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What does Uematsu do subsequent? It’s one thing that the veteran online game composer has lastly discovered a while to mirror on in gentle of the famed JRPG sequence’s thirty fifth anniversary. The final recreation he composed an entire soundtrack for was 2021’s “Fantasian,” an Apple Arcade unique created by his good friend and Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and it is perhaps his final.
Uematsu devoted all of his “body and spirit” to the mission. A typical working day concerned waking up at 5 a.m. with music already in his head and composing till 6 p.m. It’s onerous to consider that it was solely in 2018 that Uematsu introduced by way of a weblog publish that he was taking an “extended leave of absence” because of the fatigue from wrapping a busy touring schedule round his composition work. Uematsu labored so onerous that he was hospitalized. Sakaguchi had doubts as as to whether he’d be capable to work on “Fantasian.”
Despite the well being considerations, Uematsu instructed The Washington Post over a video name that he’s now totally recovered. Has his output slowed down in any respect? Not precisely. His schedule is as busy as ever, and he’s nonetheless working comparable hours now as he was earlier than the depart of absence.
“The thing is, I don’t really have any downtime. All I do is work!” he mentioned by means of an interpreter.
That mentioned, Uematsu has hung out reflecting on his legacy and the place he invests his inventive time.
“My work has three main pillars at the moment,” Uematsu mentioned. “The first: synthesizer-based solo performances. The second: live performances of theme songs that I wrote for different games with a small group of artists. I play the piano, another member of the group plays percussion, someone else plays the guitar and we have a vocalist as well. The third: writing music and stories by myself and having a voice actor perform the live reading with my music.”
The variety of the self-taught composer’s music within the Final Fantasy sequence has led to it being organized and carried out in quite a lot of totally different genres through the years. There is a vibrant scene of musicians creating covers and preparations on YouTube and on-line communities equivalent to OverClocked Remix, whether or not that’s ’60s surf massive band variations of “The Chocobo Theme,” lofi hip-hop remixes or classical guitar renditions.
Square Enix, the sport studio chargeable for Final Fantasy, isn’t any stranger to the demand for Uematsu’s music both. It has launched a number of association albums of its personal, equivalent to “Square Enix Jazz: Final Fantasy,” “Cafe SQ” and the Distant Worlds orchestral preparations it excursions throughout the globe. Uematsu has by no means been instantly concerned with the preparations of many of those albums, making his latest synthesizer-based solo performances so distinctive.
“Modulation” is Uematsu’s first synthesizer-based mission, that includes his personal synth preparations of Final Fantasy music modulated from the devices, sound chips and applications used to file the unique tracks. It additionally marks the composer’s first time releasing an analog vinyl file. Uematsu says the concept for the album was sparked after introducing Final Fantasy music into his solo performances alongside music from different video games he labored on, together with the Blue Dragon sequence, “Lost Odyssey” and “The Last Story.”
“A representative of Square Enix heard them and asked me if I’d like to turn them into an album, and I accepted,” Uematsu mentioned. He was ready to decide on which tracks from Final Fantasy he wished to function on the album.
Uematsu has at all times been captivated with performing the music he’s written for video video games onstage. While online game live shows have been happening in Japan since 1987, when Koichi Sugiyama crammed the Suntory Hall in Tokyo together with his music from Dragon Quest on the NES, it wasn’t till 2003 that Uematsu’s music was carried out onstage within the West. The success of Thomas Böcker’s Symphonic Games Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany, spawned a symphony live performance sequence that woke up Uematsu to the worldwide reputation of Final Fantasy music live shows.
“Hearing my music performed outside of Japan was a great experience and a huge honor,” he mentioned. “At the time, orchestral performances of Japanese game music weren’t really common outside of Japan. When I was young, Japan was strongly influenced by American and European culture, but not the other way around. To think that Japanese culture has now left an impression on American and European children makes me realize that times have changed.”
Uematsu was 10 years previous when he heard music from the Vienna Boys’ Choir. This was the primary time within the younger composer’s life that he was moved to tears, he recalled.
“It really was a formative moment in my life. It was the first time I got a taste of how moving music can be,” he mentioned. There’s a cause the tissues come out at Final Fantasy live shows each time the orchestra drops “To Zanarkand” from “Final Fantasy X” or “Aerith’s Theme” from “Final Fantasy VII.” “The emotional impact that hearing the Vienna Boys’ Choir had on me is definitely an experience that I wanted to re-create, but I wanted to do it in my own way.”
Later, American and European bands significantly influenced Uematsu’s musical output. Kraftwerk followers will be capable to acknowledge the three-note melody in “Final Fantasy VII’s” “Anxious Heart,” and there are apparent similarities between Deep Purple’s “Maybe I’m a Leo” and “Final Fantasy VIII’s” “Maybe I’m a Lion.” Uematsu cites Elton John, Kraftwerk and Sparks as his greatest influences, and there’s no escaping how the composer’s love for progressive rock bands permeates his online game scores.
“At the beginning of the ’70s, progressive rock was very popular in Japan, except Genesis, maybe,” he mentioned, though he cites “Foxtrot” by Genesis as certainly one of his favourite albums. “Not a lot of people were listening to Genesis. But Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, and Pink Floyd were very popular.”
Of course, you may in all probability think about Uematsu’s delight when Sony Music introduced a possibility to collaborate with Deep Purple’s vocalist, Ian Gillan, for a boss theme in “Blue Dragon,” one of many first video games that Uematsu scored after leaving Square Enix in 2004. “I’m definitely a big fan of Deep Purple, so I was very happy that this collaboration came about!”
In 2002, Uematsu’s ardour for prog-rock music led to him forming The Black Mages, a band that includes unique Square and Square Enix members performing prog-rock and steel variations of Final Fantasy music. When the group break up in 2010, Uematsu carried the idea ahead with a brand new band, Earthbound Papas, including music from “Lost Odyssey,” “Lord of Vermilion” and “Blue Dragon” to the setlist.
The group remains to be energetic, however these days, Uematsu is extra curious about taking part in stripped-back variations of his music.
“Right now, I’m not playing rock music like I did in the days of Earthbound Papas and The Black Mages,” he mentioned. “I’m trying to shift toward a kind of music that you can relax to. I’m not after playing music that’s all about great rhythm and big beats at the moment. I want to move people with melodies and harmonies. That’s why I’m currently focusing on simple acoustic setups instead of a full-on rock band.”
The acoustic setups of Uematsu performing with different musicians are at the moment being streamed in Japan as a part of the conTIKI exhibits, with dwell performances scheduled for Europe subsequent yr. These performances and his solo tasks are taking on most of Uematsu’s time proper now, and he appears content material to not be closely concerned in writing music for video video games in the meanwhile.
In reality, once we requested Uematsu about his favourite modern-day online game scores and composers, he struggled to call any soundtracks which have impressed him in recent times:
“I feel that everyone, including myself, I guess, is simply making music that you’ve already heard somewhere else. That’s not very exciting to me. I understand that video games are meant to be fun, of course. But they’re also the cutting edge of entertainment technology.
“That’s why I’d like to see people take a more experimental approach to them. In that sense, nobody comes to mind when you ask me if there’s a composer who I’m a big fan of … But wait, I just remembered something. There is a Czech developer named Amanita Design. What they’re doing is extremely interesting to me, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of the music.”
That mentioned, he instructed The Post he has an concept for a online game he’d wish to make. While this wouldn’t be the primary time Uematsu has crafted a story expertise (“Blik-0 1946” is his story of a weaponized robotic launched as an e-book on iOS in 2013), it might be his first time making a online game.
“If I find a company that’s willing to fund it, I would like to work on that.”
Mat Ombler is a contract journalist specializing within the intersection of video video games and music.