Shinji Tamura (#303)

[Datschge]

Tamura's confirms in his own profile that he is Hibiki Aoyama.

[Dag]

I wonder why he used Aoyama in the first place. Maybe to separate his Jpop and game careers, contract stuff...?

[Datschge]

The better question may be why he feels now it's the time to announce it. I hear he is stopping composing Tales games after the next one.

[Mac_Tear]

Just a random question: did anyone know when he left Namco Tales Studio?

[Datschge]

Namco Tales Studio doesn't exist anymore since the start of this year as it was absorbed into Namco Bandai Games, which then moved all internal development into the newly formed Namco Bandai Studio at the start of this month.

That said I'm not even sure he actually left (as far as a contract worker can leave anyhow), he was still credited (as Aoyama) in "Tales of the Heroes: Twin Braves" released in February. He may stay involved arranging and remixing his own past Tales pieces, just no longer contributing new pieces to new main games anymore.

[Datschge]

He wrote a blog post on how he got into composing game music: http://ameblo.jp/tamutamuphoto/entry-12003369084.html

[Dag]

Seems he's blogging about his career in general (band he was before Telenet, Wolfteam, Tales, anime work, etc).

About his work in Tales, his and Sakuraba's tracks weren't so fixed but usually he did town, field and dungeons, and Sakuraba themes and battle.
He praises Sakuraba (battle themes, many sounds and signature changes, good at orchestral/strings too). Not a man of many words but he was always kind and respectuos even though he was Tamura's superior.
Till other specialists joined Tamura did lotsa jingles and sound effects too.
Sometimes when asked in the Internet which are his and Sakuraba's tracks, often he has trouble even after listening.
Finally ToP's Fighting of the Spirit is his work, he composed it kinda like it could be singable.
He had a desire to make singable songs (a bit from Tales OP songs) thus started his Jpop career, though he doesn't say when or why stopped composing for Tales (maybe he will later).