Game Composer Interviews + Discussion Thread

[ella guro]

hey, so whenever I feel uninspired artistically or slightly down on game music, I read a bunch of interviews with different game composers. They tend to make me feel a lot more excited about game music and also it's great to put a face on a lot of these people who I had sometimes thought of in the past as faceless Japanese guys.

Here's a few of my favorites

Massive Nobuo Uematsu interview (must read for FF fans):

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3166165

Hiroki Kikuta and Yoko Shimomura:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24920

PixelJunk Eden's composer Baiyon interviews Hip Tanaka:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26447/Interview_PixelJunk_Edens_Baiyon_Vs_Metroids_Hip_Tanaka.php

Yasunori Mitsuda interview:

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3162780

It's easy to ignore that these guys are artists who often have a lot of things to say about games and game music. Which is why it's so interesting and inspiring to read a lot of these interviews.

Check 'em out, and feel free to add any thoughts here or post more!

[Dissidia]

I want more Nobuo interviews, he's been in so few. Thanks for posting, I also like reading composer interviews.

Edit: I hadn't watched the whole Nobuo Interview before, thank you.

[ella guro]

Only 1 reply makes me . If no one else replies, I'll just keep updating the thread every day or so with more interviews and some quotes.

Alexander Brandon interviews Hip Tanaka (this one is older):

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2947/shooting_from_the_hip_an_.php

I like this part a lot:

However, what really doesn't change is that sound designing is a human-to-human business, not like you are doing it for dogs or birds. Not only that, but you have to tackle gamers’ feelings, which is something we've never been able to grasp completely. The understanding on the technology side is a must, but most importantly, I think we are required to have various ideas and techniques in order to cope with the living beings that we are targeting.

The ideas in designing sounds are everywhere, and it's not a bad thing to think about how you have been dealing with the sound since you were a child. We are surrounded by sound since our birth.

[Basementwall]

"We are surrounded by sound since our birth."

I think I'll put that on a t-shirt. Or an OCR album title...?

[lazygecko]

Tim Follin video interview:

[ella guro]

Tim Follin video interview:

Sweet, thanks! I've never seen this and Follin is one of the best game composers there is.

[ella guro]

pretty interesting older interview with (former) Silent Hill game composer, Akira Yamaoka. The translation seems not so good, but he does say some interesting and slightly provocative things.

[Dj Mokram]

Two interviews of my favorite composer, Hitoshi Sakimoto, and his work on FFXII.

First from 1up:

Notice his minions working diligently in the background... and of course the hardware.

Second is from the bonus dvd contained in the collector edition of the game:

Very interesting and detailed info on his workflow, and the differences between composing for movies and composing for video game.

Enjoy.

[Tex]

Matt Furniss interview:

http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id=444&title=Interview:%20Matt%20Furniss

[Mirby]

Do zircon and djp count? They composed original music for games... And I interviewed both of them.

[Maco70]

George "The Fat Man" Sanger interview.

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/paw/specials/22641-paw-interviews-george-the-fat-man-sanger?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThatGuyWithTheGlasses+%28That+Guy+With+The+Glasses%29

(Thank you txai)

[Mustin]

Pretty awesome to have him throw out these names. Larry gets a shout out! As he should 'cause he's the man.

[GlitterBerri]

Here's an interview with Koji Kondo concerning Ocarina of Time's music conducted back in 1998. It's part of the developer interview series about the making of OoT from the website 1101.

[GlitterBerri]

And here's a 2010 interview with Koji Kondo I just finished! It details his composition process, the way he made music for the older systems, and his thought processes behind the Mario and Zelda music.

Did You Know:

-The Underwater BGM was the first song composed for Super Mario Brothers?

-Japanese cafe tables in the 1980s had arcade games embedded in them?