A Sierra Retrospective: Part 2 – Composing a Quest

Before the PC became the dominant home computer system, Sierra published its games in a wide variety of formats, the most common being the IBM PC, the Tandy 1000, and the Apple IIgs. As each system had its own technology which wasn’t compatible with the other systems, every game soundtrack had to be recreated for each.

The PC speaker in most IBM-compatible computers was only capable of playing a single beep which could be made to approximate different musical notes, as well as only playing a single track at a time. The Tandy 1000 copied the improvements IBM had developed in their short-lived PCjr system by allowing three tracks to be played at once, although these were still system-generated tones. The Apple IIgs was arguably the most advanced of the three systems, as it allowed for digital sampling of sounds to be recorded and played back. This allowed the composer to sample real instruments and compile those samples together to make a more layered and realistic sounding score.

(For a fuller appreciation of the differences, check out the Leisure Suit Larry themes on PC Speaker, Apple II and Tandy 1000 at designer Al Lowe’s website.)

By the mid-‘80s, sound technology had further developed with the advent of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which allowed a composer to store commands in a very small file format. These files weren’t music files like an MP3, but rather a collection of commands that directed a computer’s sound card to play a certain sound at a certain speed for the specified amount of time. The most common MIDI cards at the time were the Adlib and later the SoundBlaster.

In his first role at Sierra, Robert Holmes was tasked with making soundtrack conversions for different systems.

“I would do the conversions for [fellow Sierra composer] Dan [Kehler]’s stuff, which was a great way for me to learn the ropes and get into the technology. I spent the first few months just doing the Mac and SoundBlaster conversions.

“For me it was different because while I had had some exposure to MIDI I really wasn’t a keyboard player and I really wasn’t well versed in MIDI. It took a while for me to really get into that. I never really got to the same level as some of the other guys who were really amazing MIDI composers. It was a good education.”

Recently, Holmes had the opportunity to return to his original Gabriel Knight soundtrack for the 20^th Anniversary Edition, an opportunity not many game composers get.

“There were parts of it that I still like, and actually it was really interesting to listen to. I hadn’t heard some of it in quite a while. I was actually really pleased with some of it and thought, gee, if I had to play that right now I wouldn’t know how to play it,” he says. “A lot of it, in having to go back and review it, I would think, well, I would probably make a different decision now. It’s really tricky when you do something like that, because on one hand people expect something different, because that’s what they’re paying for. But on the other hand they don’t want you to mess with what they love. It was a really big challenge but also a lot of fun.”

The biggest advance in MIDI for Sierra was the adoption of the Roland MT-32 Sound Module, a hardware peripheral that generated ten MIDI tracks simultaneously. Sierra supported this module, which they believed offered the best listening experience for their games, selling it through their mail order system with an incentive offer of two free games.

While CEO and company founder Ken Williams was a strong advocate for the MT-32, the cost of the device (over $500) was a concern for some of the staff at Sierra, as producer Guruka Singh Khalsa recalls.

“I remember Ken being so excited about the Roland because MIDI was so compact. It didn’t take any space on disk to do MIDI code and the sounds were generated by the Roland box. I said to him people aren’t going to spend several hundred dollars on a MIDI box and he said, ‘We’ll include it with every game!’”

Williams wasn’t serious, of course, but the conversation does show the importance Sierra placed on their music. Through the technological changes from PC speaker to MIDI, and later to digital music, a game’s soundtrack was always seen as a vital ingredient in the adventure game process, allowing players to be immersed in the latest Sierra adventure.
 

While it’s common knowledge that LucasArts is now owned by the Disney corporation, it was Sierra who developed the early Disney computer games. Producing a line of children’s adventure games and a movie tie-in, Sierra was at the front of Disney’s early moves into the computer game market. In our next article, we’ll take a closer look at this relationship between the two prominent giants in their respective industries.