Music
Song: Honky-Tonk Villain
Honky-Tonk Villain has a bit of a history behind it. I was originally commissioned to write this piece for a flash animation parody of the silent-film era. After finishing that project, I didn’t do much with this song – after all, it’s not exactly fitting for video game composing, which is what I mostly focus on. However, while working on the same game project associated with the aforementioned “Daybreak,” I needed to come up with a character theme for a particularly bad-ass villain character (appropriately titled “The Dragon”). You can imagine the response when I submitted this piece for consideration…
Song: Daybreak
When I first submitted this song to my batch of video game project teammates (circa 2002), I classified the genre as “Hoe-down…? Jig?! Barnyard dance?!?!” That about sums it up…
Song: Syntheticity
“Syntheticity” has gone through any number of name changes. It started out as “Technojazz”, then later became “Diridian Syndicate Theme” as part of a video game project. When that project went belly-up, the song ended up lost in an obscure folder on my old Windows XP hard drive. When I finally stumbled across it while perusing old musical archives in search of music worth fixing up, I have to admit I was pretty excited to see “Syntheticity” again…
Song: Cyaron’s Gate
“Cyaron’s Gate” will always hold a special place in my heart, since it was the first composition for which I won an actual award. (1st Place, Audio Division: 2000 Utah State Multimedia Festival). As you can tell from that date, this piece was completed last century… a.k.a. 1999.
Song: Deeper
“Deeper” is a new type of music for me – a techno dungeon theme with a bunch of cool non-MIDI sounds. To give you a feel for the thematic setting of this piece, think of a sci-fi hero quietly sneaking through an alien lair. When the music escalates, the hero makes a run for it after being detected by his otherwordly enemies…
One New Song, Three “Remasters”
The title says it all – today’s post provides links to remastered versions of three existing songs, as well as an entirely new, never-before-published track for an unannounced project. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
Music: A Taste of What’s to Come
Finally – after YEARS of avoidance – I have started taking the time to properly arrange and master the music available on this site. This is a rather involved process; it involves hours of soundfont hunting, instrument tweaking, checking and re-checking levels, normalizing and compressing, and any number of smaller steps in-between depending on the particular song. Because this process is so involved, I’ve failed to set aside the proper time for it, instead choosing to make my music available in various states of “almost finished.” But no longer…
On Writing
I’ve been asked by a number of people how progress is coming on my latest project, and it seems I never have a very exciting answer… until now, that is! I’ve decided to finally compile my entire sordid story here, in one central place, to save myself having to relate it multiple times. (Plus, this way I can make all my embellishments official! Haha!)
Get It While It’s Hot – the Complete TannerHelland.com Music Collection
For the first time ever, the complete TannerHelland.com music collection is now available for download. By downloading one (large) .zip file, you will have access to all 42 full-length compositions available on this website. As always, the .zip is available for free – so enjoy!
Song: Defiance – REMIXED
What better way to release some new music than this – a remix of one of my favorite rock themes. Video game battle themes have moved away from orchestral themes in recent years, opting instead to use a lot more guitars and drums…and thus we have the newly remixed Defiance. Soundfonts have been used to render the entire song and a new intro lends itself more to classic RPG boss battle themes. The end of the song has also been remixed, including more than 60 seconds of new material. This remix originally appeared in the TGP/TLA project of 2000-2001 but I’ve never released it online – until now!
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