Michael Nielsen is a composer and music producer for film, television, video games, records, and advertising.
Michael has composed scores for some of the worlds most successful game franchises, including the Microsoft’s genre leadinging Forza Motorsport, League of Legends, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell: Conviction was one of the highest grossing video games of the year with over two hours of cinematic score recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Warner Bros Eastwood Scoring Stage. Michael has also composed scores for the video game tie-in to the Green Lantern movie as well as Activision’s Battleship video game. Michael also provided the original score for League of Legends: Spirit Guard Udyr, and LoL Championship "Road to the Cup,” which debut in LA’s Staples Center.
Michael is an owner and principle composer for Ninja Tracks, a first call music production company specializing in film and video game advertising. With literally hundreds of advertising campaigns for Hollywoodʼs biggest blockbuster films to their credit, Ninja Tracks continues to thrill audiences on both the large and small screen. Recent credits include The Mandolorian, Indiana Jones, John Wick, Fast And The Furious, and countless others. Not stopping there, Ninja Tracks has scored numerous commercials for clients including Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, NBC, Mattel, Activision, and Disney.
Michael wrote and produced the Selena Gomez single, “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” which has sold over a million copies and has over 100 million streams.
Michael has written and produced songs for films such as Another Cinderella Story, American Pie III, Scooby Doo, Blue Crush. Michael also co-scored Marvelʼs hit animated series Wolverine and the X-Men which garnered Nicktoons their highest ratings to date.
Michael played guitar as the character Top Hat (Death), in the cult classic movie "Six String Samurai". Michael has collaborated with and produced music for iconic artists including James Brown, Barry Manilow, Kenny Loggins, The Pussycat Dolls, The Baha Men, John Sykes, Eric Gales and Lenny Kravitz. Michael produced blues/rock artist Philip Sayce’s “Peace Machine”, which was a best seller in the blues charts and has received critical acclaim. Michael received an RIAA Gold Record for Disneymania which remained on the Top 20 over a year after itʼs release. Michael also contributed to Disneymania 2 which remained in the Top 5 on Billboardʼs Childrenʼs Chart for over 23 consecutive weeks, entering at #1 the week it was released. The song “Tell Me Something I Donʼt Know” reached #3 on Radio Disney and debuted at #7 on Billboard.
Michael has a YouTube show called Big Hairy Guitars were he regularly does launch demonstration videos for some of the worlds premier music instrument companies, and is a creative outlet for his passion for guitar, mixing and mastering.
Big Hairy Sounds is Michael’s sound design company that specializes in guitar sounds like impulse responses, Kemper profiles, and software presets.
Michael graduated from UCLA. He currently (and always has) lived in Los Angeles and loves the Dodgers.
