About
Hello! My name is Nick Peck. I’m a composer, vintage keyboardist, audio engineer, and sound designer. I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area my whole life, and have been working in my chosen profession for the last 20 years. Here is my life story:
I’m a San Francisco Bay Area native. I began piano lessons at 8, then spent my teenage years exploring pop music, and began writing myown compositions at 18. I started playing in bands while at UC Berkeley, first in a gigging cover band called Common Interest, then in an original progressive rock project known as Freefall. Continuing in the prog rock vein, I fronted the Marin-based Episode for about a decade, recording two albums and gigging regionally. I then continued my formal training in electronic music, receiving a BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. During that period, I focused on composing serious 20th century electronic music, particularly using modular analog synthesizers, analog tape, and field recordings.
This led to the art of sound design, which I currently practice professionally as Audio Director of Underground Development, an Activision video game studio. Previous audio production stints include Game Sound Supervisor of Skywalker Sound, and Sound Supervisor of Lucasarts Entertainment Company. I also worked as a freelance sound designer under the company name of Perceptive Sound Design for about 12 years. From the late nineties to the mid-2000’s, I had a fairly large, custom-built recording studio with a foley pit, which was used for many films and video games.
In the mid-nineties, I recorded my progressive rock magnum opus: an album called Under the Big Tree. It took three years to create, and its completion marked a shift of focus from prog rock to improvisational music. After that, I co-founded a jamband called Ten Ton Chicken, which proved to be a fruitful project in its day. After nearly five years, 150 gigs, and two albums with the band, I left to focus on jazz.
Six months later, I formed the Mill Valley Jazz Collective, a Hammond organ-based soul jazz group in the tradition of Jimmy Smith. Then, in 2004, I formed Sycamore Park, a funk/jazz band, which recorded and gigged around the Bay Area. I now have another jazz/funk organ trio called The Nick Peck Organ Trio, which is gigging locally and looking at recording soon. I’m continuing to compose and record original material, gig locally with a variety of musicians, record and mix albums, work as a session keyboardist, and write articles for Electronic Musician magazine. A new CD of jazz/funk compositions entitled Fire Trucks I Have Known was released in September 2007, and is available from CD Baby.
I’ve been working on various aspects of the Guitar Hero video game for the last couple of years. It has been an incredible honor to remix some of the greatest songs in rock history. The job is challenging, but it’s been great to come to work every day. Our first Guitar Hero title, Guitar Hero Van Halen, was released on December 22, 2009, and we’ve been at work mixing more songs for downloadable content since then.
On a personal note, my wife Agnes and I had our first child, Julian, in January 2005. Julian is now a precocious five-year-old, who loves playing the drums (big surprise, huh?). In August 2006, we sold our house and studio in Mill Valley and moved to San Mateo where we now live. Our daughter, Natalie, was born in August 2009.