Peter McConnell

Last updated

Peter McConnell
Petermc.jpg
McConnell in 2010
Background information
Birth namePeter Nelson McConnell
Also known asPeter Mc, Pete McConnell
Born (1960-04-19) April 19, 1960 (age 63)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
GenresVarious
Occupation(s)Composer, musician
Instruments Keyboards, synthesizer, guitar
Years active1991–present
Website petermc.com

Peter Nelson McConnell (born April 19, 1960), [1] also known as Peter Mc, is an American video game composer and musician, best known for his work at LucasArts and for composing the soundtracks for every Sly Cooper game since the second installment.

Contents

Biography

McConnell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Peter studied music as an undergraduate at Harvard University in the 1980s under Timothy Vincent Clarke, Curt Cacioppo and Ivan Tcherepnin. In Harvard McConnell befriended the future LucasArts composer Michael Land, [2] who composed many of the company's titles, and worked with him at the audio company Lexicon. While beginning his career in the Sound Department at LucasArts, Land needed someone who would both compose and implement music into his second project Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and McConnell stepped in. [3] McConnell and Land co-invented iMUSE, LucasArts' patented interactive music system. [4]

During his time at LucasArts, McConnell composed many soundtracks for games such as those in the Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and Star Wars series. Notable titles from this time include Grim Fandango , scored with unique Mexican influenced jazz, klezmer and traditional film score style, and Full Throttle , featuring rock soundtrack which McConnell scored with rock group The Gone Jackals. While composing music for these two games, McConnell worked closely with Tim Schafer, who later hired him to compose scores for the titles Psychonauts , Brütal Legend , and Costume Quest for his company Double Fine Productions.

McConnell left LucasArts in 2000, but contributed to Escape from Monkey Island and special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island . Since then, McConnell has composed scores for Psychonauts , Sly 2: Band of Thieves , Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (about which McConnell says that he was influenced by Henry Mancini works), [5] and Kinectimals .

McConnell is one of the founding members of G.A.N.G., the Game Audio Network Guild. He is also a known live-action music performer, playing the electric violin.

In 2013, McConnell returned to the Sly Cooper franchise to score the fourth game, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time , which was released in February of that year. The score of the game is performed by the Nashville Music Scoring orchestra. Also, for the first time ever, McConnell's entire score was released on iTunes to accompany the release of the game.

Recently, McConnell has worked on the Double Fine titles Broken Age and the remastered version of Grim Fandango , both of which include performances by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He scored the 2021 Psychonauts 2 , for which he was nominated for a BAFTA Games Award [6] and D.I.C.E. Award. [7] He also wrote music for 2020 film Intersect . [8]

He married Amy McConnell and they now have two children, Eben and Alice.

Works

Video game soundtracks
TitleYearNotes
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge 1991With Michael Land and Clint Bajakian
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis 1992
Star Wars: X-Wing 1993
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Day of the Tentacle
Star Wars: Rebel Assault Sound advice, with Michael Land
Star Wars: TIE Fighter 1994
Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire 1995Sound Quality Control
Full Throttle Orchestral Composer & Music Producer, Additional Programming
The Dig iMUSE Music System
Shadows of the Empire 1996Music Editor/Sound Quality Control
Afterlife
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II 1997
Herc's Adventures Music Consultant
Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi Special thanks
Star Wars: Yoda Stories Music Editing
Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Star Wars: X-Wing - Collector Series1998
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
Grim Fandango
Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance 1999iMUSE Music System
Star Wars Episode I: Racer Music Editing
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Yoda's Challenge - Activity Center
Star Wars: Pit Droids [9] With Michael Land
Star Wars: Anakin's SpeedwayWith Clint Bajakian
Star Wars: Force Commander 2000Additional Music Composition, Lead Music Production and Editing
Escape from Monkey Island With Clint Bajakian, Anna Karney, Michael Land, Michael Lande
Star Wars: Battlefront 2004Music editing
The Bard's Tale With Tommy Tallarico, Clint Bajakian, Jared Emerson-Johnson
Sly 2: Band of Thieves With Bill Wolford
Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves 2005
Psychonauts
Thrillville 2006With Alistair Lindsay, David Collins and Jesse Harlin
Calling All Cars! 2007
The Sims 2: Celebration! StuffStereo Object Music
The Sims 2: Castaway Additional music
Pain
Insecticide 2008
LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures Music editor
Tornado Outbreak 2009Musician Magician, Composer Extraordinaire and all around "Groovy" Guy
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special EditionViolin, special thanks
inFAMOUS
Brütal Legend Original Music Composer, Orchestrator and Production
Costume Quest 2010
Kinectimals Music Supervisor, with Jared Emerson-Johnson
Sports Champions Additional music
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge - Special EditionOriginal music, special thanks
Kinect Disneyland Adventures 2011With Paul Lipson, Laura Karpman, Mark Griskey, Wataru Hokoyama and Lennie Moore
Star Wars: The Old Republic Cantina Music
Stacking Music composer, orchestrations, production
Iron Brigade
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster With David Earl
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale 2012Sly Cooper music
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time 2013With Michael Bricker
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time With Laura Shigihara, Korby Sears, Dave Cowen, Christopher Ballew and C. Andrew Rohrmann
Hearthstone
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2014
Costume Quest 2
Broken Age With Karim Elmahmoudi
Grim Fandango: Remastered 2015
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 2016
Day of the Tentacle: RemasteredOriginal music, special thanks
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin 2017
Full Throttle: RemasteredOrchestral Music Revoicing
World of WarCraft: Battle for Azeroth 2018Additional music
Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love2019With Arkadiusz Reikowski
Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville
Psychonauts 2 2021
Goblin Stone2022
Voodoo DetectiveMusic producer
Return to Monkey Island With Michael Land and Clint Bajakian
Film
TitleYearDirector
Intersect 2020 Gus Holwerda
Acting
TitleRoleNotes
Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Yoda Voice
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader Admiral Ackbar
Double Fine Adventure SelfDocumentary series
Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound Documentary

Written works

Related Research Articles

<i>Day of the Tentacle</i> 1993 adventure game

Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion. The plot follows Bernard Bernoulli and his friends Hoagie and Laverne as they attempt to stop the evil Purple Tentacle - a sentient, disembodied tentacle - from taking over the world. The player takes control of the trio and solves puzzles while using time travel to explore different periods of history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucasfilm Games</span> American video game producer

Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SCUMM</span> Game engine developed by LucasArts

Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) is a video game engine developed at Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, to ease development on their graphic adventure game Maniac Mansion (1987). It was subsequently used as the engine for later LucasArts adventure games and Humongous Entertainment games.

<i>Grim Fandango</i> 1998 video game

Grim Fandango is a 1998 adventure game directed by Tim Schafer and developed and published by LucasArts for Microsoft Windows. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered static backgrounds. As with other LucasArts adventure games, the player must converse with characters and examine, collect, and use objects to solve puzzles.

Michael Z. Land is an American video game composer and musician best known for his scores for various games produced by LucasArts.

<i>Monkey Island 2: LeChucks Revenge</i> 1991 adventure video game

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. A sequel to 1990's The Secret of Monkey Island, it is the second game in the Monkey Island series. It was the sixth LucasArts game to use the SCUMM engine, and the first game to use the iMUSE sound system. In it, pirate Guybrush Threepwood searches for the legendary treasure of Big Whoop and again faces off against the pirate LeChuck, who is now an undead corpse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Schafer</span> American video game designer

Timothy John Schafer is an American video game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.

<i>Escape from Monkey Island</i> 2000 video game

Escape from Monkey Island is an adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series, and the sequel to the 1997 videogame The Curse of Monkey Island. It is the first game in the series to use 3D graphics and the second game to use the GrimE engine, which was upgraded from its first use in Grim Fandango.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LucasArts adventure games</span> Adventure games produced by LucasArts

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humor, with the exceptions of Loom and The Dig. Their game design philosophy was that the player should never die or reach a complete dead-end, although there were exceptions.

<i>Psychonauts</i> 2005 video game

Psychonauts is a 2005 platform video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Xbox and PlayStation 2.

iMUSE is an interactive music system used in a number of LucasArts video games. The idea behind iMUSE is to synchronize music with the visual action in a video game so that the audio continuously matches the on-screen events and transitions from one musical theme to another are done seamlessly. iMUSE was developed in the early 1990s by composers Michael Land and Peter McConnell while working at LucasArts. The iMUSE system was patented by LucasArts in 1994, after being added to the fifth version of the SCUMM game engine in 1991.

<i>Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing</i> 2001 video game

Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing is both a racing video game and vehicular combat game with characters from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Star Wars, and Return of the Jedi. The playable characters are portrayed in a super deformed style. This game is available on PlayStation 2 only, as the Dreamcast, Windows, and Mac OS versions were cancelled due to poor sales of the PlayStation 2 version.

Clint Bajakian is an American video game composer and musician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jared Emerson-Johnson</span> American video game composer

Jared Nathaniel Emerson-Johnson is an American video game music composer, sound designer, voice director and voice actor. Emerson-Johnson is the Music Supervisor and lead composer at Bay Area Sound, an audio production company specializing in sound design, music and voiceover for video games. His work has been predominantly featured in games developed by Telltale.

In video games, adaptive music is background music whose volume, rhythm or tune changes in response to specific events in the game.

<i>Broken Age</i> 2015 video game

Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. Broken Age was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's Grim Fandango, and was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One platforms. The game was developed in two acts; the first was released on January 28, 2014, and the second was released on April 28, 2015. A retail version of the complete game for Windows, macOS, and Linux, published by Nordic Games, was released on April 28, 2015. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 13, 2018.

Razmig Mavlian is an Armenian-Canadian artist, animator, video game developer, and musician. His nickname "Raz" was the inspiration for the name of the main character in Psychonauts. He currently is a concept artist at Oculus VR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jory Prum</span> American audio engineer (1975–2016)

Jory Prum, also known as Jory K. Prum, was an American audio engineer, best known for his work in film and video games. He was the owner of a recording studio located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Peter Chan is an American freelance concept and storyboard artist and animator for video games and films. Chan is best known for his work in several LucasArts adventure games, including Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.

Music of <i>Grim Fandango</i> 1998 Grim Fandango video game music by Peter McConnell

The music for the video game Grim Fandango was composed and produced by Peter McConnell and published by LucasArts in 1998. The soundtrack is a mix of South American folk music, jazz, swing and big band sounds, for the game story filled with adventure and intrigue set in a unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore's Day of the Dead. The soundtrack garnered critical acclaim and remained subject of positive reviews and inclusion in critics' rankings for the two decades after its first release. The soundtrack was praised both as a stand-alone musical experience, as well as for its outstanding contribution to the overall game experience; capturing the spirit of the game, "gluing" the story together, and becoming "integral" to the success of the game.

References

  1. MySpace profile of Peter Mc.
  2. Bowe, Miles (June 21, 2015). "When Mexican folk music danced with film noir: FACT meets Peter McConnell, the composer behind Grim Fandango". Fact . The Vinyl Factory. Archived from the original on July 13, 2019.
  3. According to interview with Peter McConnell in 22/11/2003 Archived July 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine : "Michael Land and I had been working on projects together since we were at Harvard in the 80's. He really started the Sound Department at LucasArts, and was looking for someone who could both compose and design code, and I guess he figured I would fit the job pretty well. He must have been right, since I ended up working there for nearly 10 years."
  4. Sweet, Michael (October 2, 2014). Writing Interactive Music for Video Games: A Composer's Guide. Addison-Wesley Professional. p. 99. ISBN   978-0321961587. Frustrated with the state of music in games at the time, two composers at LucasArts Peter MccConnell and Michal Land created one of the first adaptive music systems, called iMuse. iMuse (Interactive MUsic Streaming Engine) let composers insert branch and loop markers into a sequence that would allow the music to change based on the decisions of the player. The iMuse engine was one of the first significant contributions to interactive music for video games. Its importance in shaping many of the techniques that you see in video games today cannot be overemphasized. (...)
  5. Lucasdelirium.it gives an interview to Peter McConnell. [ permanent dead link ]
  6. Diaz, Ana (June 13, 2021). "Psychonauts 2 finally gets a release date". Polygon . Retrieved August 2, 2021.
  7. "25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards Finalists Revealed". Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
  8. "Intersect (2020)". FilmAffinity. 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2022.
  9. http://www.petermc.com/ [ bare URL ]

Further reading