Aleksi Eeben

Aleksi Eeben is a composer and programmer. He worked for Nokia between 2002 and 2014 (later transferred to Microsoft Mobile) as a sound designer, creating many ringtones, alerts and UI sounds. Other duties included mixing and mastering, project management, and creating sound banks.

Outside of Nokia, he is a prolific demoscener (best known under the Heatbeat alias), and has composed dozens of tracks on the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers, as well as creating many tech demos and chiptune-related tools. Prior to joining Nokia, he also composed for several video games such as Elfmania and Project S-11, and in more recent years he composed for the mobile game People Vs People.

Work at Nokia
Eeben joined Nokia in November 2002 as a Principal Sound Designer, alongside Hannu af Ursin and Henry Daw, as Nokia were looking for new composers to write polyphonic ringtones. During his early years at the company he wrote some polyphonic ringtones and alerts, and created all three of the mobileBAE sound banks Nokia utilized on their phones from 2004 to 2013; these were mostly created with samples of real instruments and custom synth patches. Other duties at Nokia included mastering, mixing and managing outsourced projects.

Although his compositions for Nokia were usually different in nature to his demoscene and game work, which often feature an unconventional jazzy electronic style, he created a chiptune ringtone named Rhodium using his Commodore 64 SID tracker, John Player. This was exclusive to the Nokia 7373 Special Edition.

One of the first phones he was responsible for producing the sound set for was the Nokia 9500 Communicator in 2004. He was also largely responsible for producing the sound sets of Eseries phones, and later the Lumia phones. Although some of his earlier audio ringtones were heavily based on demos from sample CDs, his later Nokia work features fairly high production values, as he favored the use of real instruments and recordings rather than using library SFX. Examples including creating a real music box version of the Silver ringtone, and producing recordings of wind chimes, cats and biting fruit. Shortly before Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nokia, he produced three Windows Phone apps: Nokia Tones consisting of 1000 ringtones, Nokia Alerts consisting of 170 alerts, and Nokia Buzzer consisting of 250 monophonic ringtones.

Credits
See Aleksi Eeben/Credits