Shota Kageyama (#274)

[CHz]

Shota Kageyama wrote two songs for Pokkén Tournament

Tellur Town (Autumn)
Acoustic Guitar & Mandolin: Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Violin: Yuma Ito
Mix: Yoshiyuki Watanabe (VICTOR STUDIO)
* New track for the Wii U version

Ferrum Stadium
Electric Guitar: Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Mix: su-kei (OM FACTORY)
* In both the arcade and Wii U versions

[RBM95]

Kageyama is in charge of the music of Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee: https://twitter.com/shotakageyama/st...376425472?s=19

[Mentalo]

Some news and/or interesting things I found about Kageyama in late 2018 and 2019 :

- first, a video of his piano performance on the event celebrating the release of the Pokémon Let's Go soundtrack (on 12/01/18), along with Kon Shirasu at the violin and Hiroaki Tsutsumi at the acoustic guitar : https://youtu.be/XHkUbX1bsPE

The tracks are in order :
1- Title Screen
2- Pallet Town Theme - Road to Viridian City: Leaving Pallet Town - Pewter City Theme - Celadon City Theme
3- GO Park - Catch! (GO Park)
Encore- Pokémon Center


- details on people participating to his arrangements for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate :

Pokémon Omega Ruby & Pokémon Alpha Sapphire / Battle! (Lorekeeper Zinnia)
Violin：Kon Shirasu
Electric Guitar：Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Mixing Engineer : Yoshiyuki Watanabe

Pokémon Sun & Pokémon Moon / The Battle at the Summit!
Electric Guitar：Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Mixing Engineer : Yoshiyuki Watanabe

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask / Termina Field
Violin：Kon Shirasu
Electric Guitar：Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Tin Whistle：Akio Noguchi
Mixing Engineer : Yoshiyuki Watanabe

Mega Man 3 / Hard Man Stage
Acoustic & Electric Guitar：Yujin Imanishi
Mixing Engineer : Yoshiyuki Watanabe

Yoshi’s New Island / Main Theme
Acoustic Guitar：Hiroaki Tsutsumi
Mixing Engineer : Yoshiyuki Watanabe

(source)


- Kageyama wrote the score for Last Idea, a mobile RPG published by Square Enix and released exclusively in Japan this spring (on 04/18/19)
(source)
During a live presentation (04/12/19), he played (at the piano, again) some of the game's music, along with the JAGMO orchestra : https://youtu.be/OMLLT_0MC8E
Also, a video of some of the recordings for the game's music has been released : https://youtu.be/dbWqfxalFmE
Details on the musicians here.


- He is also writing the score for Cross X Logos, another japanese mobile RPG releasing this fall. (source)


- He wrote some of the score for Pokémon Masters, which is releasing on mobile worldwide this summer. The sound producer for the game is Kenji Nakano and the other music composer is Haruki Yamada, both from ATTIC INC. (source)
Music for this game already seems wonderful. The orchestral songs + some other songs (like 2:20, 3:27 or 6:40) sound very Kageyama to me !


So between last year (with Let's Go and Smash) and this year (with all those mobile titles), Shota Kageyama is truly a busy man ! I hope all his 2019 works will release on CD or at least on platforms like iTunes.

[Mentalo]

The music in today's reveal of Pokémon Unite sounded very Kageyama-ish and it turns out that he indeed is in charge of its music : https://twitter.com/shotakageyama/st...81614631415814

[Sherkel]

Here's hoping he finally gets to write something himself again.

[Mentalo]

Oh, it seems that he also made at least a song for Ninjala : https://youtu.be/WBF7EIRZ2R0
https://twitter.com/shotakageyama/st...97113499873280
https://twitter.com/shotakageyama/st...98798800535552

[Mentalo]

It seems some of Pokémon Unite's soundtrack was datamined within the closed betas. And whereas the soundtrack for the chinese beta was almost fully synthetised, the one for the canadian beta is recorded with live instruments!
If you want to hear a preview of this soundtrack or compare music of both betas, here's a link!

It's always really cool to hear Kageyama's music with high budget, his style really fits live recordings. I really hope he'll bring live instruments for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Let's Go was a small step in this direction with the live performances for the piano, guitar and violin, but Pokémon has the means to improve the sound quality of their games.

It would be really nice for TPCi to release soundtracks for spin-off Pokémon games but I think they haven't done that since the Stadium + Snap CD...
A Pokémon Masters soundtrack release would also be really cool, it has some cool Kageyama music!

[Mentalo]

Nothing has been confirmed yet but I feel from what we heard Kageyama could be behind at least part of the Pokémon Legends ZA soundtrack. That would make perfect sense with him having been X&Y's sound director and lead composer.
At least, I feel confident to say what we heard doesn't sound like Ichinose, Adachi or Sato.

Maybe the biggest news we got from ZA's reveal music wise is there seem to be quite a lot of live recording (finally!!!!).
"Lumiose City"'s arrangement seem to feature live brass, piano and winds, I'm not sure about the strings though.
"Berry Picker"'s arrangement is hard to hear so not sure about that one.
The very calm "Battle! (Wild Pokémon)" arrangement also seem to feature live piano and woodwinds, but also live strings I think.
The "Battle! (Trainer)" arrangement very obviously features live electric guitar.
The last theme heard doesn't sound live though.

[Mentalo]

Ok nevermind what I said last month.
Hitomi Sato is definitely involved (that explains why she retweeted stuff about it). The last theme heard in this video and also in the Pokémon Presents one could be another one of her songs.
Ichinose is most likely involved too with this new "Battle! (Trainer)" arrangement.

Still have no clue about who made the live themes mentionned earlier though ("Lumiose City", "Battle! (Wild Pokémon)", and the 1st "Battle! (Trainer)" arrangement).

[RBM95]

From what I've heard between the previous presentation and today's direct, the Trainer Battle theme arrangement for Legends Z-A kinda reminds me of "Battle! (Academy Trainer)" from Scarlet/Violet's DLC, so my guess might be Haruka Soeda (we don't have much info about them, but maybe they are a newer sound hire at Game Freak?).

Either way, I'd be more than interested to hear Ichinose's take on Kalos music considering he completely skipped the XY generation, so hopefully he is indeed involved.