Rob Hubbard (born 1955 in

Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south- ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

) is a British

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

best known for his musical and programming work for microcomputers of the 1980s, such as the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...

Early life

Hubbard first started playing music at age seven. Whilst at school he played in bands. After leaving school he went to music college.

Early career

In the late seventies, before scoring games, he was a professional studio musician. He decided to teach himself

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

and

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ve ...

for the Commodore 64.

Music on the Commodore 64

He approached

Gremlin Graphics Gremlin Graphics Software Limited, later Gremlin Interactive Limited and ultimately Infogrames Studios Limited was a British software house based in Sheffield, working mostly in the home computer market. Like many software houses established in ...

in 1985 to promote a few demos and a music-education program he had written, but Gremlin was more interested in his music than his software. He was asked to create the soundtrack for '' Thing on a Spring'', a platform game. Hubbard subsequently wrote or converted music for a variety of publishers on over 75 games between 1985 and 1989 such as '' Monty on the Run'', ''

Crazy Comets ''Crazy Comets'' is a 1985 multidirectional shooter programmed by Simon Nicol for the Commodore 64 and published by Martech in 1985. The game is a clone of Gottlieb's 1983 ''Mad Planets'' arcade game, even using the same logo treatment with "Craz ...

'', '' Master of Magic'' and ''

Commando Royal Marines from 40 Commando on patrol in the Sangin">40_Commando.html" ;"title="Royal Marines from 40 Commando">Royal Marines from 40 Commando on patrol in the Sangin area of Afghanistan are pictured A commando is a combatant, or operativ ...

''. Some of his most popular tunes include also '' Warhawk'', '' Delta'', ''

Thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...

'', '' Lightforce'', '' Spellbound'', '' Sanxion'', '' Auf Wiedersehen Monty'' and ''

International Karate ''International Karate'' is a fighting game developed and published by System 3 for the ZX Spectrum in 1985 and ported to various home computers over the following years. In the United States it was published by Epyx in 1986 as ''World Karate C ...

''. The game ''Knucklebusters'' includes Hubbard's longest tune: a 17-minute opus. Hubbard has mentioned his personal favourites are ''

Kentilla ''Kentilla'' is a text adventure game written in Basic by British developer Derek Brewster and published by Micromega. It was later rereleased as a budget title by Mastertronic. Game music composer Rob Hubbard Rob Hubbard (born 1955 in King ...

'', '' W.A.R.'' and '' Sanxion''. His least favourite was Samantha Fox Strip Poker, which he admitted to have done purely for money; he was listed in the game credits with the alias ''John York''. He has stated that he had many musical influences including Jean Michel Jarre,

Larry Fast Lawrence Roger Fast (born December 10, 1951) is an American synthesizer player and composer. He is best known for his 1975–1987 series of synthesizer music albums (''Synergy'') and for his contributions to a number of popular music acts, inclu ...

and other synth bands. Hubbard mainly composed for the Commodore 64's '' SID'' sound chip. He worked freelance and turned down offers from companies to work in-house.

Move to Electronic Arts and the United States

After working for several different companies, he left

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

in 1988 and had the choice to work for Electronic Arts, or Microsoft. Hubbard chose EA due to their prominence in the gaming industry as Microsoft had (as yet) no gaming platform. His work with EA

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

in America was as a composer. He was the first person devoted to sound and music at EA, and did everything from low-level programming to composing. One of his most famous compositions during his period at EA, is the music featured in the loading sequence of the ''

'' version of '' Skate or Die'', which features multiple sampled chords of electric guitar and organ. Playback of samples was facilitated by exploiting a feature in the SID sound-synthesizer chip: altering the volume register produces an audible click, and altering the register thousands of times per second enables a relatively crude (but surprisingly clear and sophisticated for eight-bit computers) form of sample playback. He eventually became Audio Technical Director, a more administrative job, deciding which technologies to use in games, and which to develop further. After the Commodore 64 period, he wrote some soundtracks for games which appeared on the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first per ...

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

and

Sega Mega Drive The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as ...

Recent activities

Hubbard recently contributed a few re-arrangements of his themes to Chris Abbott's C64 tribute ''Back in Time Live''. Hubbard has performed several times with the Danish C64 cover-band PRESS PLAY ON TAPE who have covered many of his early tunes using a full rock-band arrangement. Hubbard has also performed his old music on piano with the support of violinist and fellow chiptune composer

Mark Knight Mark Knight (born 1962) is an Australian cartoonist. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for the ''Herald Sun'', a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper in Melbourne. Knight was also the last editorial cartoonist for one of t ...

. Hubbard left EA in 2002 and returned to England. He has recently resumed playing in a band, and he has revisited his past game-music work in concert. His recent compositions have included music for mobile-phone games. In 2005, music from ''

'' was performed live by a full orchestra at the third

Symphonic Game Music Concert The ''Symphonic Game Music Concerts (''shortened to: ''Game Concerts'') are a series of award-winning orchestral video game music concerts first performed in 2003 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, notable for being the longest running and the ...

. The event took place in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. Hubbard arranged and orchestrated the piece. In 2014, Hubbard appeared in and composed music for the documentary feature film '' From Bedrooms to Billions'', a film that tells the story of the British video games industry. In November 2016, Hubbard received an honorary degree from

Abertay University , mottoeng = "Blessed is the one who finds wisdom." , established = 1994 – granted University Status 1888 – Dundee Institute of Technology , type = Public , chancellor = Alice Brown , principal = Liz Bacon , head_label = Chair of C ...

for his contributions to video-game music in the 1980s.

Works

References

External links

C64Audio.com
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hubbard, Rob 1955 births British male composers Chiptune musicians Commodore 64 music Living people Musicians from Kingston upon Hull Video game composers