El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Oh hello!

I had wondered why Sarah was getting more and more silent,and I welcome ye to the Pirate101 Message Boards!Now,El Kaboing,there's not much I can say.I myself am a violinist,on top of my studies,and all that other stuff I do.(and I do do some composition on the side,and at the moment is my primary focus).And there's not much I can say beyond that.

Welcome!And I love the Cool Ranch music,especially Tumbleweed,it just feels...tense.I have yet to actually meet Nelson Everhart,(on the boards or other media,not in real life).

Bonnie is an amazing character,this is something so many players can agree on.And I do hope Ratbeard makes Shattershot available(though,my Musketeer is kinda level 2...so I have yet to experience the full potential of the class)

And anyone who knows me,knows my obsession with the dialogue,the puppet shows and such.In fact,MistyDragon13,Anecorbie,Chrissy the Blesser,among others,know EXACTLY where dialogue skippers go in my house...don't you?So,the highest praises to the Creative design crew.

I recently did the Ode to Eagilles quest,and I can say that that was great.Honestly,little more I could say...

Oh,wait,I forgot to introduce myself...

I am Felix,Noble Felix Yellowfish,the Hoodoo Master(but I do prefer being called Felix instead of Hoodoo).I live in a place far far away(not gonna get into too much detail here).I may have already stated that I play the violin...and that I love Biology and History(which leads into an obsession with mythology).I am a big fan of Mathematics,even though I am far from skillful in them.Like I said,not much to say!So,that's more or less it.A witchdoctor(that's pretty obvious).

I do hope,however,mademoiselle Steele will still come to visit us at some point,it wouldn't feel right if she just vanished...

So...without further yammering...I'm Felix!

El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Welcome to the message boards El Kaboing.
Um......My apologies for the frequent shellacking I gave you in Cool ranch as I was farming for much needed items. No hard feelings..........eh?
I am always in awe of composers and I dearly love the contributions you have listed above. Beyond well done and your work has always been well appreciated my me and all my Chrissys.
Hopefully I may meet you and your Lady Fair in game sometime.

El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Hola, & a very hearty warm welcome to you, El Kaboing! Nice to meet you!

I have no idea you were a co-composer at the side! That's really invigorating! I've plenty to say about your skills on it, other than my two words for it... muy... AMAZING!!

The saloon battle music in Cool Ranch was amazing! I couldn't help but somehow feel thrown head-first into an old-fashioned western-style showdown when I hear it! Get's very exciting every time I hear that in Cool Ranch's saloon battles! And that lyre music for that non-combat instance in Aquila, it sounded very... heavenly (pun intended)! Muy Fantastico! I didn't know who to thank for these amazing tunes before now, & now that I know who to thank, it's you! I hope you can keep up with composing more of these sweetly composed tunes of yours like them!

Plus, Nelson Everheart is also an equally great composer, too, like you, & his composed themes were really amazing as much as yours! I thank him for these, too!

In fact, I would really like to see these occasional additional music composing skills of yours placed to the test sometime soon by whipping up some cool boss combat music tunes, both on land & in the Skyways, & played for battling the bosses when we encounter them, rather than the normal combat music played in land & Skyway, in each available world in the game. Look up on Blind Mew's Story Thread 5: More Musings for advice on it, that I posted, if you feel inclined to do so, that is, since it is somewhat your departure. Blind Mew did say what I described could work well. He thinks so, & so do I. Just asking. Hope you're up to it someday.

Oh, it's also nice to share some of your stories with us on the side, too.

Speaking of Sarah Steele, just to ask, where did she go? I hope she's still around in the forums. I haven't heard from her for quite a time. Just wanted to know how she's doing, that's all.

In any case, I thank you a lot for all that you have done, & I hope to see you keep up these amazingly great tunes of yours!

Adios, for now!

ValkoorTheVictorio... on Oct 1, 2014 wrote:

Sounds....like you are going to fit in quite well around here, El Kaboing! And hearing that you are going to be spending time with us on the boards sure is music to our ears! It's very nice to have you aboard and every day I am blown away by the storyline scores, the critical attack music and other amazing musical elements found throughout the game.

Thank you for the wonderful introduction and we sure look forward to future posts and insight from you.....as well as all the new compositions, sounds and music the Sound team has in store for us in the new worlds and content. Love those critical attack stingers....amazing work!

Lol The sneak pun attack where you would least expect it. Well played Valkoor.

The Hoodoo Master on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

Oh hello!

I had wondered why Sarah was getting more and more silent,and I welcome ye to the Pirate101 Message Boards!Now,El Kaboing,there's not much I can say.I myself am a violinist,on top of my studies,and all that other stuff I do.(and I do do some composition on the side,and at the moment is my primary focus).And there's not much I can say beyond that.

Welcome!And I love the Cool Ranch music,especially Tumbleweed,it just feels...tense.I have yet to actually meet Nelson Everhart,(on the boards or other media,not in real life).

Bonnie is an amazing character,this is something so many players can agree on.And I do hope Ratbeard makes Shattershot available(though,my Musketeer is kinda level 2...so I have yet to experience the full potential of the class)

And anyone who knows me,knows my obsession with the dialogue,the puppet shows and such.In fact,MistyDragon13,Anecorbie,Chrissy the Blesser,among others,know EXACTLY where dialogue skippers go in my house...don't you?So,the highest praises to the Creative design crew.

I recently did the Ode to Eagilles quest,and I can say that that was great.Honestly,little more I could say...

Oh,wait,I forgot to introduce myself...

I am Felix,Noble Felix Yellowfish,the Hoodoo Master(but I do prefer being called Felix instead of Hoodoo).I live in a place far far away(not gonna get into too much detail here).I may have already stated that I play the violin...and that I love Biology and History(which leads into an obsession with mythology).I am a big fan of Mathematics,even though I am far from skillful in them.Like I said,not much to say!So,that's more or less it.A witchdoctor(that's pretty obvious).

I do hope,however,mademoiselle Steele will still come to visit us at some point,it wouldn't feel right if she just vanished...

So...without further yammering...I'm Felix!

For anyone who's been to my house,dialogue skippers get to sleep in a lovely graveya-I mean guest room,in a fine tent!They even have the company of my...permanent residents,so to speak.

(I don't actually kill people for skipping dialogue,I just make them camp in my graveyard)

El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Ahoy there!

Welcome to the message boards! It is wonderful to have a representative from the Sound Department here again. Though, what happened to Sarah Steele? I haven't seen her for quite a while.

The music is my absolute favorite part of Pirate101, and wait, you did the piano music for the Cool Ranch taverns?? I used to stand in there just to listen to it! And Apollo's lyre, that was great!

I won't go crazy with sound questions just yet (I may in the future...be warned...) but I have to ask, are some of the tracks based on movie music? There is one Aquila theme that reminds me of 'In Dreams' from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or more specifically, The Fellowship of the Ring.

I hope to see you in-game one day, El Kaboing! Again, glad to have you here on the Message Boards!

-Misty Jackson

El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Hiya :D

Since you love strategies I think you should hear one of mine . My strategy is to use Fan Flanders, El Toro, and 1 tough swashbuckler of choice (I go with Sarah Steele) to provide a huge rush like attack. First turn and possibly second turn I use buffs to enhanced my agility (Fan Flanders and the final stage of the agility buff trained by the swashbuckler using this strategy which Fan uses as well) alongside El Toro's power. Also using black fog to make everyone stealthy. Finally on the next turn I split up the group into 2 groups (Like El Toro+ Me and Fan Flanders+ Sarah Steele) to create a sneaky attack from both sides of the opponent. It has proven quite effective and gets even better if another Pirate teams up and provides more boosts.

Also I absolutely LOVE the music in this game. If the music had lyrics I would likely try to record myself singing them (for non profit of course)

Also I am curious
When coming up for music for a specific world/area does it take very long to come up with a theme that the music will follow?

Welcome to the message boards El Kaboing! I just love how your name is a spoof to my childhood show. I always appreciate the hard work and dedication to the whole sound crew who add such life to the game. I am hard of hearing, so I can't actually fully appreciate it but I do enjoy what I can. I am forever grateful that you add captions to everything. Even the puppet shows as I'm sure that had to take extra work to sync it up. I have played games before where there is no captions and you have to take everything in on the spoken word alone.

By the way, I always wondered this. Has anyone on the team ever suggested releasing a CD containing the music to the game for us fans to listen to?

haha, thank you for the compliments and stories - glad to hear there are fans of paying close attention to the dialog and music!

I am sure Nelson listens to other soundtracks sometimes for inspiration before writing his original pieces - it is very common for composers. I wouldn't know if he has ever had Firefly or LotR in mind, though, interesting. They are great soundtracks.

I like the idea for custom battle music for certain bosses (maybe El Kaboing? ha!). Of course, I cannot speak to what things may or may not make it into the game, but I can say that we in the audio team greatly appreciate the feedback (and bug reports) in the forums.

Thanks again!

Well, I did hear that Supreme Commander Kane may have his own unique combat themes for his many Epic Battles in his many forms reserved in the big final battle against him to come, for I may know that his final form may have it's own combat theme that brings the true epic feeling of us getting closer to defeating the end-of-main-story-arc villain completely, rather than using one unique combat theme shared for all of his forms, considering that he is the end-of-main-story-arc villain & the esteemed final boss of the first major story arc, nonetheless, so I feel that he should have his own combat themes in all of his forms, including his final form.

My advice on how available bosses in the game, both in land & Skyway, should be having boss combat music in all available worlds, save for end-of-arc villains, for they should have their own combat themes in all of their forms, including the final form, too, is this, start going slow by going through one world at a time, starting with Skull Island, for example, compose shared boss combat themes for the available land & Skyway bosses, then add them in a small update, rather than wait until all worlds have them in one large update, then go on to the next, & et cetera.

Of course, if you wish for select bosses to have their own combat music themes, too, El Kaboing, then, by all means, OK. Please do. I don't mind. I would enjoy that. Really.

Anyway, if those of you are to wonder how I got this idea, I'll tell you how.

Wizard101's Aquila does have some bosses that have their shared boss combat music, which I was very happy for, by the way (though, I wish all normal bosses in W101's Aquila would share that theme in it's dungeons instead of some while other bosses share the normal combat theme for the enemies there.), and yes, even secret bosses having their own boss combat music, too, that I like, too, so I thought to myself, "Why not have available bosses in Pirate101's worlds have their own boss combat themes, rather than them sharing normal combat music in all worlds? It would fit well with battling the bosses!". It's a good idea to have bosses have boss combat music instead of them sharing the normal combat themes in all available worlds.

Once again, thanks for complementing my thoughts & for listening!

El Kaboing on Sep 30, 2014 wrote:

¡Hola!

I am a Sound Designer here at KingsIsle. I have always enjoyed reading the forums (especially the audio-related threads!), and am excited to now play a more active role as El Kaboing. I will be taking over for Sarah Steele in representing KingsIsle’s audio team here.

An introduction:

For Pirate101, I tend to specialized in combat, Puppetshows, and extra music. Nelson Everhart is our amazing composer for all the normal background tracks, but I sometimes compose additional music - such as the piano in the Cool Ranch taverns, the lyre in the "Ode to Eagilles", and my favorite: the musical stingers for all the critical attacks. I also love to record sounds when I am traveling, especially nature sounds, and sometimes they wind up in the game.

I play Pirate101 at home, too - my wife and I are a Musketeer / Privateer team. We like to order pizza and sit back and play through some quests on the weekends. We have fun and it is very rewarding to hear my sounds in the finished product.

Some random things I love about Pirate101:

• The mix of strategy and cinema in every fight. You have meaningful decisions to make during the planning phase, and then you get to watch it all unfold.
• Bonnie Anne is the best companion. She looks cool, I like her accent, her beefy gun sounds awesome, and it is fun to decide when I want to use that attack of hers that can hit a billion enemies at once.
• Cool Ranch has my favorite music of Nelson Everhart's. Love the guitar!
• Everyone is buffed at once now instead of one at a time. My Privateer loves to buff, so we appreciate the time-saver.
• The writing! There is always something clever and funny.

That's all for now! Thank you for reading and I continue to look forward to your sound and music posts,

El Kaboing

Hi there el kaboing! welcome to the message boards! Im bob! (oh and by the way, i hope their is no hard feelings, considering that i killed you and all, lol)

El Kaboing, I do have a question about some recycled music themes heard in the game.

While I was travelling through the spiral path to travel from world to world, I noticed that the music theme is from one of Celestia's themes heard in Wizard101, not to mention the combat theme from battling the creatures there is Celestia's combat theme, too. I just took note of these while hearing these themes.

I also noticed that most of MooShu's Zones have been using recycled themes from Wizard101, merely because once that world was in Pirate101 before it went Live, I imagined & guessed that there was either original music composed in there for that game, of which I was kind of expecting sometimes, or that world was re-using past themes heard in Wizard101. Once I got to MooShu, my second guess was correct, for the most part, as the Skyway & Skyway combat themes heard in MooShu were original music themes composed, so that's something.

I understand that there wasn't enough time to compose new themes in select Zones that the P101 team had to bypass because the game was very close to release. Otherwise, if they did, it would delay the game's launch date.

Once I heard Marleybone was going to be in Pirate101, I had guessed that the world's Zones would be using recycled themes from Wizard101 in my head & ears, but once I got there, I was wrong. All of Marleybone's Zones were using original themes, & that fit well there.

From my perspective, recycled music used from another game, such as Wizard101, can get a bit, to place it gently... mundane. But, being that you compose new music themes, I don't suppose there could be new original themes you can compose that can replace the recycled music themes used from Wizard101 someday? I understand that doing so requires time & the resources for composing new music themes are finite, so, I won't complain.

I hope other worlds seen in W101 won't be using recycled themes if they appear in P101 one day.