| Mr. X |
May 5, 2006 04:44 AM |
A few paragraphs about Mitsuda's background from yours truly, with help from CocoeBiz:
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Born on January 21, 1972, in Tokuyama, Japan, Yasunori Mitsuda is one of today's most widely loved game music composers, widely known for his Chrono and Xeno works associated with Square, though also a successful freelancer. Throughout his early childhood in Kumake, he was a keen and active outdoorsman, a talented sprinter and swimmer, who was also passionate about fishing and golf (he wanted to be the next Tiger Woods). Unfortunately, he was irresponsible and never keen on practice, quitting golf and failing to achieve on the athletics track. His lack of dedication was also reflected when learning music, which he initially completely unpassionate about, never practicing the piano while learning it throughout high school. Nonetheless, eventually he begun to appreciate music during his early teenage years, thanks to enjoying film scores, such as Vangelis' Blade Runner and Henry Mancini's Pink Panther soundtracks. This gave him a new lifelong ambition — to become an internationally acclaimed film music composer — and this ambition became refined somewhat after his father convinced him to buy a computer, leading him towards composing game music. A rare item at that day, Yasunori became a huge fan of computers and gained technical proficiency, thanks to his electrical engineering classes at high school and regular experiences creating music and programming games. This put him in good stead for his career, to be highly reliant on technical expertise.
After graduating from high school, the pathway towards his musical career reached another turning point, as he decided to leave home and become independent. This move was influenced by his sister, who was getting married at the same time. With bold words from his father, he was encouraged to move to Tokyo, where he enrolled in a junior college to study composing and arranging. This move was either going to make or break him. Indeed, he had little musical knowledge, suffering from his lazy childhood, and was forced to go to a junior college, not a standard one, as a result. Knowing that he would need to do a huge amount of work to catch up, however, Mitsuda was wise enough to dedicate these years to constant practice and learning. Despite being often ridiculed by needlessly cruel teachers who told him he was a natural born failure, he never gave up and these comments simply hardened him and made him be even more determined to prove them wrong and succeed. Further, in spite of their destructive comments, he still learnt a lot from his teachers by seeing them conduct their work outside the college (most were only part-time teachers and had careers elsewhere in the music industry); though he was often given the tasks of carrying heavy instruments, this did not prevent him from learning. While here, his regular early morning 'jam' sessions and beer-induced escapades with long-term collaborator Yoshitaka Hirota aided his musical and social development and led to the formation of a strong friendship. These two years shaped him into a man and made him a blossoming musician, and, while certainly tough and the hardest he had ever worked, his resolute determination to succeed was what made him an unexpected success.
During his junior college years, the prospect of finding a job was raised while working under a teacher at the sound department of a game software company during the autumn and winter of his second academic year (1991-1992). Since he had no clear plans, yet plenty of ambitions, his teacher recommended that he apply for a job at Square, having seen an advertisement for a composing job in a gaming magazine. Though this was hardly what he wanted to do, still desiring the option of composing for movies, he decided to apply nonetheless and sent three sample pieces initially to the company. The four-man sound team at the time decided that they needed more than three pieces to make their decision, however, and Mitsuda had to create three more compositions for them. Two days after sending them, he received an invitation to an interview and met with Nobuo Uematsu and sound programmer Minoru Akao at the start of March. Unfortunately, he made a number of poor responses at the interview, stating that he had never played the Final Fantasy series, Square's only major success at that time, and only wanted the job as a stepping stone. Despite the interviewers being horrified, they were still prepared to give him a job, having been impressed by his compositions, and was subsequently recruited the following month. Though ecstatic at being employed, he remained resolute throughout his time at the company that his employment was the foundations for his move on to bigger and better projects, remaining as hard-headed and ambitious as ever.
Despite being employed under the title 'composer', Mitsuda's first projects were actually a series of roles dedicated to sound manipulation and sound effects. His first project came when he was asked to work with game music legend Koichi Sugiyama on the Super Nintendo's Hanjuku Hero, Sugiyama's only contribution to Square. Mitsuda was asked to work as a sound programmer and sound effects designer, and, despite his eagerness for a composing role, he truly enjoyed his work, especially given it was alongside such a respected and loved composer. Sugiyama taught Mitsuda much and this certainly helped him later in his career, particularly when he had to write orchestral themes for the first Xenosaga game. Working on 1992's Final Fantasy V and Secret of Mana in similar roles, Mitsuda became known as the most picky person when it came to sound quality in the company, inspired an array of innovative techniques for improving sound effects, and, along with Minoru Akao, was a principle force for Square's SNES games always sounding relatively good. Mitsuda soon got bored of not being in a composing role, however, and, after taking a similar role for 1993's Romancing SaGa 3, it dawned on Mitsuda that if he didn't do something, he would remain a sound programmer for the rest of his career, much like Minoru Akao. Having fought so many uphill struggles to succeed, he wasn't prepared to stick this out, leading him to march into the office of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Square's vice president, one day and give the ultimatum that either he was to be given a composing role or he would quit the company...
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He received education at music college, but this is hardly graduating from university. However, his fiercely ambitious nature, together with his ability to self-reflect and persevere, has made him largely successful. While I do find Mitsuda a tad arrogant at times, everything he says usually makes a lot of sense and I admire his ability to constantly refine his style while both revisiting his roots and experimenting into new areas (e.g. Moonlit Shadow, Xenosaga Ep. 1, Hako no Niwa). He's a composer who has done well to move with the times, though I still don't appreciate his Celtic contributions that much. |
