Brian Salter

Brian Salter is a composer who worked for Beatnik. Previously working as a freelance composer for WebTV, he joined the company in 1996 but left in 1998 to became freelance again. He wrote many music tracks while working there, as well as aiding the design and testing of their software such as the Beatnik Audio Engine, which the company had acquired during the development of WebTV. After going freelance, he maintained a close relationship with the company and with the dawn of polyphonic ringtones, he was involved in creating many ringtones and mobile soundbanks.

Outside of Beatnik, he composed and designed sounds for video games such as Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, Mario's Game Gallery and several downloadable Danger Hiptop games. He also composed tracks for royalty free music libraries following his work with Beatnik, although he no longer regularly composes music, feeling that it was no longer possible to make a living from it.

WebTV and Beatnik
Salter was employed by game development company Presage during 1994, but left the following year. In 1996, he was contracted to create music for WebTV using SoundMusicSys, while having experience composing for games using the engine. Thomas Dolby was also involved in composing several tracks for the project, and was so impressed by the engine that he acquired it for his company Headspace. This led to Salter joining said company as a composer, where he wrote several tracks in a variety of styles for the Headspace Music Library. He was also consulted to aid a redesign of SoundMusicSys, which became the Beatnik Audio Engine. He left during 1998 and became freelance again, feeling that their technology only had appeal to a niche market until it was later adapted for mobile phones and PDAs the following year.

Despite leaving, he continued to do contract work for the company, now renamed to Beatnik. He continued composing tracks for the library, as well as CD audio versions for FirstCom Music's CD releases of library material. He also created many miniBAE sound banks, such as Nokia's small and large sound banks. After briefly moving to Japan, he worked on projects for many of Beatnik's Japanese clients, as well as a Yamaha SMAF version of the Headspace Music Library. This impressed Sony Ericsson, who contracted him to write ringtones for their phones, as well as producing the sound bank used on Symbian UIQ phones.

His involvement with Beatnik is known to stretch as late as 2005, where he created several mobileBAE soundbanks that shipped on some phones using the engine as well as Beatnik Player for Mobile Audio. He is not known to have been involved with the company beyond this point, although he did compose for downloadable Danger Hiptop games using Beatnik's sound engines, though these gigs did not involve Beatnik.

Regarding where the instruments were sourced, Salter wrote: "I was involved in most or all of the soundbanks. We sourced a lot of the sounds from our own recordings; Matt Levine contributed guitar, bass, and drums, I did clarinets & saxes, and some other acoustic instruments such as strings were recorded with volunteer student musicians if I remember correctly. Some sounds were sourced from a Yamaha VL-70, an early physical modeling hardware synth. Finally, some more sources were provided my[sic] a musician who had done sampling for Yamaha romplers. His name was Ed Mann, IIRC. Additional samples may have come from Jennifer Hruska, founder of Sonivox, who worked briefly for Beatnik around the time that Mobile BAE was in development."

Nokia
Salter worked on the miniBAE sound banks for Nokia, including the small and large banks. Prior to those, he created a bank named SalterNokia, which appears to have been a predecessor to the small and large banks, and an edited version was later used as Sony Ericsson's UIQ bank. He also composed several ringtones for various models, such as the phones in Nokia's Fashion Collection, which includes the 7260, 7270, and 7280.

Danger
Salter later went on to do contract work for Danger, creating the music and sound effects for games such as Pumpjack, Omega and Bubblespin.

Credits
See Brian Salter/Credits