Project Information

Shining Guitar


Note: This is a mirror of
http://www.providence-guild.net/grom/Shining_Force/Music/


Welcome to the Shining Guitar project page. Here you will find the entire archive of Shining Force One tunes created by myself (Grom).

Track Listing

  1. Introduction
  2. Title
  3. Simone's Theme
  4. Town
  5. Attack
  6. Enemy at the Gate
  7. Overworld
  8. Circus
  9. Holy War
  10. Battle on the Ship
  11. Castle
  12. HeadQuarters
  13. Shade Abbey
  14. Sad Theme
  15. Darksol
  16. Dark Dragon
  17. Ending
  18. Backing

About This Album

This album was initially conceived by myself and my good friend, and fellow guitarist Matt Creamer (Norrin_Radd) sometime around mid 2004. Although these plans never came to fruition until the summer of 2008. For a long time, both myself and Matt had wanted to create some music, we both had similar musical tastes, we both loved the same types of games, we both shared a passion for Shining Force and for playing guitar. Any collaboration project would have been a feat in itself because Matt lives almost three and a half thousand miles away from me and we are yet to meet up in real life. Sadly, Me and Matt rarely speak to each other these days, we have gone our seperate ways, we both live busy lives and the time zone difference makes it very hard to have a chat in real time. When it became clear we would never get the chance to create a collaboration project, I decided to start our coveted idea of "a shining force one guitar style" project on my own.

This album is dedicated to my good, and somewhat missed, friend - Matt Creamer aka Norrin_Radd.

In 1992, Climax Entertainment released Shining Force on the Sega MegaDrive (or Genesis to you yanks :P) and with it, one of my best childhood games. The music in particular brings back many memories of the summers of 93, 94 and 95 when me and my brother used to swap our SNES with our friends Sega for a month when we were off school =]. It brings me great pleasure to be able to present to you, my version of the Shining Force One sound track.

This album was no easy feat. My band, Male Function, consists currently of one member. Me. I only have a basic grasp of most music instruments, I am most definitely not a 'Pro' at keyboard or guitar, nor do i pretend to be. My covers are not perfect, and I'm sure many of you can find faults or flaws in my playing. Please bare in mind that the Shining Force Sound Track was never intended to be played on instruments, and as such, there is no sheet music available (not that I can read sheet music). Ty from TSS called me a brave man for even attempting to cover some tunes such as the Circus Theme (named aptly for Rusty of SFC) and Darksol's Theme which feature some backing and/or main tunes that are too fast for me to play on guitar/keyboard.

The Sega Megadrive/Genesis actually has two soundchips, both controlled by the Zilog Z80; the Yamaha YM2612 Frequency Modulation (FM) chip and the Texas Instruments SN76489 Programmable Sound Generator (PSG) chip.

The Yamaha chip has 6 Stereo output channels, The Texas Instruments chip has 4 Stereo output channels, although two of these are only used for sound effects and do not actually feature in the Musical Score of the game, that's still 8 channels playing different sounds simultaneously. No wonder these songs are complex.

Using the wonders of modern technology, I can isolate each channel in a song and learn it by ear. This allows me to recreate the sound (for the most part) from each channel - which in turn, will be mixed together with my other channel recordings to form a complete song. Here lies my greatest enemy though .. the timing. Those that have followed my progress through this project will know the countless problems ive met with regards to timing. the simple fact is, I use a crap program to mix these files together, and sometimes my mixing is out of synchronisation with the rest of the song. It is a problem im aware of, but not willing to resolve. Live with it.

What's the deal with that last track (18) ?

Track 18, Backing, is a mixture of backing tracks i created for this album, that I randomly selected. When creating these tunes I noticed that the lead guitar(s) often dulled out the backing that I made, so here you can hear the backing in its full glory :P

So, what instruments were used to create this album?

The majority of tracks in this album will have some part of them recorded by my electronic keyboard, a Casio GK-3000 (76 keys 800 Tones). The keyboard was used to record the 'brass' instruments (trumpets, trombones, tubas, horns), Bass instruments and Stringed Instruments (Violins, Harps, Violas, Cellos).

The first five tracks were made with my old guitar, a Crafter Cruiser RG-600/M.BK. The rest were made with my new guitar, pictured on the album cover, my B.C.Rich Warlock (Bronze Edition).

What couldn't be recorded ?

I tried, multiple times, to record my own percussion for these tracks, I even sought drummers to help, but ultimately I was left with no choice but to use the original percussion from the game. There was also some noises that I couldn't reproduce and so copied them from the original too.

Id like to thank the following people for their help, support and/or feedback on this project;

  • Mariska Neilsen
  • Ty (TSS)
  • Morgan Diaz
  • Pete Dale
  • Anthony Valance