Marty O'Donnell - The man behind the Halo Music

Posted By: tina10 | Dec 17th, 2009 @ 9:30 AM | 47,172 Views | 19 Comments

Marty O Donnell is the Man behind the Halo Soundtracks but he is so much more and this is by far one of my favorite interviews since I have been at Microsoft.  I hope you enjoy. 

Martin "Marty" O'Donnell (born May 1, 1955)is an award-winning American composer known for his work on video game developer Bungie's series, such as Myth, Oni, and most predominately Halo. O'Donnell collaborates with his musical colleague Michael Salvatori for many of the scores; he has also directed voice talent and sound design for the Halo trilogy, and is currently Bungie's Audio Lead.

O'Donnell began his music career writing television and radio jingles as well as scoring for radio and film. O'Donnell moved to composing video game music when his company, TotalAudio, did the sound design for the 1997 title Riven. After producing the music for Myth II, Bungie contracted O'Donnell to work on their other projects, including Oni and the code-named project that would become Halo: Combat Evolved. O'Donnell ended up joining the Bungie staff only ten days before the studio was bought by Microsoft, and has been the audio director for all Bungie projects since.

O'Donnell's score to the Halo trilogy has been called iconic, and the commercial soundtrack release of the music to Halo 2 became the best-selling video game soundtrack of all time. His most recently released work is the music for Halo 3: ODST, a departure from his previous work for the series. The two-disc soundtrack was released September 22, 2009.

Source: Wikipedia
Rating:
3
0
#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 2:00 AM
CreamFilling512
CreamFilling512

There were actually a couple songs in Halo that reminded me of Myst and Riven, I think it was mostly some of the samples that are used, now I see I wasn't crazy. Smiley

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 3:06 AM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

Great, I was afraid this had fallen by the wayside. Good stuff.

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 8:19 AM
freefly
freefly

That was nice and refreshing interview...

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 9:19 AM
exoteric
exoteric
embarassingly sequential

I've always been fascinated with soundtracks and scores and this one sounds good. And a very rare kind of interview for Channel 9.

 

Speaking of Myth. The first time I heard of that was here:

 

 

C64 version starts at 5:00.

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 9:23 AM
davidfuchs
davidfuchs

I would ask that you please remove the summary about O'Donnell attached to this post. It is copied verbatim from Wikipedia's lead on O'Donnell (original), against licensing requirements that require attribution.

 

David Fuchs

Systems Operator, Wikipedia

 

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 11:04 AM
exoteric
exoteric
embarassingly sequential

A simpler solution would be to stick a "Source: Wikipedia" at the end, no?

First time I've seen Wikipedia police!

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 12:06 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change

We have added credit to Wikipedia and marked the description as verbatim (using italics and a link to the source text on wikipedia). Is this OK?
C

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 12:36 PM
CreamFilling512
CreamFilling512

Hah yeah, that's ridiculous, just go and edit the wikipedia article instead lol.

#Dec 17th, 2009 @ 2:26 PM
necro2607
necro2607
seven is darker

Exoteric,  that "Myth" video you posted has nothing to do with Myth - The Fallen Lords from Bungie.  Wink  Completely different stuff. The one you posted is a much older game from 1989 called "Myth - History In The Making" for Commodore 64, Amiga and the like, which neither Bungie nor Marty O'Donnell had anything to do with. Wink  Myth - The Fallen Lords (and its sequels) came out in 1997 and later.

Microsoft Communities