Shannon Mason's (temporary)
Music Portfolio

Hello! This site is being renovated right now, but here's a temporary place-holder thing with some examples of my music. If you'd like to hire me to write music for a game or license one of my existing tracks, you are awesome! And you can reach me at shannon.amelia@gmail.com.



Skip to: Soundtracks | Full Production | Super Nintendo style | General MIDI

Soundtracks:


Full production:

These tracks were done using Sonar, various VSTs, and fancy sample libraries.

Obsidian Paradise (Download)

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This is one of my contibutions to Project VGM, which I wrote based on this description:
~A cavern that has been dressed up to look anything but. Obsidian obelisks, a row of mongolia trees, and a terraced stairway mark the entrance to this grand dungeon. Veins of gold and silver lace the tunnel walls. Vines covered in blossoming flowers cling to the walls and sometimes the floor. They grow from planters lining nearly every wall. The floor is polished to a shine and doorways and arches of obsidian mark every portal. A sacred place in the dark underground, and an ancient site of the Elven race.~

Fond Memories (Download)

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I started this one in a one hour compo, and finished it up early this year. Stylistically, it pays homage to my favourite composer, Yasunori Mitsuda. And yes, I actually sequenced breath noises for the flute part, haha (no one's commented on that yet, so I'll assume that means it sounds natural!).

Swamps of Isthmus (Download)

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Another contribution to Project VGM, which I wrote based on this description:
~A polluted forest with a sewer system draining into it, making it a disgusting cess-marsh. The party must climb trees, wade through slime, jump from one chunk of trash to another in polluted acid streams, and fight mutants to stay alive as they make for the huge metropolis of Sidhe (the source of the pollution).~

Deep Ocean Lights (Download)

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A song about the strange bioluminescent life at the bottom of the ocean. (Suggestion: close your eyes while you listen...!)

Super Nintendo style:

My tribute to the Super Nintendo era. These songs were written using lo-fi instrument samples from various SNES games, in the style of the classic 2D RPGs of that time.

Waterfall Caverns (Download)

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Hey, there's a secret cave behind this waterfall! This track was really popular over at 8bitcollective, where it hit #1 on the front page two weeks in a row, and got tons of amazing feedback, including one of my favorite comments I've ever received:

"I think it's music like this that always allowed me to become emotionally attached to old games with simple graphics, and cheesy, convoluted story-lines. At a certain point, it's up to the composer to really build up the environment using sound, so that the player can be allowed to believe in places and things that couldn't possibly exist. The end result is that when I think about those old games, those are places I've *been*, and adventures I thoroughly enjoyed having. Your music, and this song especially, captures those feelings. In short: fuck yes. Let's explore these caverns, collect what needs collectin', and save who needs savin'."

Their Planet (Download)

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I usually write my music based on a very specific theme, but for this one, I just started out with the concept of "space", and decided to go wherever my imagination might take me. The result is some sort of weird spacey-celtic-jazz-waltz-orchestral-electronic hybrid. Someone once described it as "Chrono Trigger in space."

Heroic (Download)

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I wrote this track with a hero's theme in mind, but it also makes a good victory fanfare or ending theme. In fact, it was used in the ending credits of Clash of the Olympians by Ironhide Game Studio, where it fit very nicely, if I might say so (and wow, was it ever hard getting to the end credits).

My Town (Download)

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A peaceful theme for the hero's town, where the hypothetical game begins (probably after some sort of dramatic prologue).

Mysterious Forest (Download)

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A theme for a beautiful, misty forest, with maze-like paths and strange secrets.

General MIDI:

Most of my earlier work was done in General MIDI (a small, standard--usually poor quality--set of instruments). I put these here because I'm still proud of them. I think they have some really memorable musicial themes and ideas, and are still fun to listen to. (Note: these are mp3 recordings, not the actual .mid files.)

General MIDI Demo Roll (Download)

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Short clips from a whoooole bunch of different tracks. There's quite a few musical styles in here that I haven't yet tackled with higher quality instruments, so hopefully this will give a better idea of my flexability as a composer.

Eidora Overworld ~A World of Beasts (Download)

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This is one of many tracks I wrote for an old homebrew RPG called Excalistia (which of course was never finished) between 2001 - 2004. It was going to be the theme for the dark overworld (I wrote a light overworld theme too, but it hasn't aged as well).

Black Abbey (Download)

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I wrote this all the way back in 2001, if I'm remembering right (trust me, not all my music from that time sounds this good!).

Soaring Above the World (Download)

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This was from a phase when I was addicted to writing RPG airship themes. They're so much fun!

Theme of Troys ~Deep Within Myself (Download)

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This was intended to be the theme of the main character in Excalistia, Troys (pronounced "Troyce," apparently). I think he was a "cold on the outside, emotional on the inside" sort of character (hard to remember now).

Ninja Eclathion (Download)

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This was for a silly project over at the VGMusic forums where we formed teams and came up with a game concept and the music for said game. Our team's concept was something about a cartoony ninja (sort of Goeman-ish) named "Eclathion" (kind of a weird name--I didn't come up with it!).

The Tower (Download)

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Another track originally written for Excalistia. I think this may have been the last track I wrote for it (sometime in 2004), and was one of the most polished. It ended up being used years later for the title screen in Clash of the Olympians.

Emotion (Download)

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This is probably the only piece I've ever written that might be leaning more towards film music style than game music style. Or maybe not, haha. Whenever I write something I think isn't video game style, someone's always like, "this would sound really good in a video game."

Starblaze Confront - Intro (Download)

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This was written for a little space shooter called Starblaze Confront back in 2004. The developer wanted music similar to the style of Gundam Wing Endless Duel for SNES. The soundtrack was left unfinished for a long time (long story!), but I was approached again last year and asked if I would finish it, so I finally did.

Starblaze Confront - Alternate Level 2 (Download)

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This is one of the recent tracks I wrote for Starblaze Confront (my favourite track). It was the first General MIDI thing I'd done in ages, and it was really strange trying to emulate my composing style from 2004, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Village of the Cursed (Download)

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A theme for an almost-typical RPG village... but something seems a little weird about the people there.

Thanks for visiting!

All music on this page is ©2001-2012 Shannon Mason