Tim Follin
Timothy John Follin | ||||||||||
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Tim Follin is a British musician who has been renowned for his computer music. He is also the brother of Geoff Follin, another video game musician.
Tim did not have prior music training before starting his music career. He attended the Liverpool Sandown Music College at age 15, but dropped out to start his video game music career at Insight Studios. He was asked by his brother Geoff to help compose game music. Tim had never used a computer before, but with the help of his brother, Tim began creating music and sound together.
Later, Tim and his brother moved on to Software Creations and composed the music to a vast majority of their video games, including all of their NES titles. During Software Creations' SNES and Genesis development, the Follins would usually compose the music to the SNES versions while Tony Williams converted their compositions to the Genesis.
Follin says he isn't too fond of his game music because it didn't fit with the theme of the game. Tim also said that he isn't much of a gamer and just likes to compose music.
Some of Tim's prominent works include Plok, Solstice, Treasure Master, Rock 'N Roll Racing, and many others.
Music Composition
Follin used drivers written by Stephen Ruddy for his early music on the Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, C64, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System, NES, and ZX Spectrum. To utilize these drivers, Follin had to take his music and convert it to hexadecimal representations of the notes. For SNES music, Follin used a sound driver written by Mike Webb. The SNES instruments were from either a Korg M1 or Korg Wavestation, and possibly other keyboards.
GEN
According to Tim, for Time Trax, he used a sound driver written by Dean Belfield. Unfortunately, this was the only game he ever composed on the Genesis, so the driver was never used again.
Gameography
Picture Gallery
Links
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,56818/ - Mobygames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Follin - Wikipedia.
- youtube.com/watch?v=bQkicZOG-Z4 - Video Interview.
- youtube.com/watch?v=894_PNqBkx4 - Interview about Solstice (NES).