GameSpot has an item up on a US concert tour called Video Games Live put together by Tommy Tallarico and the Clear Channel Music Group. Here's why it's interesting for us:

Bungie sound and music guru Marty The Elder posted today on the Marty Army site that soon we'll get more info on the second part of Halo 2's soundtrack:

I finished the Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 today and listened to it (all 70 minutes worth) in one sitting. I liked it, and I hope you will too. I'll tell you more about it soon.

Can't wait.

Devin has produced transcripts of the A Walk in the Woods and Under Cover of Night tracks from Halo; each file archive includes a PDF, a MIDI file, a PrintMusic document and a read me. We've added them to our Halo Sheetmusic section.

Skeletor posted a guitar tab in Power Tab Editor format, as well as a recording, of The Maw from the Halo soundtrack in the HBO forum the other day, and was kind enough to let us add the file to our Sheet Music collection here at Rampancy.

... that there aren't more items in a day than we have minutes (to say nothing of hours) to post them. So here's what happened when I wasn't looking:

BDGamer notes that Aspyr has announced the track listings for the soundtrack to Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse by Wideload Games. In a strange twist, the soundtrack will be out on March 15, although the game is apparently due out later.

The latest in GameSpy's series of interviews with Bungie is with Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, about the sounds and music in Halo 2. Marty always gets asked a lot about music, but this article also talks a bit about the game's sound effects:

Hitting a cabbage with a metal pipe works wonders. Also this time we have doubled the sampling rate, and have stereo/surround sound files that are crisp, juicy and crunchy. Plus, we killed a lot of grunts while recording.

Nico "Grasshopper" Audy-Rowland, the music and audio guy for Red vs Blue, the Strangerhood, and some Project Magma maps, has done a strenuously detailed interview with Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, music and audio guy on Myth, Halo and Halo 2. Marty seems to be running neck and neck with Frankie for the award for most forthcoming and loquacious Bungie employee. HBO is hosting it the interview.

Music 4 Games has interviewed Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell about the Halo 2 soundtrack. Here's what he had to say about what's different this time around, under the hood:

Marty The Elder dropped into the HBO forum to answer questions about the Soundtrack promotion at Sumthing.com. Basically, the soundtrack to be released on the same day as the game will have whatever tracks of the game's score that are ready to be released at that time, plus "music inspired by Halo 2" produced by other artists.

[image:8085 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Sumthing Distribution, the company that inked a deal back in 2002 to market game soundtracks for Microsoft Game Studios, including the original Halo soundtrack, has a graphic on its front page promoting the Halo 2 soundtrack.

Marty O'Donnell has been interviewed by Electronic Gaming Monthly; the three-page article is online at 1Up.com. Fun fact: Halo 2 has about 15,000 lines of random combat dialogue. So far.

While most of Bungie has been mum lately about the single player campaign, Marty does reiterate how his sound work is contributing to it, and what Bungie is trying to do in the second game: