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  #1  
Old Jul 6, 2014, 03:14 PM
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leatherhead333 leatherhead333 is offline
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Edit: My bad just noticed the brotherhood names are weird lol.

Last edited by leatherhead333; Jul 6, 2014 at 03:17 PM.
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Old Feb 18, 2021, 02:55 PM
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So this guy has scored the upcoming Project Triangle Strategy game from Square Enix.

Wow! He's been around for a long time. It's pretty rare to have someone this experienced hop onto brand new RPGs. And he's good, too. Just listening to that main theme, so many strains and harmonic centerings that you would never hear in games generally these days, especially JRPGs, outside of, say, Kohei Tanaka or Koichi Sugiyama. In other words, old guys who have been doing the job forever--and are experts in their craft.

This would be a fantastic trend, in my mind, not that I expect this is more than a fluke (Nishiki being asked, but too busy, so he recommended his buddy (maybe even mentor?)). I've been saying for a long time that I'm displeased with the migration of older, experienced composers (those who basically scored my childhood) to mobile trash and just generally games I would never play; while younger composers are increasingly responsible for the console games that I still regularly play.

This isn't a knock on Nishiki, of course. But who wouldn't want a new JRPG OST composed+arranged entirely by Nobuo Uematsu, or a new Zelda game entirely by Koji Kondo, a new Mario Kart entirely by Soyo Oka? And those are just some major contributors also born around the 1960 era. A big chunk of my favorite composers are late 60s/early 70s babies; basically the people that invented classic JRPG music not from Final Fantasy/DQ, and even some that is.

Anyway, rant off. I like this change, and will readily welcome more.
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Old Feb 18, 2021, 03:40 PM
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That attitude baffles me. Here is a story: there once was a Younger Nobody Composer, and Big Studio Head decided that a well loved Important Veteran Composer wouldn't score their Newest Triple A JRPG, but that little fellow. Can you guess who? (hint: it's Mitsuda). Thank goodness Japanese artists are willing to give new people chances to shine in appropriately big works.

Veteran composers have given enough excellent works and their albums aren't going anywhere, let them rest.
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Old Feb 18, 2021, 06:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dag View Post
That attitude baffles me. Here is a story: there once was a Younger Nobody Composer, and Big Studio Head decided that a well loved Important Veteran Composer wouldn't score their Newest Triple A JRPG, but that little fellow. Can you guess who? (hint: it's Mitsuda). Thank goodness Japanese artists are willing to give new people chances to shine in appropriately big works.

Veteran composers have given enough excellent works and their albums aren't going anywhere, let them rest.
I get the tongue-in-cheek, the facetiousness, but I legit don't know which game we're talking about. Chrono Trigger? Xenosaga?

In Trigger's case Mitsuda begged for it, nor was it necessarily Triple A. I suppose everyone remembers it that way because of the pretend "holy trinity" of Sakaguchi-Toriyama-Horii (when really it was Masato Kato + Tokita + Kitase + Matsui who made that game work and become legendary). And, uh, well, CT's got a lot of not great Mitsuda work (it was clearly a "first work", in a very similar way that a teacher's first year is their, well, "first year"). And he couldn't finish it without Uematsu taking over--btw, I am a major Mitsuda fan, he's in my top 3! even over Uematsu).

In XS's case, he invested for the first time in his life learning orchestration. Half the score went in that direction; but it was also a very short score, and the orchestration definitely showed his new-ness at it.

If the suggestion is that "this is the sequence of succession", well, obviously it is. Not contending that. I'm just saying, I play basically the same type of games I always have (JRPGs) and they've switched from having the "good old" composers to young guys who don't strike my interest quite as much. Why? I don't know, I'm not going to try and explain that. No idea. I have a huge range of VGM composers I listen to. I can only name like 10 that I genuinely dislike.

And composers I didn't like initially have become among my absolute favorites (I'd love to do an hours-long talk on how I changed completely on Naoshi Mizuta, and want to strike my decades-old FFXI OST review out of existence so that the internet doesn't get the wrong idea). Like, yeah, new blood is going to happen and it has happened in the past.

And... new composers have plenty of opportunities. Far more than anyone had in the 90s, and even 00s. I don't deny them that. I am glad for it. Guys like Nishiki and Takeshi Hama and I are all the same age, and they're amazing. Way better than me. They absolutely earned what they've got! But the immediate impulse to "get new blood" even if it doesn't have the intention of snubbing older artists, does happen at greater frequency. And we few nerds at vgmdb can name dozens who just don't even do the job anymore!

You can have a new work where the master acts as the master, and mentors the younger person. That's a model I would use as a studio boss, which I'll never be. Eventually that young person becomes the master.

And now is where I start to deviate heavily, so just stop reading here, but the 90s itself was the cradle of VGM (yep, I'm willfully snubbing the 80s vgm); and completely the Wild West. No one, anywhere, had expectations of what VGM should be. that's why we're so lucky, us old guys. We have an intimate memory and still refresh ourselves on that frontier that was once lawless. You had your conformists, sure, and then a lot of people who just pioneered because no one gave them any specific guidance. It was sheer luck that many of them were truly genius in their field, and sheer luck (for us) that the games they participated on were just popular enough to expose them. And then 30 years have gone by. There are expectations now... but those pioneers still do "their thing". I'm afraid I haven't heard many particularly young composers who do "their thing", just yet. Someday perhaps. But professionals these days do adhere to the expectations, and so we get soundtracks that are, well, more expected. Because a lot of them never were encouraged, or given an opportunity, or avenue, to just do their thing.

That last part is going to have to stay vague, until I can figure out a way to really expand on it. Tough to do. It's tough to do the job and criticize the job and also actively spend recreation time enjoying others doing the same job.

Wow! What a mess above. I swear I teach my kiddos to write more coherently than this. It's likely I haven't convinced anyone of anything. I should also point out though, I believe this sort of discussion is essential to a forum like this.

tl;dr
1. not a knock on newer composers, I'm one too.
2. wish my favs still scored games I actually play.
3. love that an old guy is doing a JRPG.
4. Ryuji Sasai should've done Bravely Default (only sort of related to this post but you're reading a tl;dr so I get to say this try and stop me ha)

Last edited by Jormungand; Feb 18, 2021 at 07:04 PM.
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  #5  
Old Feb 18, 2021, 08:37 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jormungand View Post
This would be a fantastic trend, in my mind, not that I expect this is more than a fluke (Nishiki being asked, but too busy, so he recommended his buddy (maybe even mentor?)).
Not exactly a fluke. Senju did some work as an orchestrator and conductor for Bravely Default so the producers knew him since then. Though coicidentally (or maybe not) he is also a visiting professor at Tokyo College of Music where Nishiki graduated from.

If you aren't very familiar with Akira Senju he's mostly known for his romantic style of orchestral writing, but he's also capable of writing FF style battle tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qivgMWGrdE

In Japan, he's probably most famous for his Piano Concerto "SHUKUMEI" from the TV series Vessel of Sand.
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Old Feb 19, 2021, 07:41 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jormungand View Post
This would be a fantastic trend, in my mind, not that I expect this is more than a fluke
Neither a trend nor a fluke, producer Tomoya Asano just seems to like trying outside composers, like happened with Revo (Bravely Default 1 & 2) and Ryo (Bravely Second).
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Old Feb 19, 2021, 10:08 AM
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Neither a trend nor a fluke, producer Tomoya Asano just seems to like trying outside composers, like happened with Revo (Bravely Default 1 & 2) and Ryo (Bravely Second).
@cal too
Nice. Good on Asano then. I figured with the enormously positive response to Nishiki, he would be retained.

Quote:
If you aren't very familiar with Akira Senju he's mostly known for his romantic style of orchestral writing, but he's also capable of writing FF style battle tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qivgMWGrdE
Yeah, I hadn't heard of him before now. That romantic flavor is all over this stuff, which is very rare to hear these days--but was very common in 70s/80s classic anime scores. So it's super cool to hear it in a modern JRPG of all places!

And I'm still shocked how these things are getting the budget to have fully live soundtracks (even a full orchestra!). Square, for all their production missteps, does their music justice.
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