"Duane Decker was born in the steel belt of upstate New York and caught the music bug at a very young age. He started playing drums when he turned 8 years old and by the time he was 13, his rock bands were playing professionally at parties and dances. His family moved to San Diego, CA just before high school and he continued to play professionally throughout his high school and college years. While still in college, Duane designed and co-built his first synthesizer and began playing keyboards. While still playing in bands, he also put together his first solo act, playing piano, synthesizer, flute and drums with a fully interactive light show.
After college, Duane moved to Hollywood and spent the next 13 years touring the U.S. and Canada with all original rock bands and high tech solo act. His bands and solo act opened shows for acts like Humble Pie, Fleetwood Mac, KISS, The Romantics, Van Morrison, and many more. He also received critical acclaim for his work on vinyl records "Chicago Rocks Volume 1" and "Duane Decker -- Hard Disk Drive" during that time.
Because of his knowledge and passion for music technology, Duane went on to become a Product Specialist for Kurzweil Music Systems and E-mu Systems. He was involved with the creation of some of the most influential new music products of the day and also toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe performing at clinics and trade shows.
Duane then recognized that games held tremendous potential as a viable entertainment medium. He joined Premier Technology and scored the soundtracks for over 13 Gottlieb pinball games. He then joined FASA Interactive and took over all the audio chores for the extremely popular BattleTech series of products including MechWarrior and MechCommander as well as working on location based entertainment projects for Virtual World Entertainment and Walt Disney Imagineering.
In the late '90s, Microsoft acquired FASA Interactive and Duane found himself in Redmond, WA as an Audio Lead and eventually in-house composer for Microsoft Game Studios. While there, he continued to create music scores for some of the world's most popular games including Rise Of Nations, MechAssault, MechWarrior 4 and MechCommander 2. His music score from MechWarrior 4 was released on Varese Sarabande Records, which was the first game soundtrack Microsoft ever released. In June, 2003 soundtrack from Rise Of Nations was released through legendary producer and artist Nile Rodgers' Sumthing Else Musicworks record label. It was the first game soundtrack to ever be released in the 5.1 surround sound format on DVD.
In August, 2003, Duane decided to leave his post as in-house composer for Microsoft Game Studios and form his own music production company -- DDMusic, LLC. Projects have included the expansion pack for the highly acclaimed Rise Of Nations PC game; film and television promo tracks for Carlin Production Music - London; TV advertising projects; the 95 minute, fully orchestrated music score for "Rise Of Legends"; two and a half hours of original music from the Duane Decker Music (ASCAP) catalogue featured in Pump Audio's in-house production music catalogue; and music, sound design and voiceovers for a new game platform.
More to come..."
