Music: Difference between revisions

TotalAudio is a music and sound production company founded by Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, also referred to as O'Donnell/Salvatori Inc. This was an outside company contracted by Bungie to score their games. When it comes to Oni, however, Salvatori may not actually have composed anything for Oni. O'Donnell states in [https://halo.bungie.org/misc/nico_marty_interview.html this interview] that he personally composed the half of the soundtrack which Power of Seven did not. In the same interview, Salvatori is referred to as a producer and engineer working with O'Donnell, not a composer, but the interview was three years after Oni released. O'Donnell specifically seemed to take credit for "Oni Anime" and "Farewell" on his [https://web.archive.org/web/20010203124800/http://mp3.com/artists/18/totalaudio_bungie.html mp3.com artist page]. When O'Donnell released the Oni soundtrack on Bandcamp for a short while, the sheet music for "Hurry" was included as an extra, credited to O'Donnell/Salvatori Inc. but not either specific person.

Sebastien was also a founder of the techno band Psykosonik; over the course of the band's existence (1992–1997), four of their electronic dance songs charted in the Billboard Top 40. In 1996, Power of Seven [https://marathon.bungie.org/story/power_of_seven/power_of_seven.html was acquired by] audio company Headspace, Inc. and the studio was relocated to Headspace's HQ in San Mateo, California. In 1999, Headspace renamed themselves [[wp:Beatnik (company)|Beatnik, Inc.]] They became defunct in 2011. (The Californian company which currently creates meditation audio programs under the name Headspace is unrelated.)

Determining which people at Power of Seven actually worked on Oni's soundtrack is more difficult. [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bungies-mp3-contribution/1100-2451769/ This article] from spring 2000 calls the group a trio consisting of "NVerse", Brian Salter and Kim Cascone.

[[wp:Kim Cascone|Cascone]] is a famous experimental electronic composer, and his work is ''wayyy'' more avant-garde than what you'd expect to hear in a game, though he did score [[wp:Obsidian (1997 video game)|Obsidian]], a 1997 surrealist puzzle game. Cascone briefly mentioned that he was working on "sound design for a Japanese anime game" at the end of [https://web.archive.org/web/20170314155110/http://www.spiderbytes.com/ambientrance/cascone.htm this 1998 interview], which he confirmed by email in 2022 to have been Oni, however he referred to his contributions as "[[wp:Speculative work|spec work]]" and didn't think that his "sound design" was used in the final game.

Based on the style of each composer, their public statements, private correspondence with them, and their released music, we can confidently credit some tracks and speculate on the rest:

When it comes to the ambient tracks, attribution for the ones starting with "atm_" remain a mystery. The ones starting with "mus_" are largely or entirely by O'Donnell, which we know because some are [[Music/Myth|reused from Myth I/II]] and one (amasian or "Up and Away") shares the same synthesized instruments as his work on Halo (see "TotalAudio" section above).