Interview with Akira Yamaoka (IGN)Date published: 2013.11.28 Akira Yamaoka is no stranger to the video game industry, having scored the music for dozens of video games, and recently even movies. He's most famously known for his work on Silent HIll, where he pretty much captivated the game's super-creepy atmosphere. Ahead of his arrival in Dubai for Video Games Live next month, we sat down to find out more about the man behind the music. You have been composing music for video games for so many years now. What inspired you to get into this field, and especially taking up the Silent Hill project? Well, basically I've loved both video games and music since I don't remember, and that's the reason I got into this field (industry). For a long time, I’ve been try drawing new ideas and creations for my own works. Silent Hill, especially, is a work of horror that expresses a sense of fear every human being feels, where language was not a tool to use to describe such fear and atmosphere in its view of world. So what I tried to come up with was the sound capable of leading everyone sense such fear without verbal expressions. Since I originally love such horror works, I think it was not too much of a hard work for me to create the fear described in Silent Hill. Providing score for a horror game is always challenging where you must create this fine-tuned atmosphere of anticipation, fear and thrill. What’s the process behind composing such a score? What is your main draw of inspiration? No special inspiration is needed when you create them. However, I would say you may want to stay calm and cool yourself instead. It's difficult to create a work in a good quality being in the situation you are anxious about something and the mind is lost. Better to keep calm and cool of your mind so that you will be able to create score spontaneously. You have also scored the Silent Hill movie. How different is the scoring process between a video game and movie? Video game is an interactive product, which allows players to enjoy in diverse ways, so in a video game, the story and direction to take will change depending on the character that a player chooses and controls. On the other hand, movie is a non-interactive product, in which every audience watches the story displayed in the same timeline, therefore, although each audience may feel and understand the film in different ways, the final work itself stays the same for everyone. In the process of production for video games, I have to imagine and simulate various patterns and situations for various players who will play in different ways. Considering this point of the production process, I need to concentrate and care much about the work itself, and that is one of the biggest differences between them. Of course, the tools for music composition have changed drastically from the time you started in the industry till now. Has this change in the technology affected the way score and how? The significant one is a memory device, I think. Before, we always had to worry about the amount of memory left to use while working, but it is no longer an issue and is much less stressful today. Also, due to the sampling technology and waveform stretching capabilities, we can reduce the working time dramatically. I think such improvements in memory and waveform technology shortened my working time and has resulted me producing much more sound. So, it seems that the process of basic sound production of mine has never changed. Finally, what’s favorite video game music other than your own work? I love music by David Cage. His recent work, ”BEYOND” was fabulous! |