Chris Huelsbeck

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Chris Hülsbeck at the Next Level Conference in Cologne (2011)

Christopher "Chris" Hülsbeck (born March 2, 1968 in Kassel ) is a musician known primarily from the home computer sector . Due to his increasingly international work, he has recently appeared under the name of Chris Huelsbeck .

Life

With 12 years Hülsbeck got his first instrument (a home organ ), one year later, a percussion and with 15 years its first MIDI - synthesizer . Around the same time he began to be interested in the home computer. The first success was in 1986 the song "Shades" on the Commodore 64 , which took first place in a competition organized by the computer magazine 64'er . A few months later, his sound monitor was the "listing of the month", also in '64 magazine. Hülsbeck already had a good reputation in the scene in 1984. The Zündfunks editorial team in Munich invited him to one of the first live computer broadcasts in the studio, where he extracted a fourth voice from the C64 home computer, which was a hack on a three-part instrument.

After these initial successes, Hülsbeck became a permanent employee of Rainbow Arts , for whom he wrote songs for the games Jinks , Bad Cat , To Be on Top (a computer game completely devised and implemented by Chris Hülsbeck ), Katakis and The Great Giana Sisters . He was soon given the nickname “Sound Magician” by gaming magazines. In 1988/89 he published the music program TFMX for the Commodore Amiga together with Peter Thierolf .

From 1989 Hülsbeck worked mainly for the Amiga (including the soundtracks for Grand Monster Slam and X-Out as well as the well-known implementation of Ramiro Vaca's original music for "Rock 'n' Roll"). In 1990 his career took off with the music for the game Turrican ; Above all, his music for Turrican 2 quickly achieved cult status in the game scene. For example, he was one of the first to generate five voices on the normally 3-part Commodore 64 or to extract seven voices from the normally 4-part Amiga. Turrican and Turrican 2 are therefore among the sound engineering masterpieces of the home computer scene. He was also responsible for the 1991 Amiga implementation of the classic The Secret of Monkey Island .

At the end of 1990 Chris Hülsbeck founded the company AUDIOS (Art Under Design, Imaginations Of Sound) and their sub-label KAIKO together with Frank Matzke and Peter Thierolf . In 1991, Gem'X and Apidya, two game hits, and “Software Manager”, a fun simulation under the Kaiko label, were released. In the same year, Hülsbeck's first audio CD, "Shades", was released under the AUDIOS label.

Kaiko was dissolved in 1993 due to over-indebtedness. At the same time, Hülsbeck reduced the work on the Amiga and produced more and more for a wide variety of systems: From 1993 to 1998, Hülsbeck u. a. to Turrican 3: Payment Day , Jim Power , Tunnel B1 , Ballblazer Champions for companies like Software 2000 , Factor 5 and LucasArts .

In 1997 he founded his own music label called synSONIQ Records in order to offer a professional marketing channel not only for his own works, but for game music in general. To this day, synSONIQ successfully sells soundtracks for both classics and new releases on the games market. By 1998 he had produced eight soundtrack CDs and two normal audio CDs.

Also in 1998 he moved to the USA and worked there for Factor 5, LucasArts, Nintendo and other companies.

In 2003, music from Hülsbeck's Apidya was played live by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra during the opening concert of the Games Convention (game music concert ) in Leipzig . In the following years, music from the Turrican project and Giana Sisters with the FILMharmonic Orchestra from Prague under the direction of Andy Brick were performed in 2004 .

His music from Apidya also appeared at the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony to be performed in Stockholm in June 2006, the first world tour with game music. The music was performed by the Stockholm Kungliga Filharmoniska Orkestern under the direction of Arnold Roth. Chris Hülsbeck was among the guests. At the fourth opening concert of the Games Convention, a suite from Turrican 3 was performed as a piano solo. An orchestral version of music from Turrican 2 was performed at the 2007 concert , and Chris Hülsbeck presented his new album “Number Nine”.

On August 23, 2008 the concert "Symphonic Shades - Hülsbeck in Concert" took place in Cologne under the direction of Grammy Award winner Arnold Roth. More than 120 musicians from the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne and the FILMharmonisches Choir Prague performed works by Chris Hülsbeck in front of a sold-out hall in the Funkhaus Wallrafplatz . This event was broadcast live on the radio on WDR4 and on the Internet as the world's first game music concert . Under the personal guidance of Chris Hülsbeck, the arrangements by Jonne Valtonen, Yūzō Koshiro and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi were implemented for orchestra and choir. The title “Caravan of Elephants”, composed by Hülsbeck, also celebrated its world premiere .

In the past few years Chris Hülsbeck worked on a "Turrican Anthology", a completely new recording (partly with orchestral support) of the Turrican soundtrack on four CDs. To realize this project, Hülsbeck estimated a sum of 75,000 US dollars, which was raised by fans and supporters in less than two weeks with the help of the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com . The fundraiser ended on June 3, 2012 with total proceeds of over $ 200,000, making it the third most successful music project at the time. The limited anthology was to appear at the end of 2012 exclusively for the project's 2,600 financial supporters and was limited to 2,000 CD boxes and 150 vinyl versions. In January 2013, however, Hülsbeck was still working on the third CD. In April 2013 he worked with guest musicians such as Vince DiCola and Yūzō Koshiro on the fourth CD. On November 27th, the download version for Kickstarter supporters was released for US $ 50. Further commercial marketing of the CDs has so far been ruled out; however, the bundle can be purchased as a download.

Private life

Hülsbeck has been married to Tracy Sheppard since 2008. He lives and works in a motorhome with which he travels across the United States.

Discography (selection)

Own productions:

Participations:

  • 1994: Native Vision - Easy life (Single)
  • 1998: Peanuts feat. Doc. Schneider - Life Cheats (Single)
  • 2000: Merregnon Soundtrack - Volume 1
  • 2000: collage
  • 2000: Bridge from the past to the future
  • 2001: Chris Huelsbeck in the Mix
  • 2002: Immortal 2
  • 2004: Merregnon Soundtrack - Volume 2
  • 2006: Immortal 3
  • 2010: Sound of Games
  • 2012: Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - Original Soundtrack (with Fabian Del Priore )
  • 2016: Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project Soundtrack

Current projects

  • ZombieSmash! for iPhone
  • R-Type for iPhone
  • Star Trek: Infinite Space for PC (MMORPG)
  • Space advice: Xplode!
  • Turrican-Anthology (new recording of the Turrican soundtrack on 3–4 CDs)
  • Project Giana

Web links

Commons : Chris Hülsbeck  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 64er, June 1986 edition, Über den Wolken… , pp. 173–176
  2. ↑ Chris Hülsbeck about Turrican, Great Giana Sisters and Homebrew on the Commodore Amiga. In: Interview at digitalista.de. February 11, 2015, accessed November 21, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Chris Hülsbeck: Turrican Anthology Project. In: Kickstarter.com . April 15, 2012, Retrieved November 27, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Turrican Soundtrack Anthology for $ 75,000. In: Golem.de . April 17, 2012, accessed November 27, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Kickstarter campaign successful. In: 4players.de. April 27, 2012, accessed November 3, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Chris Hülsbeck: Turrican Soundtrack Anthology by Chris Huelsbeck
  7. ↑ Chris Hülsbeck: Turrican Soundtrack Anthology Update 22 , kickstarter.com, January 28, 2013, accessed February 3, 2013
  8. ↑ Chris Hülsbeck: Special surprise guest artist revealed! , kickstarter.com, April 20, 2013, accessed May 30, 2013
  9. ↑ Turrican Soundtrack Anthology: Download version ready , gamersglobal.de, November 27, 2013, accessed on December 1, 2013
  10. ^ Daniel Sterner: Talk: Chris Hülsbeck. In: Interview at elektronauts.com. November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 13, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Star Trek - Infinite Space: Chris Hülsbeck writes the music from February 18, 2011 at computerbild.de , accessed on May 12, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Hülsbeck, Chris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hülsbeck, Christopher (real name); Huelsbeck, Chris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German game developer and musician
DATE OF BIRTH March 2nd, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Kassel , Germany