Yuzo Koshiro is one of the greatest names of the videogame music. He's considered by his fans the "music God", due to the quality, beauty and the "wow factor" of his works. He manages to extract beautiful melodies from any kind of hardware typé, in any musical style. He was the first japanese game composer to receive international recognition, firstly due to his uncommon talent, but mainly for being the first composer to exhibit his name in the videogames' title-screen.

Born in Tokyo, in 12/12/1967, his mother is a piano teacher and his father artist. At three years old he began to take piano lessons. At five he already played violin, at eight composed his first music and at twelve learned cello. He studied for 3 years with the renowned composer Joe Hisaishi. Thanks to his mother, Yuzo's first musical influences were Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

THE EARLY YEARS

In adolescence, he missed classes to play "Space Invaders" in Arcades, and became fascinated by the music of "Gradius". At 16 he went to the Arcades to record the music straight from the Arcade speakers and tried to reproduce it at home, using his personal computer.

He sent his musics to a popular PC magazine titled "Microcomputer Basic Magazine", under the pseudonym YK-2. His musics were becoming so popular in the magazine that the readers acclaimed him as the "PSG God".

When finishing the gym, he began to work for that same magazine, until that he saw an announce of recruitment for the videogames company Nihon Falcom. He literally walked to the company - while stopping to take an ice cream - distant only a few blocks from his house, and applied to the position of programmer. Luckily (for us), Nihon Falcom was most interested in his compositions, and a tape with his home-made tunes impressed so much the company staff that 10 musics were immediately inserted into the game Xanadu Scenario II, that sold more than 400.000 copies and became the paradigm to all RPG games to come. Yuzo was twenty, and that was just the beginning.

Two home-made musics that probably was in that tape and weren't selected for any game:

About Dungeon (1,37 MB)

About Fusion (1,25 MB)

These musics appeared later in the CD "Early Collection 2nd".

The young Yuzo, in his studio at home

INSIDE FALCOM

Four months after Xanadu II Yuzo does his first professional works at Falcom, in partnership with other composers, in the games Romancia, Dragon Slayer 4 and Sorcerian. But it was in the game Ys - where he composed more than 90% of the musics - that he could unleash all his talent: It's the most sucessful game sountrack EVER, being sold in many, many arrangments, ranging from rock to classic. One proof of this is that many young gamemusic addicteds love those tunes, although they have never seen the game.

Yuzo composed the soundtrack for Ys exclusively for FM and PSG versions, not taking part in the arrangements done for Turbografix 16, in CD (the most known version outside Japan). About the many arrangements that people did with his music in all that years, Yuzo doesn't like them, and said he created the music with the hardware limitations in mind, and that if it were composed today, for CD, it would be a totally different music.

But it's interesting to notice that, despite the limitations, an elaborated orchestration was already present in the metallic sounds of the original version. That's why I've made a merge from the original 1986 music and a later arrangement, so you can hear the beauty of the musical structure and train your ears to perceive how these metallical sounds can very well represent a violin or a cello.

Ys - To make the end of battle (2,38 MB)

Ys - The morning grow (2,82 MB)

Now that you're trained, try to imagine a complete orchestra playing the music below! That's why I think Yuzo's talent is in par with John Williams'!

Dragon Quest 4 - Opening theme (1,04 MB)

Below we have my preferred music from Ys: This is a composition in Bach style, using one of the most beautiful medieval instruments after the pipe organ: the harpsichord. The music is beautifully crafted, and we almost don't realize it's electronic nature.

Ys - Church (2,51 MB)

The music below has a funny personal story: When I heard it for the first time, in the Master System hardware, I imediatelly thought: "It belongs to Yuzo Koshiro!" (And at this point I had NO idea where he worked before, I only knew his works from Streets of Rage and Revenge of Shinobi). Later I knew that Yuzo really took part in the composing, but still had no idea about how many musics he did for it. I was firm in my belief, and I had the oportunity to ask Yuzo himself about this music, but unfortunately he didn't remember the musics he composed at this time by the name. I wasn't discouraged: I had to know! Years have passed, and through a Japanese webpage I obtained the confirmation. YES, he did it!!! It's incredible how Yuzo conceive his musics so rich in construction, so elaborated, that it stands out in comparison with other composers works. The way he interpolates the notes seems so organic, so "real", that it sounds like an "acoustic synthesizer". When I got this MP3 I spent more than one hour hearing it in looping:

Ys - Syonin (682 KB)

Download the complete CD "Very Best of Ys" in MP3 in this page!

Yuzo is a little bitter about Ys arrangements, but, why in the hell he doesn't release his own vision of the most lucrative and acclaimed game soundtrack ever, in a well-deserved full orchestral glory? Because he doesn't own the rights to it.
Yes, he haven't received a penny for all his works on Falcom... Actually, little people know that Ys is Yuzo's work, because the company (Falcom) does not give credits to the composers (they only appear on CDs as "Falcom Sound team jdk") and it controls all the artistic rights from it's games, leaving nothing to the creator. That's why Yuzo left Falcom, and that's the reason that led Yuzo to request the music rights for all his subsequent works. Later, Yuzo's mother had the idea to request the appearence of the name of his son in the title screen of Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage. Yes, the brilliant idea that catapulted Yuzo to imortality was a mother's advice. Thanks, Ms. Koshiro!

In Falcom he composed more than 100 tracks, and learned to program and take care of sound effects, too. More experienced, he left the company in 1988, after the success of Ys Book II (for NEC PC-88), and became a freelancer.

Coming next: Freelancer

Ler em português

Publicado qui, 7 de dezembro, 2006, às 10:24 PM  1 comentário