesized audio icon, to show how cool and hi-tech the phone was (a "branding sound"), BUT when it got to production, they realized they couldn't play the sound loud enough to be heard when the phone speaker wasn't in yer ear, and so "can ya make the sound using the piezo ringer?" - a tiny vibrating piece of bimetal that could only produce square waves, one frequency at a time, aka "annoying beep".

the ATT project was a corporate politics run-around scheme best left undiscussed ... but it did pay for my very first "twittering machine" ProTools rig, so it gets a place on the resume.

Credits
This is a list of known tracks related to the scope of this wiki that Drescher has worked on.

Music tracks

 * DoorSlam — Music & Arrangement

Chimes

 * Bell Tree — Engineering
 * Bird Call — Engineering
 * Blue Flute — Music & Arrangement
 * Clarion — Music & Arrangement
 * Crickets — Music & Arrangement
 * Default Alert 1 — Music & Arrangement
 * Default Alert 2 — Music & Arrangement
 * Ding-A-Ling — Music & Arrangement
 * Don't Touch — Music & Arrangement
 * Elvin Ring — Music & Arrangement
 * Evil Overlord — Engineering
 * Frogs — Engineering
 * Future Ring — Music & Arrangement
 * Klaxon — Music & Arrangement
 * Music Box — Music & Arrangement
 * Painted Echoes — Music & Arrangement
 * Robot — Music & Arrangement
 * Siren — Engineering [NOTE: Unrelated to the earlier chime of the same name]
 * Siren — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Unrelated to the later chime of the same name]
 * Telephone — Engineering
 * Wah Wah — Engineering
 * Wolf — Music & Arrangement

Songs

 * 1 2 3 — Music & Arrangement
 * And Then — Music & Arrangement
 * Boston — Music & Arrangement
 * Call Me Crazy — Music & Arrangement
 * Chimps On Mars — Music & Arrangement
 * Circuit Breaker — Music & Arrangement
 * Cooler New Shoes — Music & Arrangement
 * Danger Girl — Music & Arrangement
 * Danger Man — Music & Arrangement
 * Dangerous Girl — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Arranged version of Danger Girl]
 * Dangertown — Music & Arrangement
 * Dublin — Music & Arrangement
 * Escola — Music & Arrangement
 * Falling For It — Music & Arrangement
 * FatCat — Music & Arrangement
 * Free — Music & Arrangement
 * Get Away With More — Music & Arrangement
 * Havana — Music & Arrangement
 * Hip Cat — Music & Arrangement
 * Hong Kong — Music & Arrangement
 * Karsilama — Music & Arrangement
 * Los Angeles — Music & Arrangement
 * New Orleans — Music & Arrangement
 * Oh Yeah — Music & Arrangement
 * Ooh Yeah — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Mostly unrelated to Oh Yeah]
 * Paris — Music & Arrangement
 * Pushing It — Music & Arrangement
 * San Francisco — Music & Arrangement
 * Sydney — Music & Arrangement
 * T-Jingle (US version) — Arrangement
 * Tal Vez Despues (audio remix) — Music & Arrangement
 * Tal Vez Despues — Music & Arrangement
 * Talk To Me — Music & Arrangement
 * Theremin — Music & Arrangement
 * Time To Say Hello — Music & Arrangement
 * Twittering Machine — Music & Arrangement
 * Vindaloo — Music & Arrangement

Ringtones

 * Andromeda — Music & Arrangement
 * Aquila — Music & Arrangement
 * Boötes — Music & Arrangement
 * Canis Major — Music & Arrangement
 * Cassiopeia — Music & Arrangement
 * Centaurus — Music & Arrangement
 * Cygnus — Music & Arrangement
 * Draco — Music & Arrangement
 * Hydra — Music & Arrangement
 * Lyra — Music & Arrangement
 * Orion — Music & Arrangement
 * Pegasus — Music & Arrangement
 * Perseus — Music & Arrangement
 * Pyxis — Engineering
 * Rigel — Music & Arrangement
 * Ursa Minor — Music & Arrangement

Alarms

 * Barium — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Also known as Analysis and Violet Alarm]
 * Cesium — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Also known as Oxygen and Blue Alarm]
 * Plutonium — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Also known as Krypton, White Alarm and Fire Drill]
 * Scandium — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Also known as Timing and Green Alarm]

Notifications

 * Aldebaran — Music & Arrangement
 * Altair — Music & Arrangement
 * Antares — Music & Arrangement
 * Arcturus — Music & Arrangement
 * Betelgeuse — Music & Arrangement
 * Capella — Music & Arrangement
 * Castor — Music & Arrangement [NOTE: Also known as Cobalt]
 * Deneb — Music & Arrangement
 * Electra — Music & Arrangement
 * Fomalhaut — Music & Arrangement
 * Polaris — Music & Arrangement
 * Pollux — Music & Arrangement
 * Procyon — Music & Arrangement
 * Regulus — Music & Arrangement
 * Sirius — Music & Arrangement
 * Vega — Music & Arrangement