Richard Joseph

Richard Joseph ( born April 23 1953 † 4 March 2007) was a computer game musician, musician and sound engineer. His career spanned a period of almost 20 years, from the early days of the C64 and the Amiga to the successful PC game soundtracks of the early 21st century.

Biography

Richard came from a family of artists. His brother Eddy was, inter alia, as a supervisor for the sound responsible for such films as Harry Potter and James Bond. His brother Pat is Director of The Mill, which won an Oscar for the film Gladiator. His nephew Alex is also a supervisor. Richard's father Teddy (1918-2006) was a producer and worked, among others, films by John Schlesinger, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Before he focused on playing Richard had a brief career in the music industry and has worked with artists such as Trevor Horn and Hugh Padgham. Richard released a solo album with EMI and was a member of the group CMU, which released two albums on Transatlantic before they converted into the jazz - funk band Shakatak.

Richard is a pioneer of the game setting. He has become known in that it in a game einbaute first "real" speaker voices (Mega lo Mania ) by the earliest use of interactive music ( Chaos Engine ), his collaboration with famous musicians ( Betty Boo at Magic Pockets, Captain Sensible at sensible Soccer, Brian May in Rise of the Robots and Jon Foxx on Gods and Speedball 2 ) and the use of vocals in songs titles, which was revolutionary in its time.

In the late 80s / early 90s he produced soundtracks for the well-known game developer Sensible Software and the Bitmap Brothers. He was also responsible for the soundtrack of the C64 version of the hit Defender of the Crown. He then built Audio Interactive at Pinewood Film Studios and helped Electronic Arts to win the BAFTA Award for Best Sound in 2000 for the game Theme Park World. Richards own soundtrack for Cannon Fodder GBA was nominated in the same year and is still the only small-format soundtrack that has ever been nominated by BAFTA. He has produced soundtracks for the title Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius of Elixir Studios ( both reached Bafta nominations in music ) and eventually moved to France, where he ran a company called SoundTropez, which produced modern soundtracks.

After he discovered he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he died on 4 March 2007.