CORE DESIGN SCORES WITH HERDY GERDY

Herdy Gerdy is a unique blend of animated fantasy adventure and mind-numbing puzzle-solving that takes the player on a magical journey through beautifully rendered landscapes in order to rescue the Acorn of Power from a ruthless evil dictator. Not only did developers Core Design break new ground with Herdy Gerdy, unitising the PS2 awesome terrain-based capabilities, but scored an amazing soundtrack from original Tomb Raider composers Peter Connelly and Martin Iveson. Both stopped by to give us an insight on the Herdy Gerdy phenomena.

Who are the artists responsible for scoring the music from Herdy Gerdy ?

Peter Connelly and Martin Iveson. Martin has worked at Core Design for over eleven years and has worked on many projects including Fighting Force, Eden, Jaguar XJ220, Ninja, Tomb Raider and Thunderhawk on various platforms. Peter has worked for Core Design since 1998 and has worked on the last three Tomb Raider installments. Prior to working for Core, Peter has worked for several other companies full-time and freelence.

What were your influences when composing the soundtrack ?

We both work for Core Design full-time and were mainly influenced by classic cartoons, but it needed a more organic feel. The general style of the game gave us a lot of inspiration. Most of the music needed to be subtle. We had a different theme for just about every level and each theme needed a flute melody that would work with main theme for when Gerdy played his flute. We worked closely with the level designers just to make sure what we were doing was right.

Hergy Gerdy is indeed a unique video-game. How did you go about scoring such a unique soundtrack ?

Peter initially wrote the title tune as a collage of ideas for the game, but it seemed to work as a whole, so we just kept it like it was. Peter: "I started of with a simple melody and the rest fell into place". The in-game music was written with influence from each level. We would load up a level on our PS2 dev kits, walk round and find inspiration from this.

How were the tracks designed, was the composition totally in-house ?

Everything was done in-house including FMV and Sound Effects. We'd mess around with various sounds, lay down some ideas then build from that.

What hardware/software did you use ?

Hardware: Sound/Instruments - Roland XV3080 (fully expanded), Roland JV1080 (fully expanded), Akai S3000XL, Korg Trinity (V3 Pro), Novation Supernova, Waldof Microwave XT. Outboard/FX - TC Electronic M2000, TC Electronic Fireworx, TC Electronic Finalizer, TL Audio Valve Compressor, TL Audio Valve EQ, Ensoniq DP/4. Mixing Console - Soundcraft GHOST (56 Channel). Software: We used Cubase VST 5 to write the music, Soundforge 5 to edit sounds/sound effects, Vegas Audio to edit FMV's.

What are you next projects ?

Our next project is Tomb Raider - Angel of Darkness for PS2 and PC.