Stan LePard

Stanley James LePard (August 10, 1956 – February 11, 2021) was an American composer, orchestrator and sound designer. He is best known for his work on the Halo and Destiny game series, as well as Guild Wars 2. In addition to games, he has also composed music and designed sounds for numerous Microsoft software products, including Encarta and Windows.

LePard was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. He composed piano ragtimes for his assignments in music theory classes. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition at Eastern Washington University, as well as a master's degree in Music Education at University of North Texas.

Starting from 1980, LePard composed for TV shows and films. One of his first projects was composing the theme song for Vintage Video Jukebox, a music video show which played soundies from the 1930s to the 1950s. During the late 1980s, LePard was part of the new wave band Secret Cinema as a keyboardist and saxophone player. He was also part of industrial band Steel Porn Rhino along with Jerry Schroeder, a fellow composer and sound designer whom he continued to collaborate with on later projects.

Around 1994, LePard started a long working relationship with Microsoft, initially doing work on various multimedia software products under the Microsoft Home line, including Encarta and 3D Movie Maker. This led to him composing the music for Hover!, a game included with Windows 95, and the first game that he composed for. He also composed the shutdown sound for Windows 98, as well as the installation music for Internet Explorer Starter Kit 3.0, which gained recognition from its later inclusion in Windows XP's out-of-box experience (OOBE), known as "Windows Welcome music", "Velkommen" or simply its file name title.wma.

LePard's first game score to use a live orchestra was Crimson Skies, released in 2000. He aimed to write music inspired by 1930s film and concert music, without being derivative of particular composers or styles. Starting with MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, released later in the same year, he also provided orchestrations for scores written by other composers, such as Duane Decker and Stephen Rippy.

From around 2012 to 2019, he contributed to the music of various events and expansions of Guild Wars 2. His first contribution was a track for the game's first Halloween event Shadow of the Mad King 2012, based on a short piano sketch by Maclaine Diemer that he transformed into a full composition. He also provided orchestration work, which Diemer has praised for relieving his anxiety over wasting the studio's budget, making sure his compositions were not "unplayable nonsense", as well as adding extra harmonic and melodic sophistication to his compositions. He also composed and orchestrated music for its expansions Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire.

LePard died on February 11, 2021, aged 64, following a intracerebral hemorrhage. To commemorate him, an NPC named Van Leopard and a memorial statue for him was added to Guild Wars 2 on May 11, 2021.