David Javelosa

From Sega Retro

DavidJavelosa.png
David Javelosa
Place of birth: San Jose, California, United States
Employment history:
Sega of America[1] (1992[2] – 1994[1])
Yamaha[1] (1999-01[1] – 2001-08[1])
Role(s): Audio Director[1], Sound Programmer[3], Composer
Education: San Jose State University (1972-1976; BA Electronic Music)[3], California Institute of the Arts (1989-1991; MFA Composition - Computer Music)[3]

David "Dave" Javelosa is an American musician and former Sega of America audio director and sound programmer.[1] He first began working with Sega as a contractual consultant in 1990[2], and would eventually be directly hired in 1992[1], where he would serve as Senior Music Designer for a number of the company's first-party titles[3] (including those in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise). His responsibilities covered all aspects of music and audio production, supervision, creative support, and technology[2], the managing and hiring of musical talent, and the support of Sega-licensed developers with audio creation tools.[4] He also composed music for the Sega Channel, as well as the first revision of the North American Sega CD BIOS.[5][6]

After departing Sega in 1994[1] and leaving his consultant position two years later[2], he remained active in the game industry as a freelance composer and audio director, and eventually became a Professor of Interactive Media at Santa Monica College in September 2001 - a position he remains in to this day.[1] He also runs the independent music label Hyperspace Communications, which specializes in releasing vintage electronic music on vinyl record.[4][7]

Career

David Javelosa studied at both San Jose State University and the California Institute of the Arts, the latter of which saw him studying alongside Morton Subotnick, David Rosenboom, and other notable composers. During his youth, he was an active musician, establishing the New Wave band Los Microwaves[8], as well as acting as a new media artist for electronic music technology and performance art.

Sometime in the early 1990s, Javelosa was first approached by his friend and fellow musician Alex Rudis, who was then working with Atari, Epyx, and Sega of America. Rudis was overwhelmed with all the projects he can taken on, and could not find another musician that had the cross section of skills for creating game audio at the time. In particular, Rudis knew that Javelosa could program FM-based synthesizers and edit MIDI in a command line editor, and reached out to him for assistance: first introducing Javelosa to the video game industry, and to Sega.

Sega of America

Javelosa famously composed the background music for the first revision of the Sega CD.

Javelosa first began working with Sega of America as a contractual consultant in 1990[2], where his first job was to test the feasibility of an early audio tool for the Sega Genesis, the Sega Music Development System. He and others prototyped a demo for the tool, but it was found to be too inconvenient to be widely used, and the project was dropped.[4] Following this, Javelosa was asked to provide support for a few in-development games, and was flown by Ed Annunziata from Los Angeles to Redwood City to work with the producer on the weekends (as Javelosa was still completing his MFA degree at the California Institute of the Arts at the time).[4]

After about two years consulting for the company, and as he was finishing his last semester of university[4], he was hired for a full-time position in 1994[1], where he would serve as Senior Music Designer for a number of the company's first-party titles.[3] He was responsible for supporting first and third-party game developers with both tools and talent, including the hiring of sound programmer Brian Coburn, programmer Tom Miley, musician Spencer Nilsen, and audio engineer Barry Blum. With the example of Miley, all of these developers also doubled as composers, creating music for the company's games. In some occasions, Javelosa would recommend artists from his own references, while other times, producers would find their own talent and Javelosa's audio group would support them with the needed development tools. Reportedly, Sega of America's musicians were frequently credited only for sound programming, as in Javelosa's own words, "it's only because the producers looked at our sound tools as middle-ware for the programmers. We had to make music and implement with the engineers."[4]

Alongside his work managing the music production of Sega's Western game output (including those developed both in-house and externally[2]), Javelosa produced the music for software like the Sega Channel and the first revision of the Sega CD's BIOS.[5][6] During this time, he also found himself acting as a liaison between Sega of America and its two biggest co-branches, Sega of Japan and Sega Europe.[2]

Javelosa was also one of the primary musicians to work on the Sega Channel. First approached by a Sega of America producer sometime in 1993, he was commissioned to compose an initial set of Genesis tracks in the GEMS audio driver. The project continued into 1994, when Javelosa departed his full-time role with the company. Still, he remained in an advisory role until 1996[2], during which time he was contracted to compose a few more tracks for the Sega Channel - such as the introduction and menu screens). While John Baker and Howard Drossin are generally credited with composing its soundtrack, Javelosa states he created a much larger majority of the service's final music than previously believed.[4] Notably, the track "Think Tank/The Arcade" was originally composed by Javelosa's band Los Microwaves for their 1981 LP Life After Breakfast and remixed for the project.[4]

DJ Demo Reel

Shortly before departing Sega of America in 1994, Javelosa worked with Developer Technical Support's Kenneth Chao to produce an internal demonstration Mega Drive cartridge which would serve as an audio resume of the musician's output from his three years with Sega. Known as the DJ Demo Reel, it is a modified version of the GEMS Module Test Program with its modules containing a showcase of Javelosa's GEMS work, and features unreleased music composed for games like Baby Boom[9], Iron Hammer[9], and Sonic the Hedgehog 2[10][9], among others.[11] After leaving his formal employment position with the company later that year, he would remain working as a contractual consultant for Sega until 1996.[2]

Javelosa retained his DJ Demo Reel cartridge following his time with Sega, and later reused its contents for teaching material once he began his teaching career. During one of his 2019 courses at Santa Monica College, a student recognized the importance of said material[11] and eventually persuaded him to upload a recording of the cartridge's ROM to YouTube that May.[9] This, along with Javelosa's active presence in the video's comment section, revealed new information related to a number of Sega of America's more notable projects.

Later career

Javelosa began educating in the early 1990s, teaching at venues such as San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Center and University of California, Los Angeles's Entertainment Studies Program, among others.[12] He has also authored a number of articles on electronic music and art, and published an interactive book/CD-ROM in 1997 titled Sound and Music for Multimedia.[12]

Javelosa currently serves as a full time Professor of Interactive Media in the Design Technology Department at Santa Monica College’s Academy of Entertainment and Technology[1], where he also founded a dedicated game development program in the Fall of 2004.[12] Javelosa also runs the independent music label Hyperspace Communications, which specializes in releasing vintage electronic music on vinyl record.[4][7]

Production history

Hardware

Interviews

Photographs

Main article: Photos of David Javelosa

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-javelosa-a6a1171/details/experience/
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 http://javelosa.com/DJ/consulting.htm (Wayback Machine: 2022-08-16 18:34)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-javelosa-a6a1171/
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 [Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas] Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Interview: David Javelosa (2023-11-12) by Alexander Rojas" defined multiple times with different content
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 http://javelosa.com/DJ/production.htm (Wayback Machine: 2022-12-25 00:07)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKLKquCbzJ4 (Ghostarchive)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 https://www.facebook.com/HyperspaceCommunications/
  8. ↑ http://javelosa.com/DJ/Los_microwaves.htm (Wayback Machine: 2023-05-28 20:23)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJLkkOxRP8Y (Ghostarchive)
  10. ↑ Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit)/Development#Music
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 https://sonicretro.org/2019/05/15/david-javelosa-sonic-and-sega-music-demo-tracks-surface-online/ (Wayback Machine: 2023-03-26 08:15)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 http://javelosa.com/DJ/edupub.htm (Wayback Machine: 2022-08-16 18:31)
  13. ↑ File:Spider-Man vs the Kingpin MD credits.pdf
  14. ↑ File:Mario Lemieux Hockey MD US Manual.pdf, page 16
  15. ↑ File:Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine MD credits.pdf
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 File:Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine SMS credits.pdf
  17. ↑ File:SonicSpinball MD US manual.pdf, page 21
  18. ↑ File:Streets of Rage 3 MD credits.pdf
  19. ↑ File:Jurassic Park MCD credits.pdf
  20. ↑ File:Pocahontas MD credits.pdf
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