Early life Michael Salvatori was born in
Elmhurst, Illinois, in 1954. He attended Visitation Catholic School until eighth grade. He then attended York High School in the early 70s. After Salvatori had finished college he took a bank loan to build a basement studio at his home in
Wheaton, which would later be used to record Salvatori's first solo album, Waiting for Autumn, published in 1982 when Salvatori was aged 28. The album sold around five hundred copies, some of which are owned by Salvatori due to how rare they have become.
Early works Salvatori wrote music for his own rock band while he was in college, and became friends with
Martin O'Donnell. O'Donnell eventually moved to Chicago after completing his degrees, and was approached with a job offer to score a colleague's film. Since Salvatori had his own recording studio, O'Donnell offered to split the job with him; the two became partners. Soon after producing the music for
Myth II,
Bungie contracted O'Donnell for several of Bungie's other projects, including the third-person game
Oni. Bungie wanted to re-negotiate the contracts for
Oni in 1999, which resulted in O'Donnell joining the Bungie team ten days before the company was bought by
Microsoft. During production Bungie decided that instead of contracting work to O'Donnell, they would hire him. Salvatori remained at TotalAudio to manage the business aspect of the company, and shortly after O'Donnell joined the team, Bungie was bought by
Microsoft. Salvatori co-composed the music for
Halos sequels—
Halo 2 and
Halo 3—with O'Donnell, who has called Salvatori one of his musical influences. For the music to
Halo 3: ODST, O'Donnell began work on crafting the game's themes before Salvatori joined the team in February 2009. "Marty [O'Donnell] had started writing before me, and sent me some of his ideas," Salvatori said. "I picked a few that I felt I could add some magic to, and worked on those. I also came up with several ideas that I sent to Marty that he put his hands on." Once the duo felt they had enough material, the Chicago-based Salvatori flew to Bungie in Seattle to complete the arrangements and record live musicians. Early on, the team decided that rather than rely on old
Halo themes,
ODST would feature all-new music. "It was a bit intimidating at first," Salvatori recalled, "because in previous
Halo games if new ideas weren't coming, I could always dust off an old one and give it a new spin. I was afraid that we might hit some writer's block along the way, but that didn't happen at all. Instead, we had the freedom to explore some new musical territory, and the ideas flowed pretty quickly." With the exception of the main player character, O'Donnell and Salvatori did not compose themes to represent characters. While the game's setting in Africa inspired some percussion pieces, the team was interested in a sparser atmosphere, which Salvatori described as "a bit darker and less epic". He helped to write
Destiny 2's soundtrack, released Fall 2017. In October 2023, Salvatori was laid off from Bungie amid staff cutbacks across the company.
Collections and other work O'Donnell and Salvatori's music has been packaged and released in physical and digital forms. The soundtracks feature "frozen" arrangements that represent an approximation of a play-through of the games. The
Halo Original Soundtrack sold over 40,000 copies, and was followed by two different releases of the music to
Halo 2. The two volumes of the
Halo 2 Original Soundtrack were produced by
Nile Rodgers, with the first album being released in sync with the video game in 2004 and became the best-selling game soundtrack of all time. The second album was released more than a year after the soundtrack had been mixed and mastered.
Halo 3s soundtrack was released in November 2007, and featured a fan contribution that was the select winner from a pool of entries judged by O'Donnell, Rodgers, and others. All of Salvatori's contemporary work on the series was repackaged as
Halo Trilogy—The Complete Original Soundtracks in December 2008, alongside preview tracks written by
Halo Wars composer
Stephen Rippy. The music for
ODST was released in a two-disc set on September 22, 2009. Salvatori continues to engineer, produce and compose his own music. Aside from
Halo and
Destiny, he has served as the audio lead and composer for
Stubbs the Zombie. He also created the music for
Hail to the Chimp and ''
Disney's Guilty Party''. Salvatori made a guest appearance in the
Nostalgia Critic episode "Planet of the Commercials" for the
Flintstones Vitamins jingle.
Video game music works ==References==