Two innovations in Nobuo Uematsu's style of harmony stand out: improvisation and counterpoint techniques. It can be embarrassing to express your true self, but without ‘going nude’ there’s not much meaning to being a creator.”įrom left to right: Fantasian Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster. In order to reach your true essence as a creator, it’s essential to be yourself. But now that I’ve become older, I think about why I make music in the first place. I wanted to make better music than anyone else. “When you’re young, you want to stand out by doing something no one has ever done before. From the point of view of harmony, his most experimental works are concentrated on disc 3. But most interesting are Uetmatsu's "new discoveries" in terms of new sounds and harmony the pieces that depart from the composer's usual style. The album features a variety of styles of rhythm, harmony, and timbres. A sound and improvisation laboratoryįantasian's soundtrack is the most diverse ever made by Nobuo Uematsu. Nobuo Uematsu ( Mistwalker, 2021) Source: YouTube. I don't know if this was fate whether I did it on my own accord of if this was always meant to be but I did everything I could." So, once I wake up or maybe just before I wake up, there's already music playing in my head. "I'll wake up at 5 in the morning get to composing right away keep going until 6PM then I'll drink some beer and go to bed. Nothing could be more fitting for a game produced, designed, and written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator and main director of the Final Fantasy games and the friend and developer Uematsu spent the most time working with. It presents a broader musical identity with stylistic elements from different periods of his career, as well as ideas he's never tried before. The Fantasian soundtrack - with about 60 tracks - represents Nobuo Uematsu's view of the video game legacy he wants to leave. And when I did more than ever, my music diversified, and lead to so many new discoveries. So, I devoted all of my body and spirit into this project. "Will I get another chance to work on an entire game? I didn't want to have any regrets. Nobuo Uematsu ( IGN, 2021) Source: theongaku. I really tried being more adventurous this time.” I guess you could say that I got tired of playing it safe. For Fantasian, I tried to forget about all that and went in with the mindset that anything is possible. But lately, I’ve come to realize that following a pattern isn’t much fun. Without really realizing it myself, somewhere along the way I established a pattern for what RPG music was supposed to sound like. Then with Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation, it became possible to implement actual songs recorded in a studio. For Final Fantasy VI, I could recreate an opera scene for the first time. For video games, music has evolved together with what technology allowed us to do. “Actually, I don’t think that my music has evolved that much at all. In this story, I'm going to discuss why Nobuo Uematsu's compositional style is so special and how it remained rich and experimental until his most recent work: Fantasian (2021). But Uematsu was also strongly influenced by progressive rock, that increasingly accentuated his work after Final Fantasy VII. The most influential among these composers - at least, after Sugiyama - is probably Uematsu, who has also been dubbed the "John Williams of the video game world".Ĭlassical music influenced both men and were important for taking music composition in video games to another level. Examples include Yoko Shimomura (Super Mario RPG and Kingdom Hearts series), Keiichi Okabe (NieR and Voice of Cards series), Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto (Ogre series and Ivalice Alliance), Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono and Xeno series), Takeharu Ishimoto (The World Ends with You series), Koichi Sugiyama (Dragon Quest series) and, of course, Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy).įrom left to right: Nobuo Uematsu "Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY", FINAL FANTASY 35th Anniversary Coral. These composers have created the musical identity for some of gaming's most memorable IP. Most of these notable composers worked - or still work - at Square Enix, the leading JRPG publisher. JRPGs were also responsible for the popularization of game soundtracks as albums (a great example being "Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY", with compositions by Nobuo Uematsu).Ĭomposers of Japanese RPGs are among the most famous in the video game industry. Japanese RPGs introduced the practice of video game music being played by an orchestra in 1986, thanks to Koichi Sugiyama, the composer and conductor of Dragon Quest. JRPG soundtracks have always been among the most memorable in video games, and a fundamental part of their success.
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