Daggerfall's other composer found?
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:16 pm
Hey everyone, I think I may have found Daggerfall's uncredited co-composer! I made an account just to share the results of my search, so please bear with me if I fail to adhere to any unspoken forum etiquette I don't know about.
I was looking into the work that Eric Heberling put into Daggerfall's soundtrack in the hopes of getting some inspiration for a personal project of my own. In my googling, I stumbled upon a few people talking about the fact that Daggerfall had a second composer who worked beside Heberling, a notion sourced from this old 2011 interview with the man himself:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Eric_H ... _Interview
In the interview, Heberling states the following:
"Bethesda Softworks had also used another composer, who worked for a company they owned. We never had any contact, I don't even know his name. My compositions are usually the ones with a descriptive name ("sunny day", "dungeon", etc.), while his were just numbered."
I almost couldn't believe it -- that would mean half of the soundtrack has gone uncredited all these years! So I did what anyone going mad from a mind-numbing data entry job would do with their free time: I started digging.
The only lead I had was Heberling's reference to Bethesda having owned another company, so I looked into what acquisitions they had made prior to Daggerfall's release. I found only one, acquired in 1995: Flashpoint Productions, the studio behind games like "Noctropolis" and "Golf Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples" (a real mouthful!), the soundtracks of which were composed by Ron Saltmarsh and Andy Warr.
Given that it can be tricky to track people down online, I started my search from the top. I asked the folks at OnceLost Games (which, if anyone is unaware, is headed by ex-Daggerfall developers) if they had any information on this mystery composer, but they weren't sure themselves. I next reached out to the next best lead: Flashpoint president Brent Erickson, who very promptly and helpfully directed me to Ron Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh had this to say:
With my leads immediately narrowed down considerably, I was ready to just start e-mailing every Andy Warr I could find ... but as luck would have it, looking up "Andy Warr composer" on Google immediately hits you with seven results for the same guy. I opened up his website at andywarr dot com, filled out the contact form, and soon enough I received a reply:
I sent a follow-up asking if I had permission to share my findings with the community:
...And that brings me to the making of this thread!
I figure some people will be skeptical as to whether or not I have the right person, but I have no reason to doubt Warr's claim. He is open to questions if anyone wishes to dig for further details... just please try not to dogpile the poor guy
Ultimately, all I care about is finally having a name to put to the music that underscored so much of my youth, even if I only realized it was lacking half the proper credit a few weeks ago -- plus, the search for this sort of thing is just fun. It's shocking how many mysteries in this world come down to a simple case of "no one thought to ask"!
I was looking into the work that Eric Heberling put into Daggerfall's soundtrack in the hopes of getting some inspiration for a personal project of my own. In my googling, I stumbled upon a few people talking about the fact that Daggerfall had a second composer who worked beside Heberling, a notion sourced from this old 2011 interview with the man himself:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Eric_H ... _Interview
In the interview, Heberling states the following:
"Bethesda Softworks had also used another composer, who worked for a company they owned. We never had any contact, I don't even know his name. My compositions are usually the ones with a descriptive name ("sunny day", "dungeon", etc.), while his were just numbered."
I almost couldn't believe it -- that would mean half of the soundtrack has gone uncredited all these years! So I did what anyone going mad from a mind-numbing data entry job would do with their free time: I started digging.
The only lead I had was Heberling's reference to Bethesda having owned another company, so I looked into what acquisitions they had made prior to Daggerfall's release. I found only one, acquired in 1995: Flashpoint Productions, the studio behind games like "Noctropolis" and "Golf Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples" (a real mouthful!), the soundtracks of which were composed by Ron Saltmarsh and Andy Warr.
Given that it can be tricky to track people down online, I started my search from the top. I asked the folks at OnceLost Games (which, if anyone is unaware, is headed by ex-Daggerfall developers) if they had any information on this mystery composer, but they weren't sure themselves. I next reached out to the next best lead: Flashpoint president Brent Erickson, who very promptly and helpfully directed me to Ron Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh had this to say:
With my leads immediately narrowed down considerably, I was ready to just start e-mailing every Andy Warr I could find ... but as luck would have it, looking up "Andy Warr composer" on Google immediately hits you with seven results for the same guy. I opened up his website at andywarr dot com, filled out the contact form, and soon enough I received a reply:
I sent a follow-up asking if I had permission to share my findings with the community:
...And that brings me to the making of this thread!
I figure some people will be skeptical as to whether or not I have the right person, but I have no reason to doubt Warr's claim. He is open to questions if anyone wishes to dig for further details... just please try not to dogpile the poor guy
Ultimately, all I care about is finally having a name to put to the music that underscored so much of my youth, even if I only realized it was lacking half the proper credit a few weeks ago -- plus, the search for this sort of thing is just fun. It's shocking how many mysteries in this world come down to a simple case of "no one thought to ask"!