# The Pinball Show Interviews Ep 7: Bob Baffy, Sound Designer/Engineer **Source:** The Pinball Network **Type:** video **Published:** 2022-03-03 **Duration:** 81m 54s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGG8OyVYsqw --- ## Analysis Bob Baffey, a veteran video game audio engineer with 20+ years experience across Game Boy Color, PS1-4, and other platforms, discusses his transition into pinball sound design at Stern Pinball. He details his work on music-themed games (KISS, Aerosmith, Deadpool, Rush, Led Zeppelin) and explains the technical and creative challenges of integrating dynamic audio systems, managing band feedback, and mixing music pinball machines where licensed tracks must coexist with callouts and effects. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Bob Baffey has worked in the video game industry for over 20 years, starting on Game Boy Color and working across Super Nintendo, PS1-4, and other platforms. — _Baffey directly states this in his introduction_ - [HIGH] Tanya (co-creator of Rock Band Unplugged) brought Baffey to Stern to help implement dynamic, musically-aware audio systems in pinball machines. — _Baffey explains Tanya's vision and how their prior collaboration led to the Stern work_ - [HIGH] KISS was Baffey's first pinball title and served as a 'trial by fire' while learning pinball sound design. — _Direct statement from Baffey_ - [HIGH] Aerosmith was the first Stern pinball Baffey worked on that featured an LED screen, creating new technical challenges. — _Baffey notes this was a changeover from KISS and involved 'growing pains' with new hardware_ - [HIGH] Brendan Small delivered nearly-final voice recording files for Aerosmith, requiring minimal post-production from Baffey. — _Baffey describes Small's professionalism and studio capabilities_ - [HIGH] Music-themed pinball machines are harder to audio-mix than non-music games because licensed tracks must coexist with alerts and callouts without drowning the music. — _Baffey's direct assessment of the challenge_ - [MEDIUM] Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were 'surprisingly hands-off' on KISS audio, primarily caring about visual representation. — _Baffey characterizes this as 'third-person information' and notes the common thread is concerns about artwork_ - [HIGH] Jimmy Page's camp provided critical feedback on a Led Zeppelin demo mix, correctly identifying that it 'wasn't mixed right.' — _Baffey recounts this feedback during Led Zeppelin development_ ### Notable Quotes > "I was working with Lani and you know we were developing this system where I could take wave files and generate data that we needed to tell the machine when certain musical events happened but I was also learning the beginning the language of pinball and pinball sound." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~28:00 > _Describes the foundational challenge of translating his video game audio expertise to pinball's unique constraints_ > "The priority is the music there but yes when you have a sound that you want kind of to use as a signal and cut through you've got to be careful the way you design it." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~52:00 > _Core principle for music pinball audio design: music first, alerts must be surgical_ > "There's a lot of revisions and a lot of changes that way but the focus always is and I think always should be on kind of putting the the music first and the band first." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~53:00 > _Reiterates design philosophy prioritizing licensed music over gameplay audio_ > "Jimmy Page's camp said this isn't mixed right... I was like oh my god he picked that out immediately and I was bummed for a little bit and then I thought no I don't have to tell anybody what happened I can just say yeah I worked with Jimmy Page he gave me exactly some good feedback." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~61:00 > _Anecdote illustrating how even legendary producers notice audio mixing details in pinball_ > "I did the little eight bit music for it and then when the uh the voice says ninja apocalypse that's me so uh I just wanted to get more than just a uh you know just sound in there." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~72:00 > _Shows Baffey's creative involvement goes beyond engineering—he performs voice work for special content_ > "They have a whole fully stage where they were doing specific zombie sounds for the game. And they went to Prague, I believe, and recorded orchestration. I couldn't make it, which I'm still kicking myself." > — **Bob Baffey**, ~11:00 > _Reflects on working with Sony Santa Monica's resources on MediEvil remake, emphasizing scale of AAA production_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Bob Baffey | person | Video game audio engineer and sound designer with 20+ years experience; now works as sound engineer at Stern Pinball on music-themed titles | | Stern Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer employing Baffey; produces music-licensed pinball machines including KISS, Aerosmith, Deadpool, Rush, Led Zeppelin | | Tanya Kleiss | person | Audio systems engineer at Stern Pinball; recruited Baffey from video game industry; collaborated with him on Rock Band Unplugged; pioneered dynamic, musically-aware audio systems for pinball | | Digital Eclipse | company | Video game company where Baffey worked on emulation projects and collections for companies like Midway and Konami; later rebooted as 'museum quality' publisher working with Capcom and Konami | | Brendan Small | person | Voice actor and sound designer who provided voice work and audio for Aerosmith pinball; known for comedy work (Metalocalypse); delivered professional-quality recordings requiring minimal post-production | | Jimmy Page | person | Led Zeppelin guitarist whose camp provided critical audio feedback on Led Zeppelin pinball demo; known for session work and rapid album mixing capabilities | | Gene Simmons | person | KISS bassist; hands-off on audio decisions for KISS pinball, primarily concerned with artwork representation | | Paul Stanley | person | KISS guitarist; hands-off on audio decisions for KISS pinball, primarily concerned with artwork representation | | Harmonix | company | Music game developer who approached Baffey's company (Backbone Entertainment) to develop handheld version of Rock Band for PlayStation Portable | | Backbone Entertainment | company | Video game company where Baffey worked on Rock Band Unplugged PSP port; worked with Konami on original titles | | Sony Santa Monica Studio | company | AAA game development studio that worked with Baffey on MediEvil remake; recorded full orchestra in Prague; full audio department support | | Microsoft | company | Tech company that acquired Activision; Baffey has worked on Microsoft projects and notes generally positive employee treatment in game division | | Activision | company | Game publisher acquired by Microsoft; Baffey worked on Activision projects; company faced internal culture issues prior to acquisition | | KISS (pinball machine) | game | First music-themed pinball machine Baffey worked on at Stern; served as learning experience; band members hands-off on audio, focused on artwork | | Aerosmith (pinball machine) | game | Second Stern music pinball title Baffey worked on; first to feature LED screen; featured Brendan Small voice work | | Deadpool (pinball machine) | game | Stern pinball machine with 8-bit and 16-bit audio aesthetic; Baffey came in late on project; did voice work for 'Ninja Apocalypse' stinger; reportedly popular seller | | Rush (pinball machine) | game | Music-themed Stern pinball machine; mentioned as part of Baffey's recent work on music-licensed titles | | Led Zeppelin (pinball machine) | game | Stern music pinball with dynamic audio awareness added; featured pitch-aware sound effects designed to match song keys; received feedback from Jimmy Page's camp | | Matt Morrison | person | Host of The Pinball Show interview series; conducted this interview with Bob Baffey | | Rock Band Unplugged | game | PlayStation Portable music game where Baffey worked on audio systems; collaboration with Harmonix and Tanya Kleiss | | The Pinball Show | organization | Interview podcast series by The Pinball Network; episode 7 features Bob Baffey | | The Pinball Network | organization | Media platform hosting The Pinball Show interview series | ### Topics - **Primary:** Video game audio engineering and career transition to pinball, Dynamic, musically-aware audio systems in pinball, Music pinball machine design challenges (KISS, Aerosmith, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Deadpool), Voice acting and Brendan Small collaboration on Aerosmith - **Secondary:** IP holder feedback and artist approval processes, Rock Band and music game history, AAA video game production (Sony, God of War, MediEvil) - **Mentioned:** Microsoft/Activision acquisition and industry consolidation ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.8) — Baffey is enthusiastic about his work at Stern and positive about collaborations with bands and talented teams. He speaks fondly of his video game background and the cross-pollination of skills. Some mild frustration about technical challenges and remorse about missing the Prague orchestra recording session, but overall tone is appreciative and excited about the pinball work. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Stern Pinball shares work-in-progress whitewood machines with audio engineers for iterative mixing and real-world auditioning in studio environments (confidence: high) — Baffey describes receiving whitewoods from Stern, building from source, testing in his studio at different volumes, moving machines to test acoustics - **[design_philosophy]** Music-themed pinball machines prioritize licensed music over callouts and effects; sound design must be surgical to avoid drowning the band's songs (confidence: high) — Baffey consistently emphasizes that 'the focus always is and I think always should be on kind of putting the the music first and the band first' - **[licensing_signal]** Band/artist approval processes for pinball machines focus primarily on visual artwork representation rather than audio; exceptions exist (Jimmy Page's camp providing mixing feedback) (confidence: medium) — Baffey notes Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and KISS were 'surprisingly hands-off' on audio, concerned with artwork; contrasts with Jimmy Page's detailed mixing feedback on Led Zeppelin - **[personnel_signal]** Bob Baffey transitioned from veteran video game audio engineer (20+ years at Digital Eclipse, Backbone Entertainment, working on AAA titles) to Stern Pinball sound designer, brought in by Tanya Kleiss (confidence: high) — Baffey directly describes this transition and Tanya's role in recruiting him to apply dynamic audio systems to pinball - **[product_strategy]** Led Zeppelin pinball received post-launch audio enhancements including pitch-aware sound effects designed to be in-key with the songs being played (confidence: medium) — Baffey mentions Tim Sexton discussion about pitch awareness being 'added' to certain things on Led Zeppelin, with sound effects 'technically in key to the song you're playing' - **[technology_signal]** Stern Pinball implementing dynamic, musically-aware audio systems inspired by video game middleware; incremental rollout across KISS, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin with pitch-awareness being added post-launch (confidence: high) — Baffey describes building systems that make the game 'musically aware' of BPM, measure changes, beats, keys, and pitches; mentions pitch awareness being added to Led Zeppelin post-launch --- ## Transcript The Pinball Network is online. Launching The Pinball Show. Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for The Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. Thank you. I would like to be It's not a matter of Being a human It's not a matter of Understanding Welcome to the Pinball Show interview series. I'm your host Matt Morrison and this is episode 7. Everyone has a dream theme list. Maybe you keep it in the back of your mind or in a Google Doc file or with your dealer on an interested list. Rush was at the top of my personal list for a music themed pinball machine. The best part of music pens is just that, the music. But balancing that with a fun layout, deep rules, lights, callouts, and sound effects is no easy task. But the team at Stern Pinball has done just that. I sat down with sound engineer Bob Baffy, who has taken on this near-impossible task. And we talk about his history in gaming, his role on Rush, and his work on previous Stern titles. So without further ado, Mr. Bob Baffy. Welcome to the Pinball Network's The Pinball Show interview series. I'm your host, Matt Morrison. And today on the show, we've got a great guest. His name is Bob Baffy. How are you doing today, Bob? I'm good. How are you doing? Very well. And just give everybody a quick overview of kind of where you've been and what you've done. Absolutely. So traditionally, I'm a video game composer and sound designer and sometimes programmer. I've been in the industry for over 20 years now. I started working on Game Boy Color that far back and some systems like Super Nintendo, PS1, 2, 3, 4, consoles, PC, all that kind of stuff, but mainly focusing on the video game side until I started working with Stern. Yeah, I was looking through kind of your resume and some of the stuff you'd worked on, and I was blown away having Game Boy Color and PS1 on there. What Super Nintendo stuff did you do? That was, I worked for a company called Digital Eclipse, and they did a lot of the early emulation stuff for companies like Midway and Konami. And so I think the Super Nintendo stuff I worked on were some of the collections. And it might have been even N64 that that really got a wide release on. But it was like Defender, Robotron, those kind of collections. And mainly for those, it was just making sure that the emulations played the sounds correctly, as well as maybe doing some music for the menus and that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's really cool. I do remember like a Midway compilation for the SNES. So that's really, really cool. I grew up, you know, in that era of those home consoles. So I'm very familiar with that. And obviously, you know, when you're talking about Konami or, you know, it goes back to the early Metal Gear games as well as the one on PS1 and a lot of great memories with just that. Speaking of emulation, I can remember playing like early PC emulators of like NES games and sometimes the sound would be off or, you know, things wouldn't line up. So I could see how porting those over to another system, you know, could have its problems. Yeah, it's a real challenge and they've gotten so much better now. And I'm actually still working with Digital Eclipse. They actually rebooted that brand and they're doing I would kind of they call them museum quality where they're working with publishers again, like Konami and Capcom, they're re-releasing these collections. They did a couple of years ago, I think it was the Capcom collection. They worked on a Street Fighter re-release. Yep. The 30th anniversary one. Yeah, I think I have that on Switch. Yeah. And that was really fun because you get to go through some of the history and luckily, some of these companies are opening up their archives to companies like Digital Eclipse. and I'm lucky enough when they have those things to get original music or notes from composers. Sometimes it's in Japanese, so we have to get it translated, and it's a little odd to follow certain things, but it's really fun, and they just pack that into these projects, which are just a labor of love, so it's fun to be a part of that. Yeah, that looks awesome. And I noticed when they re-released Mida Evil, the PS1 game, I always loved it, and I always felt like it didn't get enough credit, and they remastered it. What was it like porting that over? I mean, that's almost like a brand-new game, really. Yeah, that was fun. My role on that was a little bit different because we had the support of Sony, which was so great because I basically took advantage of their entire audio department. Wow. And my role on that game was we were using the Unreal Engine to port this and just rebuilding it from scratch. and so I was building a lot of the the music systems at least how they they played in the game and footstep systems and animation kind of things like that that Unreal didn't necessarily provide just kind of almost sitting back and and watching all the talented people uh at Sony I think it was Santa Monica studio was uh it was just amazing they they have like you know unlike my home studio They have a whole fully stage where they were doing specific zombie sounds for the game. And they went to Prague, I believe, and recorded orchestration. I couldn't make it, which I'm still kicking myself. It was right before COVID hit. And I was thinking, well, there'll be another opportunity for me to go out there. And my son had something going on. And I was like, well, I won't be able to go this time. And of course, now I haven't gotten another opportunity. But they recorded a full orchestra there. It was just amazing, the whole project. was great yeah and i think sony santa monica they're pretty famous for um i can't remember if it was the uncharted games they did some of the sound on or even maybe the god of war definitely god of war i knew it was one of the two and man what a what a sound package those games have i mean especially i remember the second one you know just being super epic so i'm sure that was an experience working with that team yeah getting uh and in fact i i did get to work with several of these guys who just jumped off of the latest God of War. So hearing their stories and some of their trips to go field recording are pretty amazing. Yeah, they kind of rebooted that series with the Norse mythology. And man, you know, reboots, a lot of times you're like, oh boy, they're just going to drag this thing out forever. But it was a phenomenal game. Really, really good reboot. Yeah, yeah, I love that one. So yeah, and then being able to work on that game with Sony, it's just like, you can have good and bad experiences with large companies that's obviously true in any kind of industry but that project was just so great and sony was uh fantastic that's really cool um well while we're on video games even though this isn't a video game podcast uh a lot of our listeners dabble in both uh what do you think about the you know microsoft acquiring activision and and god who knows how many other brands at the same time i'm you know i'm i'm optimistic on it a little bit concerned just because that kind of consolidation can be worrisome. I've been working on a Microsoft project and a project through an Activision company, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I suspect that they'll be mostly hands-off at first and just kind of let things happen. But yeah, then after that, it's anybody's guess. I mean, there's good and bad things that can happen from that but like i said i'm just kind of optimistic that it might fix some of the things that activision was dealing with and my experience with microsoft is is you know they're a huge company and it's a lot of moving parts but they they generally treat uh their employees well at least in the the game division with the people i've talked to so right hopefully that pans out you know their commitment to that brand the xbox brand is especially i remember in the early days of Xbox Live, they were really pushing that. They were trying to get that market share. And they were, my brother was a huge, huge sports gamer and won a lot of tournaments and actually flew him to the All-Star game. And he played in front of like Dan Patrick for the like championship final. You know, it was almost like back in the day when Nintendo would do the world championships. It was really something. So yeah, it's super cool. And, you know, it amazes me that even though Sony kind of won, I guess, maybe what some people would consider the last console battle, but they're not giving up for sure, especially acquiring those. Blizzard was the other big one they got. Right. Really interesting stuff. It kind of came out of left field for me, but you may have had insight into that already. I knew nothing about it, and a lot of the people that I thought would know something about it knew nothing about it, so they did a very good job of keeping that mostly quiet. Wow. Wow. So that kind of leads us into one part of your resume. I saw, you know, there was some rock band games on there like Wii Ports and the PSP one. Have you always kind of started gravitating more towards the music based, whether it be pinball or software? Is that something that just kind of fell in your lap? It's an interesting story because that fell into our laps. That was at Backbone Entertainment. They were looking for a company that could... We had done some stuff on the PlayStation Portable. We'd done Death Junior. It was an original game that Konami published for us. And so we had a really good idea of the PSP hardware, audio, graphics, all of it. So Harmonix had approached us to see how we would do a handheld version because they didn't really think that they could do rock band on there with streaming multiple tracks of audio and some of the other technical limitations. We ended up getting it done, and I think we did a great job. It was something that was unlike what I had worked on there. I would say that was my first real music game. But the interesting part of this story is that one of the main engineers who worked with me to kind of build this handheld version of what they call the gem system of how they put the gems down on the lane was Tanya. No kidding. And so that might be a good lead into how I got hooked up with Stern. That's next on our itinerary, really. So how did you get the gig with Stern? Well, Tanya, I know, was talking about with Stern when he got there, expanding on their music and audio system. So traditionally, like now in video games, everything is really dynamic in terms of audio. There's a lot of middleware that allows you to create a game that's, I'll say, musically aware. That means that the game can know what the beats per minute of a song is. It can know where there's measure changes. It can know what beat it's on. It can even know the key and the pitch of certain tracks or melodies that are playing. And Tanya had the idea, as I understand it, I'm kind of speaking for him here, but to kind of bring some of that into the Stern system. And since we had worked on Unplugged, a rock band unplugged for PSP, he knew I had experience with these systems, creating these systems where you kind of make the game aware, musically aware. So he asked if I'd be interested on working on a system for that, and that coincided with working on KISS. Very cool. Yeah. And I think Tanya is a guitar player as well, maybe, if I remember correctly. Now going back to video games, just for a moment, there's a guitar learning game called Rocksmith. You know, you could plug a real guitar into your Xbox, and I always wondered how that system operated. Maybe it's similar in tracking the notes coming out of a guitar into an Xbox or a PS4 or whatever. Yeah, that was an Ubisoft title, I think. And the funny thing is I remember hearing about it, and then I never tried it out, so I never got to see exactly how it worked. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I would say if your guitar is not intonated very well, I'd seen some issues with that. But I mean, for the most part, it works very well and it's able to slow the track down and and help you learn that way. But I don't know if it was very if it sold very well. It always seemed like it was kind of on the back burner. You would you would see it on fire cells, you know, more often than not sometimes. But I thought it was it was a pretty neat piece of software. I love the idea of it. And the unfortunate thing is it just may have been a little bit too late in that in that whole, you know, game music kind of. I don't want to say bubble, but like Hill, you know, rock band and they were throwing so much money, both Guitar Hero, Harmonix. I mean, the amount of money that Harmonix had to spend on that Beatles rock band game was crazy. not to mention all the labels you know they if you think about back at that time but before it was before spotify before streaming really took off so the record companies and these labels were sitting on masters of all these these bands and really not making great money everybody's stealing music you know steedy sales are down and this game comes out where they're going to make a profit on licensing these masters and getting a profit every time they sell a copy of these songs on the rock band network so i think they ramped up just too much and then everybody got sick of you know storing plastic guitars and drum sets in the apartments and houses yeah yeah but man you're right it was almost maybe a bubble of some kind because that stuff was everywhere you know for a good bit and then you you would see it traded in and kind of hanging around second hand but as you were saying uh you came on board i guess in into kiss so so what did you do in the development of that game that was a uh a trial by fire i was working with lani and uh you know we were developing this system where i could take uh wave files and generate data that we needed to you know tell the machine when certain musical events happened but i was also learning the beginning the language of pinball and pinball sound. So I did do the sound package on there, but I had plenty of help from people to kind of push me along and nudge me in the right direction, thankfully, because I had a lot of experience by that point, but pinball was a whole new thing for me. Right. And I guess, how would you explain integrating that piece of software into Spike 2? Was that really difficult, being like a separate type of controller than maybe what you're used to on consoles or PC. It wasn't too bad, that experience with the Rock Band stuff. And of course, Tanya pretty much already knew what he wanted to do. And the first time I talked to him about this, we were already on the same page of it. It was just a matter of figuring out how we were going to do it and then writing the code for it. But that came together pretty quickly. And it's something that's still being developed and expanded on. For example, on Led Zeppelin, I think, and we could get this in detail later, but I believe Tim Sexton mentioned, talk he did, that we've kind of added pitch awareness a little bit to certain things where we play sound effects that are technically in key to the song you're playing. And there's a lot of cool stuff just incrementally coming online. And really, it's about budget, time. The tech stuff's already solved almost, except for making sure it all fits in terms of running the game, playing sound, playing video, and tracking all this stuff. Basically running that all at the same time. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. So with KISS, you're working with Lonnie and with some other people kind of chiming in here and there. Outside of integrating that software package and getting all that laid out, Did you find it difficult to come up with the rest of the sound effects? And I guess one thing maybe our listeners should understand is that you can also really code. You just don't create sound effects. You can implement this software we're talking about. I guess you probably wrote most of the code for it as well. On those and the pinball games, I've specifically been a little bit hands-off, not in terms of implementing but of actually writing code. i've i've stayed away from there i've kind of stayed on the systems and tools side i that might change i don't know if they really want me to get that involved but yeah i mean my my background when i started doing game boy color games uh the the first game i worked on was nfl blitz for the game boy color and i just to give you a idea of what a kind of wild west time it was My partner programmed most of the code and I did the graphics. The sound was kind of a side effect of everything. I did the art and I did a lot of tools. And then I programmed 1942 for the Game Boy Color. It's an old Capcom arcade game. Yeah, I did that entire thing myself on the Game Boy Color, which was a nightmare. So I wouldn't call myself a senior programmer. I'd call myself a dangerous junior programmer in that I've been doing a lot of audio. And then there's times where someone will say, hey, we don't have time to do this. Can you build this? And I'll jump in and do it. But I have not done that yet for Stern. It's just been, I would say, external tool support and maybe some consulting on maybe how things have been built. But I let the pinball experts handle that. Gotcha. When you're talking about those Game Boy Color games, you did the entire game of 1942, and then you and one other guy did the entire NFL Blitz game? Yes. So it was funny. My friend and I, we had stumbled upon, I stumbled in air quotes, upon an original Game Boy development manual and software. You know, we found it on the Internet. We built a cartridge that we could flash and we started to go to CES and E3 had just started the E3 show. So we were going to those shows and basically cold calling the two or three remaining companies that were making Game Boy games. Everybody else had stopped really making Game Boy games, but we were so lucky that unknown to everybody else Nintendo decided we're gonna release the Game Boy Color and all of a sudden all these companies like Midway and Activision and all these companies are looking for Game Boy programmers and they all gone So we were part of like a handful of people who knew how to program for Game Boy So all of a sudden we were getting all these games and they were getting so many games Digital Eclipse at this time, that they would go to different people. And they came to me and said, do you want to do 1942? And I said, well, that looks simple enough, which was a absolute mistake. It was not simple enough. And I still remember I was flying out to the office and the other programmer I was flying out with was teaching me Z80 assembly on the plane while we were flying there. Oh, my God. That is amazing. Well, I guess you got it done. So that's the silver lining here. But it was a battle. Yeah, just don't look at it. Don't go with a critical eye there. I'm going to go download it on an emulator when we're done. okay so back to pinball here we go uh so after kiss we uh we dive into aerosmith yeah and that one uh i was a little more comfortable i had kind of built the tool set there that was an interesting one because it was my first time i worked with uh brendan uh small oh he was on air that's right that's right yeah he did the jackie voice okay and you know i i went from editing a bunch of kiss vo to hit which his stuff is always cracks oh yeah he's hilarious but there was also the uh the changeover so kiss had the uh dot and aerosmith was the first one i worked on that had the led screen so there was some growing pains there in terms of getting all that stuff to work and the new hardware and that stuff and the idea that you would make these more complex sound effects for these display sequences so that was kind of the beginning of that interesting for me anyway so how much of like you know did you just get files from Brendon Small to you know to kind of put in into the game or did you do any recording i was wondering i always wonder on like certain projects if if you were handling some of that as well he really is just kind of a genius in terms of all the things he can do and so he asked me what format do you want it in how do you want it recorded you want it compressed before i gave him the specs i got uh files back and they were nearly ready to go i do some post-production on on them just to get them to sound better in the mix there but essentially he delivered a near final product himself he's got a you know he records all that music for his show so he's got a studio a detail yeah yeah so he's all set for that Right. Yeah, that's amazing. So they kind of had the call outs they wanted, shot him over, he recorded them. And then once once he records them, do you put them in the software or, you know, do you kind of arrange them in the mix somehow? Yeah. So usually what the process is, is I take however the files come. I post process if there's any. He will and most places will deliver multiple takes of a line. That's just kind of a standard for TV, video games, or any kind of thing. So you have a choice, or you can have multiple reads of a line. And if there's like pops on the microphone or noise, I'll do noise reduction. I'll do an EQ and a compression pass to make sure all of the lines that we're using are perceptively the same volume. And from there, then you start putting them in the game. And until you kind of trigger them and let them sit in there, you don't know how they're going to sit in the mix. It's kind of an interesting thing because a line that you really love just might kind of die when it's on the table. Just because of the read or the way the words hit, it just kind of gets buried in there. So there's tricks you can do to fix that. But until you kind of live with those VO calls, you can't really fully say you've mixed it. So we do a preliminary mix at first to put them in, and then you just start picking pieces that maybe don't work that you need to boost or you need to take out and abandon or use different ones. So do they send you like a whitewood or how would you know, how would you be able to kind of experience it in real time on a pinball machine? I mean, is it something you just kind of play out or run it back? Or if you hit this, you kind of see how it lands with the music itself? Yeah, so I do get whitewood. Oh, great. Yeah, I actually have. And it's funny. It's, you know, they're machines that probably have some dents and scratches, you know, that they're not going to ship out. They basically, you know, the developed machines are workhorses. So I would get a white wood and basically build from source and be able to put in sounds and audition them pretty quickly afterwards. And, you know, you kind of part of the mix process is, you know, playing at different volumes, playing with the EQ curves. Sometimes, you know, if I have enough room in my my studio is not too big here, But I'll move the machine around just to hear how it's going to play or take some of the soundproofing off to hear how it sounds if it's echoing off the walls. So there's a lot of things you do. And it's just kind of a living, what you would call a living mix. You just start putting content in there. You see how it plays. You see how it sounds in a room. Some of it's guessing. Some of it is you just actually physically hear what's not working. and you just kind of got to do your best as the game development progresses to make sure everything is sounding good. Yeah, there's, you know, looking over the list of games and so many of them are music pins. I feel like, you know, a lot of people would think the music pins would be easier because you have all these songs to go off of. But it's like, how do you, to me, it would almost be harder because you're having, You don't want to interrupt the jam of a rock song with a call out or a noise that's too grating, but you also need the player's attention if this is happening as an alert. Do you feel it's easier or harder doing these music pins? I would say, well, I'm going to be biased here, but I think it's harder just for that very reason. I've worked on video games with licensed and unlicensed music. and when you're in control of the music and the sound what i mean is from a creation standpoint it's a lot easier especially if it's music nobody's really heard before you can kind of do that but yeah these music games there is a priority and everybody kind of agrees the priority is the is the music there but yes when you have a a sound that you want kind of to use as a signal and cut through you've got to be careful the way you design it there's definitely i would say it's still a learning process for me there's sounds that when i'm designing them i think they're going to work a certain way and then when i put them in the game they just fall flat or they're just too loud or too annoying they just don't play right so it's a lot of revisions and a lot of changes that way but the focus always is and i think always should be on kind of putting the the music first and the band first. Yeah. The more I think about it, I was thinking about that on the way home. I was like, man, that, you know, you may, may not have to generate as much content, but the trial and error of, of the content you're making and overlaying that on top of the songs that people are wanting to hear that, that revisionment would take forever. Like I could just imagine, like I would second guess myself to the end of time doing this, you know? well then there's a further complication because you have ip holders you have band members who are smart about audio so when they listen to a mix they have their own opinions about uh the way things are playing so you have to take that into consideration as well um because you know some bands want their music front and center they don't want to they don't want to even hear the vo or they're maybe they're not familiar enough with pinball to really understand the role of all these different sounds. So, yeah, it's a balancing act. Yeah. Did you get any dirty letters from, like, Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley or Joe Perry? They were surprisingly hands-off. I will say that, and this is third-person information because I really don't know any inside dirt on it, but from my knowledge, I think they care mostly about how they look on the illustrations of the table. That seems to be the common thread. They're like, no, my nose isn't that big or I, you know, my hair doesn't look like that. And they they do that. But no, Gene Simmons was didn't really have any input on audio. I did on Led Zeppelin. It was funny because we sent a demo just for them to check. You know, that's a normal thing as you're building the game. You're just sending the the rights holders kind of videos or demos of what you're working on. and I had not mixed this part of the game yet but I did it and it was just too late for me to really fix it and uh Jimmy Page's uh camp said uh this isn't mixed right I was like oh my god he picked that out immediately and I was bummed for a little bit and then I thought no I don't have to tell anybody what happened I can just say yeah I worked with Jimmy Page he gave me exactly some good feedback I can't remember which album it was, if it was Houses of the Holy or, yeah, it was either that one or it was one of the later Zeppelin records. And I don't think it was Physical Graffiti, but I know they recorded the album and he mixed it in like two or three days. Like he needed an extra day in the studio and the Rolling Stones were doing the studio like the next day. And they were like, oh, did you get, you know, the tracks laid down? he was like no the album's done like there it is like so i i'm assuming he probably knows his way around a mixing table well i was surprised i didn't find out until recent years of how many uncredited like session sessions he did like where he's a guitarist on a uh a famous record and i'm gonna forget some immediate ones but he was doing a lot of uncredited guitar work on a lot of popular songs like he's it was a studio guy for a while before i think before even led zeppelin Before the Yardbirds? Yeah, he was a session player. Yeah, that's super, that's crazy. That's a great story. Yeah, I worked with Jimmy Page. So after Aerosmith, we had Deadpool. And this game has become like beloved. I mean, they can't make enough Deadpools. If they just stopped right now and made Deadpools for the next three months, I think they would all be sold. So let's talk about Deadpool. It has a really fun soundtrack, a lot of different things going on. What all did you do on Deadpool? So I kind of came in at the end there. They they needed Tanya needed some specific again. Tanya comes in here. They were in a time crunch and there were some, you know, it's kind of got that 16 bit, eight bit flavor there on some of the display effects. And Tanya needed some like genuinely generated like eight bit sound. And he knew I had the hardware and the knowledge to generate that stuff. you know we had a good rapport of like he knew what he wanted he could explain it and i could generate it so i started doing that i started and i actually started processing um samples for like some of the fighting stuff i would pump it through some original hardware actually like down sample it through video game hardware so it had that real down sampled sound and then it just kind of went from there whenever they needed a sound so i was just kind of kind of clean up i would say on just missing sounds they needed one thing i did do which i snuck in i was so happy about was the uh uh ninja apocalypse stinger i did the vo for that so i'm kind of excited that i did i did the little uh the little eight bit music for it and then when the uh the voice says ninja apocalypse that's me so uh i just wanted to get more than just a uh you know just sound in there my voice so i could play the game and then show my kids, look, your dad's in the pinball. That's so cool. Yeah. Next time I get there, I'll be like, there's Bob. That's awesome. I mean, really, you did all of Kiss, all of Aerosmith, helped him finish out Deadpool. Online, really, the first lead project I see your name on was Led Zeppelin, but it sounds like Kiss and Aerosmith really were. Well, I would say Led Zeppelin is the one I first felt completely, like they gave me control of the sound package entirely not that Lonnie or anybody else didn't say do what you need to do but they were I think they were more confident in my ability to just kind of run on my own and design a sound package from scratch and and that's kind of where what I did I kind of proposed the idea of that you know Led Zeppelin's this kind of magical fantasy type band there I mean at least in terms of what they sing about and the you know the kind of era there so the idea was like the sound package is going to have a lot of kind of more magical and uh fantasy type sounds special 70s kind of thing it it starts like with the album art almost this kind of like magical worlds you stare at when you had the the album yeah were you a big fan of zeppelin or yes so zeppelin was a huge part of me growing up i kind of came to them late but it was like beatles led zeppelin in fact houses of the holy was the first album well i should say cassette that i actually rode my bike up to the store and used my own money wow to buy that tape and just just destroyed that tape with playing it so much and that was kind of i uh started out playing guitar when i started music and that was kind of the the impetus of that of like i want to play guitar i want to be like jimmy page yeah like so many other people um by the time i started playing uh you know guns and Rose was all over MTV. And I remember I wanted a drum set, but I saw the November rain video and slash was on the piano with the Les Paul. And I was like, Oh my God, you know, just ditch the drums. Now I got to, you know, find a Les Paul. So, you know, this, they've got you on your own. Stern's really good about this. They kind of get your feet wet a little bit. And then they, you know, they're like, he's got it. Boom. Let's go. You know, Jerry Thompson came in like with Ghostbusters and people love Jerry and Kendall Hale over there. Was there any pressure to like, okay, this is all on me now, you know, to do this whole sound package. Yeah, definitely. And like I said, I feel like I'm still learning my way around pinball. There's so many people that are, you know, that have been at it for so long and they're so great. And Jerry and Ken, I haven't gotten to work with Ken directly, but Jerry, I email and I've talked to him and everybody is so helpful there. It's like everybody is cheering everybody else on to just make something really cool. So we've been able to share tech and share all these things. And I've had nothing but great experiences, which made it so much easier because in my own head, I definitely was thinking, oh, I've really got to deliver on this. If I want to keep working for Stern. I think delivery you did because I don't own a Zeppelin, but there's one on location that another friend has here and man is is you know it really feels like like you were saying that it nails that error like all the sounds and and the one i noted was you know that electric magic spinner it's like here's this really cool mech and the charge up sound is different from like the frenzy multiball sound when you hit the spinner itself and uh it's it's just so gratifying both sounds are really good but when you notice there's a difference between the two sounds it's it really kind of opens your eyes to the the magic of that oh i i appreciate that because i will tell you something the bane of my existence right now on pinball is spinner sound oh man you've got them down already we'll get to that on rush here but um yeah and and let me ask you this on the spinner sound, how hard is it to get the RPM of the spinner and how the notes go faster or go slower? Is that difficult to do? It is difficult. And that's kind of what I mean by the bane of my existence here, because I will have an idea in my head. And just because of how long I've been doing video games and everything, the path from idea in my head to a product is generally pretty easy i mean there's going to be revisions there's going to be missteps but there must have been at least 10 to 15 different revisions on that spinner sound uh different approaches like wildly different things and i had just about given up before i got to that last one and thankfully uh tim and i believe raymond help out on that one but just kind of we're working with me to get the spinning like getting a limiting on the amount of spinning and how we pitch things up and exactly we kind of built a table a lookup table that would traverse these samples so you would get that kind of pitch curve uh it took a lot of work and they helped quite a bit on that but it's still i'm probably psyched myself out now on spinners because every time i have a spinner son i'm like it has to be as good as that one okay i'm just telling you right now no uh no tim and uh and raymond are both phenomenal players and they've played so many different games. They know a great spinner sound. Every pinball player, when they hear a good one, they're like, oh, that's it. That's a great. It's so satisfying when you get a great spinner sound. But not only that, some of your target sounds, something I've noticed maybe between the two, if you hit like a ramp or an orbit, you don't stay in the same like kind of sound realm or even the same pitch level. You almost she use more of like a whooshing sound or like a turbo sound and uh i thought that was really interesting is that kind of conveying the motion of the ball and and getting that out yeah and i really wanted something that kind of kind of spreads across the sound field there because of the thing we discussed where you're focusing on music and you want that there's certain opportunities i want to take in the sound effects that won't necessarily step all over the music but it can provide kind of a sound bed underneath that at least gives you some satisfaction and like you said a sense of motion when you bring the ball there so i kind of fell in love with that that idea of these long whooshes with uh with really complex things underneath and you know my my thought is like hopefully people are listening and maybe they hear something different each time they hear it kind of just a little piece yeah i think that's accurate uh especially when we get to Rush, we'll go into that a little more, but it's interesting, like, it's so hard to describe a sound, like, as a guitar player, if you're trying to describe, like, you know, a Les Paul through a Marshall, it's like, well, it just has that sound, you know, or like, you know, like Edge's delay sound in U2, it's like, oh, it's that, like, 30-second note, like, it's just that delay sound. You can almost describe it better by describing the track or the person, but it's like, how do you convey certain feelings through a sound and and how do you land on that like well this this would be a good target sound or this would be a good you know drain sound or whatever it may be yeah that's a tough one because i've been doing it for long enough where i don't know if i'm not talking to somebody about it i don't really have a language for it right i just kind of know what i want it to sound like and so i'll play the game and i'll think on it and I'll think about the overall theme I'm going for. Like just as an example, a contrast for Led Zeppelin was more fantasy rush. I wanted a kind of a higher tech sound. I wanted it to tie into the time machine idea and the more kind of synth sounds that Getty was using on all the albums. I was taking emulations of like Mini Moogs and Jupiter 8 and some of the hardware he was using on the albums And I was trying to generate these synth pulses and laser sounds like that to kind of give that feeling of almost to kind of be another instrument of the music where it was like it fit It fit in that range of music. And now that you mentioned, especially on Rush, I'm not sure what you used on the Rush targets, but I can't describe it. It's something I've really never heard in a pinball machine, but clearly some of those noises, you kind of move the pitch up. That way it's not riding in that zone of where the music normally is with a band like Rush. It's almost like it catches your attention. You know, you hit the target and it's gone. Right, right. Yeah, there was a idea on that one to, like you said, kind of like pop above the music. and I've also was playing on that one with adding really low end to kind of just give an extra pulse with the actual hardware hit sound I've just I'm still experimenting with that stuff and there's going to be some revisions on uh not necessarily those target ones but I'm still kind of playing with that it always happens I I commit to something we live with it a while people seem to like it and then I go back to it and go nah nah I could do better right right well you know any good uh i think artist or coder no matter what it is it's like you you always think you could probably go you could make it better but at some point you have to say you know what it's it's really really good it's good enough and if i get time right you know i'll go back but so one last thing on led zeppelin we we see brendan smalls back again right doing voiceover yep how was it working with him again i mean is it just always like pro level or it really is he was working on uh a pitch for a TV show or something. He's got all kinds of stuff going on. But in between that, we basically sent him a script. Less than a week later, I've got the files, and it's perfect. It was funny on that one. We were having a little trouble convincing the Led Zeppelin camps that you even needed VO for the game. Some of these bands don't have the background in pinball, or at least modern pinball, so they don't really understand why is there even a voice in this. he's a he's such a pro he did two reads he did two different characters and then he then we decided on the idea he did a set of revisions for us where it would be kind of one character but then he'd based on the mood he'd ramp it up and do a different read but it was kind of this and i think robert plant is the one who liked it most this kind of stayed almost droll british voice for some of the reads especially some of the lower energy stuff you can kind of you get this very standard british i'm sorry i don't know the actual breakdown of the accent there uh is it one of those things with zeppelin where it's was a hard to work with the band or you know they just weren't really that interested it's like cool they're making a pinball machine but you know whatever i always feel some sympathy for these bands because there's lots of layers and understandably so i don't know if protecting is the right word but protecting them they they get especially Led Zeppelin's notorious for this, for not licensing a lot of things out. I'm sure they get daily just so many requests that don't even make it to the band because their lawyers and their managers say, yeah, they're never going to be for this. So I was surprised the amount of access we got to them and the amount of feedback. I think it just took a little bit for them to trust Stern and to trust a company that was not going to tarnish their image, so to speak. And so it just took a little bit back and forth and stern they're licensing people and everybody there are just so such pros at that they just navigated that perfectly i rarely have any direct interaction with them that changed a little on rush but you know especially if with the vo being done not by any of the band members so it's uh i kind of get thankfully shielded from that right well while we've been you know a lot of the listeners are probably saying who the hell is Brendon Small and I've noticed, you know, I was a fan of home movies and Metalocalypse, his shows, and the band Death Clock. But do you know how that relationship came about? Why, you know, how Brendon Small got involved with Stern? I don't exactly know. I know that he loves pinball. I know that he knows somebody at Stern, and I don't know if that's through pinball or he knew somebody. I don't know that relationship. But there is a strong relationship there. It was obviously there before I got to Stern, but they love him. He's so reliable. That's the thing about Stern. If you are reliable enough and you can kind of run on your own and technically capable, you just do great there because everybody, you fit into that machine so well. And Brendan does perfectly that way. He just, you know, sent him. And of course, it helps, like you said, that he's done these shows, these cartoon shows. Yeah. Yeah. He's I mean, it's not only is he a world class guitar player, but I mean, he just he understands the animation aspect, the comedy, everything. And I got to see Death Clock early on. And if you're not familiar, go watch the show Metalocalypse. It's a parody on like really heavy death metal bands. And yeah, so I went to go see them live. and my jaw hit the floor because the band that toured with him for Death Clock are all world class players like Mike Keneally is the other guitar player and I was like oh my god like I seen him with Steve Vai and like Joe Satriani and like you know Gene Hoagland's on drums I was like I had no idea you know the touring band was like all A-listers too so that was a just a mind-blowing thing you know that wow he must be super well respected because he they had all these a-listers playing with him yeah he definitely i mean he has the chops he has everything to back it up so it's just a multi-talent it's always just fun working with him and i definitely i he's had to have pitched it but i don't know why there isn't a metal apocalypse uh pinball there should i think it's it's the fact of it's just not popular enough to move the units you know it would probably have to be like a special studio run game you know low numbers like they did for like heavy metal or something like that but well me you and brendan will buy one oh my god yeah i would i would buy one in a heartbeat just yeah oh man so if you're listening to this go check out some of brendan's small stuff and and even if you just want a sample of it go to youtube and watch some of his guitar tutorials you'll be like you melt your face off you know well that brings us to the most recent game and as fate would have it i actually received my pro to go on route today and that's rush pinball and i am a massive rush fan and i was going to ask you do you like rush well here's where i disappoint you a little i love rush but rush hit me in a time in my life where i took a really hard pivot soon after into heavy metal and skateboarding culture so i went like heavy metal and punk but um i was kind of around like a detroit radio at the very least was you know still playing uh permanent waves moving picture signals all these you know limelight spirit of radio all these radio hits so i would say my unfortunately i'm a bit of a poser because my main knowledge of rush before this game was the radio hits i mean i knew about the other songs but I hadn't really dived deep into that. Yeah, I didn't actually get into them until a good bit later. I was much like you. I was skateboarding and playing in bands, and I was mostly into metal and punk. And as I started playing more, my first band kind of dissolved, and I just started jamming with some older guys that were really, really good. And they were like, what do you mean you don't listen to Rush? It's no wonder you suck. if you listen to Rush you know you'd be way better and I was like oh what are they talking about so I went digging through um you know some some cassettes I had tapes early on you know I went to a flea market when I was a kid all I had was a Walkman and I bought you know just some random rock tapes and one of them was Permanent Waves and I hadn't listened to it in like you know five or six years and obviously when you're a teenager you're expanding and you know into adulthood, your, your palates changing. And also in that same box was, uh, Iron Maiden's, um, peace of mind. So I gravitated more to that earlier, but so I, so I come back to Rush and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's pretty good. And, uh, and then I just realized, you know, how wide their discography is. I mean, you know, by the time you get to signals and power windows and grace under pressure, it's just, you know, it just gets so much different. And, and then later on, they actually kind of got even heavier especially the last album if you had to pick a favorite rush album which would it be boy it might be oh boy it might be moving pictures just because that was you know it's always like the older brother who has something which is how i got into led zeppelin it's how i got into rush and some of the others and then pivoted to an unfortunate hairband period which was like motley crew twisted sister deaf leopard but then when metallica hit it was just you know off on a tangent there but yeah i guess i would say moving pictures then because that's the one i remember it's still that's the one i have perfect album i mean it really is it's just amazing even though you're so i'll move to the next question buddy you know even though you're not a monster rush fan i'm sure you've listened to more of their discography making the game Do you think there's one of their albums that's vastly underrated? Boy, I don't know if I feel comfortable saying, because I haven't listened to everything. But I'm kind of surprised that people don't like Roll the Bones as much. That's surprising to me, because I like that album. I used to collect a lot of records and things like that. And anytime I go into a used record store, there would only be one Rush album in the used bins. and it would always be grace under pressure and i was like this album is phenomenal like it's really good if you if you don't mind the more new wave synth pop stuff you know yeah i was always just kind of like man it's also a really cool cover like i was yeah always surprised it was in the the used bin well and it was like they got made fun of at least here in local radio for that like all the old rush fans didn't like the sound of it okay yeah i liked it i don't know that that would be my only i'm sure there's other ones that are underrated i've the good thing is that by working on this game i've definitely kind of kicked myself for not diving deeper on these things so i think that's going to be the my kind of side project for the next uh several months is just kind of dive deeper into this stuff because my son plays drums he's 13 and he's just starting out but he's really getting into he was really into metal and i've kind of just been steering him out of the direction i went into said buddy you got to listen to some you know some wider things and he's he's getting in the rush so i think it'll be something we both kind of dive into that's cool yeah i i'm i was really happy when i saw the le art package because i i loved clockwork angels the last album and i think i saw that tour like three times and oh wow yeah i got lucky because like the first year they went around like they hit north carolina once and then the next year once and i and then one in Atlanta. So I was like, bam, bam, bam. You know, it was just a phenomenal tour. Um, I didn't get to see him the first time till, uh, uh, vapor trails. And, um, but then I saw like everyone after that. Cause I was just, I couldn't believe three dudes could, could do it all. You know, I was like, it's like, like how could like three guys possibly pull all this off. And then when you see him do it, you're like, Holy shit. You know, it's amazing. But back to the pinball machine here you go again that right opto spinner what a what a juicy spinner sound did you have as much trouble with that one as you did on led zeppelin oh i did and i'll let you down a little secret i hate that oh you hate it well i'm still too close to it i'm still in the period where i'm like i can't nail this the idea i had to do it is has eluded me and um i'll probably come around to it and you telling me you like it makes me feel infinitely better yeah i don't know i'll rip it some more so you know i got the game literally today i have some of those deliveries at work because like my house is like a pain in the ass to to deliver to so i just have them drop it at my work because it's way easier and i i just went ahead and immediately unboxed it and you know very little got done the rest of the day and you know so it's a great great game already you always worry when they do a dream kind of theme and you know it's like your expectations you you try to keep them down because it's like, how could they possibly live up to what's in your mind of, you know, what this game could be? And, oh boy, man, did the team come together? I mean, it's like, oh my God, I finally, you know, the layout on Ghostbusters was never my favorite and that was always one of my favorite movies. And, but this game is just hitting on all cylinders. So it's people, even people that aren't Rush fans, when they finally get to play this game, they're going to be like, wow, they crushed it. One thing on the stream people kept commenting about was the Vukajek noise. I don't know if you've heard this yet. Oh, yeah, it's already changed. I noticed that. Okay. I was like, I'm not hearing it. And I listened to the stream, and I was like, okay, there it is. But I will tell you, when I listened to the stream, I went and I was like, okay, I see it. It is a different kind of sound effect. I don't know why it was super grating for some people. but I went to Avengers and I was like on the premium, it has the buck up kick. And I was like, what does that one sound like? And it's very much like, like it's a similar kind of pattern almost, you know? And, and I was like, for some reason, you know, the, the rush one, I guess because the balls coming in and out of there. So like more frequently they like people picked up on it. But so did you guys pull it completely? Or I didn't notice what the sound effect was now. So when it was kind of like on the bubble there, we were, it was sitting in a game for a while it was playing some people were ambivalent about it i wasn't sure i kind of wanted this mechanical and the beeping noise to be kind of like uh machinery like a time machine or you know any kind of stuff like that and kind of hit towards that with the synth stuff on the stream because of the compression i think it just really stood out so when i heard it on the stream i was like oh no that does not play well and then tim was like yeah some some people were commenting on it and i was like i've already got a revision check it out and so it's a whole new sound it's a different sound it seems like and maybe it's just me but i i feel like in the mix on rush the call outs some of the sound effects are bumped a little higher in the mix like i hear getty and alex's call outs a little more clearly than say maybe Brendan's on Led Zeppelin. Was that intentional? Because you thought maybe they were stronger than what you had or the fans would like it more? Yeah, so the thing about the voiceover session, it was during lockdown still. So I wasn't able, they had a VO session in Toronto, which I wish I could have went to. But luckily they patched us in through the internet so we could listen. and probably one of the most enjoyable sound sessions I've been a part of because those guys, Alex and Getty, are hilarious. And they gave so many hours. If you see that video, that promo video they did where they show them recording the VO, none of that is staged. I have a bunch of extra VO. We'll never make it into the game, unfortunately. but of them goofing around and making fun of lines and misreads and bloopers. And they're just high energy the whole time. They were doing alternate reads with like kind of more inside rush stuff that we ended up using, you know, that we couldn't have written. They just kind of riffed on them and improvised. And it was just fantastic. And Ed Ed Robertson, the guy from Barenaked Ladies, he directed it and just got so much great stuff out of that. And we were so lucky that he's a pinball fan because I'm not sure the VO would have come out the way it did. He wasn't involved. And, of course, just the guys from Rush are just great. I mean, that's the stereotypical thing of Canadians, right? But they kind of proved it there. Yeah. Well, if there's any way that extra stuff could sneak out, the email address is mtmpinball at gmail.com. I would love to hear it. But yeah, no, the one call out that every time I hear it, I crack up is like a friend that owes you money. You know, that one always cracks me up. There's a lot of really good ones in there. And there's obviously more cool kind of laser synth noises and turbo whooshing kind of noises, like I mentioned before. But I feel like on Rush, it really, they're riding perfectly in the mix to where I'm fully hearing the songs, the sound package, but you get that excitement from hitting a shot, and it really comes through. You're getting the pinball feedback you want, but also not losing the magic of the music. How much time was spent on layering that in? And I'm sure you're not maybe 1,000% done, but was Rush more difficult, being that you had so many call-outs and different things like that than Led Zeppelin? Definitely. It's definitely harder. It's definitely still in progress. We spent a lot of time on that and there was a lot of different opinions on it. We tried a bunch of different ducking techniques and we're still kind of playing with that. What I'd like to do in the future, you know, this is kind of one of those future dream projects, is to kind of introduce something we've been doing in video games for a while, which is kind of a dynamic mixing where you do ducking based on frequencies, not just volumes. but you you know kind of do a more dynamic mix the problem with that is it's very cpu intensive so that like i say it's kind of a dream thing but for rush it's kind of like just a balancing act where you're trying to get everything again the music is the main star of this you also want to give fans and players the the joy of all the vo that's been recorded the difference with led zeppelin is we had such a small amount of call outs compared to like rush or any other game that that you just want you just want to be able to hear me want people to be able to enjoy that stuff and then the sound effects yeah i really wanted those laser sounds and some of the other stuff to cut through and you know i was trying to recreate patches from synth patches from some of the more famous songs and sneak them into the some of the display sound effects right and uh so that's all competing that's all competing for headroom you don't have a ton of i mean the speakers are good but you don't have control of a mix like you might when you when you mix for video games they always say you do a mix for a 5-1 or a 7-1 system and then you also mix for tiny tv speakers you know you just want to make sure it sounds good on a range of things from the top end to the bottom this is fixed hardware i mean based on the speaker systems but it's still so difficult to compete with everything in the game and then the actual mechanical sounds of the game and then also not being able to control where this machine is whether it's in a home or it's in a noisy bar with 10 other pinball games so yeah that another thing where i still struggle and i say oh I should have mixed this different And I kind of do it different in every game but I would still say it still in process but I am glad to hear you hearing some of the goals that we're aiming for. Yeah, I think you're really, really close. I mean, it's hard to, you know, as somebody that has recorded music and done things like that, I wouldn't even know where to begin with this and to critique it is way out of my range. But, you know, just as a pinball player and listening to it and enjoying the game, I'm like, you know, well, what would I change? Would I change this? But, you know, maybe, I don't know. The more I play it, the more I like it. So that's always a good sign that, you know, normally, you know, there's a honeymoon phase when you first get a game. But I was really today trying to focus on the sound because I knew we were going to be talking and the mix and the different effects that are happening. And the more I really honed in on it, the more I liked it, you know, the more I enjoyed it. So I think my LE should be here next month. I'm actually going to put the headphone adapter on it because I want to like really take it all in. Oh, excellent. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. Like I said, I still, even though I've worked on this many games, I still feel like I'm just scratching the surface of kind of the language of sound on pinball. and even though I've gotten support from people who have done sound for pinball and you know all the engineers and everything it's just kind of a unspoken art for a lot of this stuff and you've really got to just go as a sound designer you got to go in and you've got to create and you've got to make mistakes you've got to learn you know what people like what you like a lot of times I'll do something and it just does not hit with the rest of the team. And, you know, I could explain till I'm blue in the face of like why I think, you know, it should go this way. But if there's five other people who say this doesn't sound right and they can't even explain why it sounds right, it doesn't matter because it doesn't sound right. It might mean that I've lived with the sound too long and I'm hearing it in a different way. But that means I have to go back and say, well, I'm wrong. I got to change it and figure out exactly, you know, where I went wrong. Right. Would you have any interest in, I mean, are you officially like the rock band sound guy for Stern? Or would you have interest in doing like a full composition for, you know, like a Marvel game or something? Yeah, I would, you know, I would be perfectly happy being the official rock band guy for there. And I'll say that in the hopes that maybe it'll just come true if I keep saying it. But I would be fine with anything. I've fallen in love with pinball from somebody who didn't play pinball, and now I just have a huge respect for not only the mechanical, the engineering, the process of development, but the community itself is just amazing. You're familiar with video game community, and I love that, but there's so much toxicity in there from just a bigger audience. Of course. I've been to launch parties and competitions and stuff and just met some fantastic people. They've been great to my kids and they've helped them learn to play better because I'm not a great player yet. It's just been a wonderful experience. Honestly, Rock Band stuff would be great if they gave me the Paula Deen cooking pinball table. I'd gladly do that too because I just like working on pinball games now. If you get the Paula Deen game, can you make the spinner sound? Just be like, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter. Just more butter. Absolutely. Okay. Actually, just go ahead and make that sound effect. Send it to me because that's going to be like the intro to all my shows from now on. Yeah, butter spinner. Butter, butter, butter, butter. Yeah, that's what I need. Is there anything that you wanted to put into any of the games that maybe the hardware just couldn't do or maybe you had an idea that just had to get scrapped that you're like, I'm going to bring that back at some point. There is an idea I have for pinball games in general hardware-wise and I can't tell you because they might do it and I know they wouldn't be happy if I talked about it. Let's not violate any NDAs here. Let's not do that. I'm so excited that you're part of the Stern team now. I mean, they just have the best, just an incredible roster, just top to bottom in that whole organization. Every time I get to talk to one of you guys, it's just a pleasure. And I hope to see you on more and more games because I think, you know, as hard as these Rock Band games are, it seems like you're up to the challenge and you're just getting better with every one of them. Was any of the tech you developed incorporated into the expression lighting system? Yes. There's some kind of crossover there. there's a couple technologies there but yeah it's it's that's part of it if you can have a system where the music can or i should say the machine code can say hey where are we in the song you know uh and you can basically tell it anything where are we in the song are we in the verse are we in the chorus uh what beat in this measure are we in what measure are we in what's the bpm you can do all kinds of stuff like schedule a light like if you could wait 120 milliseconds to ping a light then perceptively you know you might not be able to say why you like it but you know lights blinking in uh and light shows kind of going in time with the music just as is satisfying and that's kind of what we did also in blood zeppelin is like a sound effect might have might be like a multi-channel sound effect that has multiple pitches multiple versions of a sound effect with different pitches and depending on where you are in the song it will actually play a pitch appropriate sound effect wow yeah and i'm just i can't wait to see this le because like when far cry kicks in you know you know i want to see the lights just exploding um right yeah i hope that's in there yeah they yeah i mean it's just it's incremental but it just it gets better and better each revision i get excited every time i make some outlandish suggestions and they're like yeah we could probably do that yeah yeah it seems like nothing's off the table you know if if they can fit it into the time you know obviously they're everything's on a timeline but you know if they can if they think i can pull it off they do it which is which is really cool well if you could do any band what would it be oh that's a good question um let's see you know oddly enough i haven't really thought of that it would have been led zeppelin and when they approached me about led zeppelin i was i just i lost my mind i was like that would be the one to do but i would love you know there's no market for this i would love to work on a black flag one or maybe you know just some of these old punk bands can you imagine the henry rollins call outs right exactly it would be amazing yeah he's done so much spoken word he'd be perfect for it he'd be down for yeah yeah i think you and vinicore would get along quite well if you already haven't you know with with the punk stuff for sure i mean a misfits machine would be really cool too oh yeah that would be great i don't know if glenn would be into it he you wouldn't understand the call-outs that would be the problem yeah low voice yeah just be like elvis right yeah and then he did an elvis record after all those years of people saying he was like the the punk rock elvis right Anything on Rush that people may not know or any Led Zeppelin that's kind of a cool tidbit or backstory? Boy, nothing I think of offhand that hasn't already been kind of revealed by the team. The VO thing was the biggest one for me because I've been in so many voiceover sessions where people just don't want to be there. They're doing the least amount. But just know that when you play Rush that they were so supportive, the band and everybody involved in just making this a really fun machine. And I do think, sound aside, whatever you think of the sound, that the game itself, it just kind of reflects all the love that went into it from everybody at Stern and everybody in the Rush camp. Yeah, I couldn't be happier with, I mean, when I finally saw the layout of the play field and the artwork and everything, I was like, oh my God, I think they did it. You know, I think they made a dream theme, you know, come true. So it's like, and that's such a hard thing to do. It's such a tall order. While I do have you here, what is the rush target noise? Is it a synth thing? What is that? It's like a layered thing. So part of it, I almost don't want to tell you because then you'll listen for it, but I will tell you. I almost think it was almost like a cowbell-like kind of... It's an anvil sound, but it's processed. It's kind of a flange on there. Underneath there is like a light ricochet kind of tail that I stretched out. Wow. How do you compose that? Where do you even start with just one noise like that? Well, if I have an idea in my head and I know what I want it to sound like, I'll usually start with an idea of like, what do I want that sound to do? So for like a rush target, I want it to sit above the music a little bit. I want to maybe, and that was where I was experimenting with a tiny bit of sub in there that just kind of punches the mechanical part of actually hitting the target. And then, so with that recipe of like there, then I start playing with pieces and i say okay what would be a good transient high frequency sound there and um i'm sure i played with with several metal kind of hits i knew it was something metal in the hit but i could not i was like it was driving me crazy yeah and i wanted to be powerful and you know obviously they're plastic targets but when you hit it i wanted that like clank yeah just you know like the hammer there especially with some of the imagery from rush album art and all that kind of stuff and then that kind of spark ricochet tail there just kind of gives a little little bit of extra sweetness on there because just just the clank alone is not enough so it's that's kind of where the synth feeling might come in from there because that's a little bit affected there yeah i just couldn't pinpoint i was like did he use some type of synth thing there i don't know like i just could not pinpoint that noise i was like i know it's something hitting but you know It was like blowing my mind. Where did you use like a Moog sampler on one of the noises? Where was that incorporated? Oh, that's a good question. That's probably on the display effects whenever I could get away. And that's the trick there with that. And it's kind of where the pitch aware system came from, is that we wanted not just non-musical sound effects. We wanted to put some pitch stuff in there. But when you do that and you're playing, you know, a piece of music, you can't necessarily determine what key it's in, which kind of makes it sound dissident. Sometimes it doesn't fit. Sometimes it just works perfectly. Boy, I'm going to have to actually look up when I did that, because I I basically recorded a bunch of. I'm trying to think maybe I did it in the extra ball. There's kind of like the Tom Sawyer. I might be wrong on this. The Tom Sawyer synth. Yeah, no, you might be right. yeah yeah it's that kind of thing that i just yeah yeah it's the little things just hidden in there just to give it a little bit of musicality to break up uh just the pure uh atonal what i would call atonal sound effect so when you say display effect you so like when that comes up on the display you hear that sound yeah it's probably better said display sequence so when they trigger those videos there's a whole nother set of of sound effects that are incorporated yes and that's a fun one because i get to do sync sound to like the owl flapping wings and a lot of cool whoosh sounds there there's some really fun stuff i got to do on those ones i really like uh composing those ones yeah see that's a bit of trickery as as a player because you're so focused on the play field it's so well integrated that you're hearing these things but you don't realize that it's not because the ball hits something it's it's because it's going in tandem with the call outs and what's happening on the display all in one cohesive package yeah and that's kind of my design with these since aerosmith when i was learning to do this when they first came out with this stuff is to kind of also give a show to the people who are waiting to play or watching somebody play and i did a lot of stereo tricks this time because the videos kind of lent themselves to that where it kind of plays with that so the idea is hopefully someone watching isn't just bored if they're picking their head up and watching what's happening on the uh on the display on the led too they can kind of uh you know get a little audio treat there i did lose a couple balls today because I was like enamored with like the concert footage you know like well right the rotisserie chicken background awesome you know like zoink ball's gone yeah well I think we've covered the list Bob I mean that was it was wonderful to have you on and anything in closing remarks I mean anything you we may have missed or I didn't cover I don't think so I really appreciate you having me on and I really appreciate the response that the pinball community has given me kind of somebody coming in new um you know i'm i'm definitely have the respect for this uh community that i i want to i kind of want to make my mark but i want to make everybody happy with the sound and maybe do some new things that uh you know haven't been done before so i appreciate the feedback and the in the uh support everybody's given me so far oh that's awesome well you know like any community, we, we still have our trolls, but I can tell you that the vast majority of pinball people are awesome. They're, they're wonderful people. And, um, I, I hope the community stays that way and hopefully we'll see you at a pinball show. Uh, any chance you're going to be at Texas or boy, when, when is that March? Yeah. Into March. Maybe I was that pre COVID. I was at in Chicago for it since I'm in Michigan. That's a pretty easy jump. Yeah. But Who knows? I mean, I'd love to. I've been stuck in my studio for so long. Yeah, come to Texas Pinball Festival. We would love to have you there, man. I'm sure Ed Van Der Veen, he runs that show. He would love to have you as well. All right. Yeah, I'll start looking into it. That'd be great. Awesome. Well, Mr. Bob Baffy, I appreciate all your time. And man, from a Rush fan, thank you so much for this. I mean, this is really like a gift. It really is. Oh, I really appreciate it. That's very kind words today. and yeah, I had a blast. Awesome. Well, I hope you have a great evening, Bob, and hopefully we'll see you at a show soon and we can't wait to see you on the next Stern game. Are you already lined up? Can you tell us that? There's chatter, but I usually come on later. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay, well, awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bob Baffy. All right, there you have it. Big, big thanks to Mr. Bob Baffy and everyone at Stern Pinball for making this possible. Send questions and comments to mtmpinball at gmail.com. And as always, thanks for listening. And I think I'll end this podcast with the overture from 2112. This is from a 1980 live radio broadcast. and I think it sounds pretty darn good. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. We'll be right back. guitar solo We'll be right back. We'll be right back. And the meek shall inherit the earth _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: af80451f-116f-48ea-9b37-21e0c2b30134*