Yōko Shimomura

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Yōko Shimomura during a concert in 2007

Yōko Shimomura ( Japanese 下 村 陽 子 , Shimomura Yōko ; born October 19, 1967 in Hyōgo Prefecture ) is a Japanese composer of video game music . She has already been described as "the most famous female video game music composer in the world". She has worked in the video game industry since graduating from Osaka College of Music in 1988. From then until 1993 she worked for Capcom where she composed all or part of soundtracks for 16 games, including Final Fight and Street Fighter II .

From 1993 to 2002 Shimomura worked for Square (now Square Enix ), where she composed for another ten games. While at Square, she was best known for her work on the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack , which was her last game before she left the company. Starting with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga , she started working as an active freelancer, writing for over a dozen game titles.

Her work earned her great popularity and has been featured in many video game music concerts , including Sinfonia Drammatica , half based on her Greatest Hits album, Drammatica: The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura and half based on music from previous concerts. Music from several of her games have been released as arranged albums and as piano scores.

biography

Early life

Yōko Shimomura

Yōko Shimomura was born in Hyōgo Prefecture , Japan on October 19, 1967. She developed an interest in music at a young age and began taking piano lessons "at the age of four or five". She began composing her own music while playing the piano at random. Shimomura enrolled at Osaka College of Music and graduated as a Principal Pianist in 1988. After graduating, Shimomura wanted to become a piano teacher. However, since she had been an avid video game player for many years, she decided to send some of her samples of her work to various video game companies that were recruiting at the university. The company Capcom invited her to a hearing and an interview and then offered her a job at. Her family and teachers were upset because video game music composers were not very respected and they couldn't understand why she would take such a job after paying her such an expensive music school. But she took the job at Capcom anyway.

Career

While working for Capcom, she contributed to the soundtracks of 17 different games, including the successful Street Fighter II , for which she composed all but three pieces. The first soundtrack she worked on for the company was Samurai Sword in 1988. Final Fight , in 1989, was her first work to get her own soundtrack album release on an album of several Capcom games. The first album, exclusively containing only their work, came a year later and was based on Street Fighter II . While her job at Capcom initially concentrated on working on games for game consoles , she moved to the arcade games department in 1990 . She was a member of the company's own band called Alph Lyla , who performed Capcom's video game music, including pieces written by Shimomura. She played live with the group at a few events and also played the piano on Alph Lyla's first appearance at the 1992 Game Music Festival.

In 1993 Shimomura moved to another game company called Square (now Square Enix ) because they were interested in composing classical music for role-playing games . At Capcom, she was on the arcade game team and could not switch to the console game team to work on the role-playing game series Breath of Fire , even though she had contributed a piece of music to the first game in the series . Her first project in the new company was the score for the role-playing game Live A Live 1994. While she was working on the score for Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars in the following years , she was asked if she would work with Noriko Matsueda on the Music to the futuristic strategy role-playing game Front Mission would work together. Although, according to her own statements, she would be overloaded with programming both scores at the same time and it was actually not her genre that she was interested in, she could not refuse in the presence of Square President Tetsuo Mizuno. These games were followed by Tobal No. 1 , the last score she worked on with another composer for over a decade.

Over the next several years she composed the soundtrack for several games, including Parasite Eve and Legend of Mana . Of all of her compositions, Shimomura considers the Legend of Mana soundtrack to be the one that best represents her. Parasite Eve on PlayStation was Shimomura's first soundtrack with a vocal piece, as the hardware of previous titles did not support this. In 2002 she wrote a score for Kingdom Hearts , which she says is the most special soundtrack for her and also marks a turning point in her career. She describes the soundtracks for Street Fighter II and Super Mario RPG as the other two significant turning points in her life as a composer.

Kingdom Hearts was very successful, selling more than four million copies worldwide. Shimomura's music was consistently cited as one of the game's highlights, and the theme song was ranked the fourth best RPG theme song of all time. The soundtrack led to two albums with piano arrangements. Kingdom Hearts was the last soundtrack she worked on at Square. After Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002, Shimomura Square left for maternity leave and started working as a freelancer in 2003. She built on the work she was doing at Square. Since leaving, she has composed for eleven Kingdom Hearts games and Nintendo's Mario & Luigi series . She also worked on many other projects, such as Heroes of Mana and Final Fantasy XV . She is currently working on the score for Kingdom Hearts III .

effect

After composing soundtracks to over 45 different games, Shimomura became one of the biggest names in the video game music scene and has been dubbed "the world's most famous female video game music composer." Shimomura's Best of Album Drammatica: The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura was released in March 2008 and featured her compositions from Kingdom Hearts and other games fully orchestrated. It includes music from Final Fantasy XV , Live A Live , Kingdom Hearts , Front Mission , Legend of Mana, and Heroes of Mana . Shimomura stated that she chose music that was popular with fans and well suited for orchestration, but had never been performed in an orchestra. In a 2008 interview with Music4Games regarding the project, Shimomura commented that she would be interested in having Drammatica make a live performance for fans with the sheet music written for the project , should the opportunity arise. On March 19, 2009, the wish became a reality when it was announced that Arnie Roth would lead the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the Sinfonia Drammatica concert in the Stockholm Konzerthaus Konserthuset , which combined music from the album with performances of Chris Hülsbeck's Symphonic Shades. The concert took place on August 4th, 2009. On March 27, 2007, Shimomura released her first non-video game music album called Murmur - an album of songs sung by Japanese singer Chata .

Music written by Yōko Shimomura for Kingdom Hearts made up a quarter of the music of the Symphonic Fantasies - music from Square Enix in September 2009 in Cologne, which was held by the creators of the symphonic game music concerts . The theme song from Legend of Mana was also played by the Australian Eminence Symphony Orchestra at their classical music concert, A Night in Fantasia 2007 .

Music from the original Legend of Mana soundtrack was arranged for the piano and published by DOREMI Music Publishing. Two music compilations from series were also released as Seiken Densetsu Best Collection Piano Solo Sheet Music first and second editions, including Shimomura's songs from Legend of Mana in the second. All of the pieces in it have been rewritten by Asako Niwa as intermediate piano solos, although they should sound as similar to the original pieces as possible. In addition, Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II piano sheet music have been published as music books by Yamaha Music Media.

Musical style and influences

Shimomura lists Ludwig van Beethoven , Frédéric Chopin and Maurice Ravel as one of their influences on their personal website. She also stated that she enjoyed the "lounge style jazz" for a long time. Despite the influences and her classical training, she used different musical styles such as "rock, electro , oriental music , ambient , industrial , pop, symphonic metal , chiptune and others" during her career . She draws inspiration for her songs from things in her life that have moved her emotionally. She describes this as “a beautiful picture, a scene, something that tastes delicious, fragrances that bring back past memories, happy and sad things…. Anything that changes the emotion gives me inspiration. ”Shimomura also stated that most songs come to her mind when she is doing something that“ is not part of [her] daily routine, such as traveling. ”Although her influences are mostly classical she said that, in her opinion, “their style has changed dramatically over the years, but the passion for music has remained the same.” Shimomura said she believes it is an important part of the “creative process behind it Music "is to convey a" subtle message - something that comes from your imagination and sticks to the listener without being too specific about what it means ". Her favorite piece of music from her own work is "Dearly Beloved" by Kingdom Hearts .

Discography

Computer / video games

Compositions
Arrangements

Other works

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Yoko Shimomura: Interview with Yoko Shimomura (September 2009) . Square Enix Music Online, GameMusic.pl. October 1, 2009. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Yoko Shimomura: Profile ( Japanese ) Yoko Shimomura. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Yoko Shimomura: RocketBaby's interview with Yoko Shimomura . RocketBaby.com. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jeriaska: Interview: Magical Planet - The Music of Hiroki Kikuta & Yoko Shimomura . Gamasutra . August 31, 2009. Retrieved October 9, 2009.
  5. ↑ Final Fight -GSM CAPCOM 3- . Pony Canyon (May 21, 1990). PCCB-00030.
  6. ↑ Street Fighter II Image Album -GSM CAPCOM- . Pony Canyon (November 21, 1991). PCCB-00075.
  7. ↑ Game Music Festival ~ Super Live '92 ~. In: VGMDB. Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd., accessed May 9, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Capcom Sound Team Alph Lyla. In: VGMDB. Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd., accessed May 9, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Chris Greening: Game Music: Yoko Shimomura . Square-Enix . August 31, 2007. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
  10. ↑ Kingdom Hearts tips scales at 4 million . GameSpot . March 17, 2004. Retrieved May 18, 2007.
  11. ↑ David Smith: IGN Kingdom Hearts Review . IGN Entertainment . September 16, 2002. Retrieved August 14, 2007.
  12. ↑ Meghan Sullivan: Top Ten RPG Title Tracks . IGN Entertainment . August 8, 2006. Archived from the original on June 30, 2007. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 7, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / music.ign.com
  13. ↑ ga-core.net ( Memento from May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ a b Yoko Shimomura drammatica Interview with Music4Games . Music4Games . Archived from the original on August 2, 2008. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
  15. ^ Sinfonia Drammatica . Square Enix Music Online. August 13, 2009. Archived from the original on September 8, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 9, 2009.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.squareenixmusic.com
  16. ^ Concert program for download . Symphonic Fantasies. September 1, 2009. Archived from the original on October 5, 2009. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  17. ↑ Cam Shea: A Night in Fantasia 2007 - The Track List . IGN Entertainment . March 3, 2007. Retrieved August 11, 2009.
  18. ^ Doremi Music Web Site ( Japanese ) DOREMI Music Publishing. Retrieved September 14, 2008.
  19. ^ Mana Series :: Sheet Music Books . Square Enix Music Online. Archived from the original on May 15, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 11, 2009.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.squareenixmusic.com
  20. ↑ ヤ マ ハ ミ ュ ー ジ ッ ク メ デ ィ ア - 楽 譜 ／ 雑 誌 ／ 音 楽 ソ フ ト - ( Japanese ) Yamaha Music Media. Retrieved September 14, 2008.
  21. ^ Yoko Shimomura :: Biography . Square Enix Music Online. Archived from the original on July 24, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 9, 2009.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.squareenixmusic.com
  22. ↑ Kevin Gifford: Atlus Announces Radiant Historia . 1UP.com . July 28, 2010. Retrieved on August 1, 2010.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.1up.com  
  23. ↑ マ リ オ ＆ ル イ ー ジ RPG4: 音 楽 室 . Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  24. ↑ Seiken Densetsu RISE of MANA Original Soundtrack. In: VGMdb. Retrieved December 18, 2015 .
  25. ↑ Chris Greening: Hamauzu, Shimomura, Ito, and Sakimoto attached to new RPG projects. In: Game Music Online. Retrieved December 18, 2015 .
  26. ↑ か く り よ の 門 Original soundtrack. In: iTunes. Retrieved December 18, 2015 .
  27. ↑ Yôko Shimomura. Retrieved May 29, 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Yoko Shimomura  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Shimomura, Yōko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 下 村 陽 子 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese composer of video game music
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Hyogo Prefecture , Japan