The acclaimed composer of classic videogame tunes reflects on his two decades at Rare, during which time he composed the soundtracks for dozens of hit games, including Wizards & Warriors, Solar Jetman, Battletoads and Donkey Kong Country

Words by Lewis Packwood

How did you get into music, David?

We lived in a house in Leicester, and my brother was having piano lessons. I’d hear my brother playing stuff, and then I’d just wander across to the piano and start working stuff out myself. I found that I could listen to something and repeat it on the piano. Then writing music really happened a few years later when I got an acoustic guitar. I still don’t know what I’m doing on an acoustic guitar, I just play it completely by ear. I only know a few chords, but I do play it enough to be able to compose bits of music on. Once I picked up that guitar and started jamming with it, that started the compositions off.

Did you start playing other instruments?

When I was about 13 or 14 I was playing trumpet and cornet in a brass band, and flugelhorn as well. Then I got myself a drum kit. I still have a drum kit. I’m not the best drummer, but there’s something very organic about thrashing drums which I think all humans need to do. It’s good for anger management!

Were you into games when you were growing up?

I think my first game was probably Pong on the Atari when I was three or something, and there were probably a couple more. But really it was Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo Entertainment System. When I started working for what was to become Rare (at the time, they were called Ultimate Play The Game) they just sat me in front of Mario on a CRT screen and said, get on and play this for a few weeks.

How did you end up working at Rare?

When I first met Tim and Chris [Stamper], I was working in a music store. I sold them some keyboards, and they hired me at the same time. They’d just managed to get Slalom working, which was their first game on the NES. So that’s when I started working for them on a freelance basis.

Had you done any composition by that point?

Yes, I had. MIDI was a new thing, and because I was working in a music shop, it had given me the opportunity to use the modern gear, connect it altogether, and start writing stuff whilst I was working. So not only was I selling keyboards, I was also writing my own stuff.

And it was sheer chance that the Stamper brothers walked in?

I guess so. But that’s life, isn’t it?

What do you remember about working with the NES?

It was like a doorbell, really: there’s three channels and a noise or drum channel. You’ve got a triangle wave – which in the high end, it sounds like an owl hooting, and in the low end, it sounds fuzzy because it was a very basic 8-bit system – and there were two square waves. So it was very limited, and it was quite hard to get a tune out of it. It took me several years of working pretty much every day to make it sound good. But it was a good education. If you can get an 8-bit system to sound decent, then everything else after that is a joy.

What was it like working at Rare in those early days?