If anyone who is interested, here is an edited interview with music composter Yasunori Mitsuda.
1UP: Tell us, how did you get into the game industry to begin with?
Yasunori Mitsuda: Back in the early 1990s, while I was looking for a job, I was helping my mentor, who was teaching music to game companies. We visited one game company, and there was a copy of Famitsu [Japan\'s top gaming magazine] on the desk. I flipped through it and came across an ad for a sound producer at Square [as the company was known before it merged with Enix]. I wasn\'t specifically looking to get hired by a game company, but it just kind of happened like that.
1UP: So what was your first project at Square?
YM: I first worked on Hanjuku Hero [a 1992 Super Famicom strategy-RPG] with Koichi Sugiyama [composer on the Dragon Quest series] and Final Fantasy V and then Secret of Mana and Romancing SaGa 2. Back then, no one else was really able to do the sound effects for the games.
1UP: When it came to then working on Chrono Trigger, you famously told Final Fantasy creator/producer Hironobu Sakaguchi that if you weren\'t allowed to score that game, you were going to quit Square. Is that pretty much how it went?
YM: Yeah, that\'s true. I started as a sound composer, and that meant that all I was able to do were sound effects -- not to mention that I wasn\'t being paid very well at the time. I wasn\'t even able to pay the bills, so I started thinking to myself that I had no other choice. I felt the situation was unfair. "If you\'re not going to let me create music, then I\'m going to quit," is what I basically said to Sakaguchi. So he responded: "In that case, you should do Chrono Trigger -- and after you finish it, maybe your salary will go up."
1UP: So did it?
YM: Only slightly!
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1UP: I also remember that you said you\'d fall asleep in your chair because you\'d be working so hard and that melodies would actually come to you in dreams. The ending theme to Chrono Trigger, for instance, came to you in a dream.
YM: Yeah, that\'s true. Back then, I\'d camp out in the studio the entire time. I\'d keep everything on all the time and I\'d drift off to sleep. If I was sleeping and a melody came to me, I\'d jump right up and be able to work on it.
1UP: So did that really happen?
YM: Yes, and it\'s happened a lot to me recently.
1UP: Do you think that\'s kind of amazing in a way?
YM: You know, it\'s kind of like what happens in everyday life -- if you think about something a lot, it\'ll appear in your dreams. That\'s how music can be for me. I\'ll be thinking about a project so much that melodies will come in my sleep.
1UP: Any other examples that you can distinctly remember of melodies coming in a dream?
YM: "Bonds of Sea and Fire," Bart\'s theme from Xenogears.
1UP: So how do you pick your projects?
YM: I don\'t have any strict rules -- whatever captures my interest at a given time. I tend to like to do stuff that I haven\'t done before.
1UP: Do you think it\'s a shame that game companies don\'t always recognize the importance of music?
YM: Most of the Japanese companies don\'t view music as important, so yes, it\'s frustrating. There\'s only a small pool of people who appreciate music in Japan -- everyone else is just like, "If it\'s there, that\'s cool -- if it\'s not, no big deal." I think in the U.S., more people appreciate music, so it would be nice if I could work more with American clients -- not to mention that the gaming business is a bit healthier in the U.S. right now, so there might be better budgets.
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1UP: Are there any projects you\'ve worked on that you look back and say, "I wish I could have done it better"?
YM: I feel that way with all my work. That\'s why, whenever I work on a new project, I try to pick up from the point that I wasn\'t satisfied in my previous project.
1UP: You have a lot of fans around the world, you have music CDs, you have a studio -- is this kind of like a dream come true for you? Or how do you view it?
YM: Not at all. I\'m still moving forward, and I haven\'t completed my goals yet. I\'m still in progress, and there are so many things I want to still do.
1UP: Such as?
YM: Of course more games, and I\'d like to do more work for plays and movies and do some more of my own music. And producing female vocalists -- my list is endless.
1UP: If you could pick out one song or melody of yours that is your favorite, which would that be?
YM: I like all of my music, but especially "The Girl Who Closed Her Heart" and "Pain" from Xenosaga. I also have a lot of favorites in KiRite.
http://ww.1up.com/media?id=3394951
http://ww.1up.com/media?id=3394787
Link to InterviewThis guy had written and composed a lot of great musics for many popular games starting from Chrono Trigger to Xenogears, Xenosaga, etc. Originally, he only worked as doing sound effects for Square, he wanted to composed music for games so later he said if he couldn\'t do music, then he would quit. Also the paid wasn\'t that good. So, the executive producer let him in charge of the doing musics for Chrono Trigger. He got really sicked writing musics for Chrono Trigger that he was hospitalized from it. But the works paid off as he moved up to be a music composer/writer for Square.
He had written many great and memorable musics for games like Xenogears, and Chrono Cross that I had played. It\'s interesting that he worked so hard that his brain is still composing music in his sleep. From the link, there is another link on an interview with another composers that written musics for Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story,Final Fantasy XII, etc.
Topic: Interview with Composer Yasunori Mitsuda (Read 3521 times)