A recent interview with Red Bull Music and Yuzo Koshiro (古代 祐三) has revealed some very interesting tidbits regarding the famed composers upbringing, as well as his approach to composing music for various classic pixelated games.

I’d like to start off this by mentioning one Koshiro’s most iconic and memorable tracks, which I’m sure many of us had stuck in our heads back in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyuReqv2Rnc

It’s fascinating to hear about the differences in music between Los Angeles and his hometown of Hino, Tokyo at the time. When asked about what got him into house and techno, Koshiro reminisced about his culture shock within LA hotels:

“I went to LA right around that time, and I constantly had MTV on at the hotel. I felt really shocked. It was so different to what was trendy in Japan. I bought loads of cassettes as souvenirs. Nothing like that was being sold in CD shops in the suburbs in Hino back then. I went to places like Shinjuku and Shibuya and tried to find music that was close to what I got in LA, and gradually gathered more info. That was just after I turned 20.”

Koshiro was also polled on the impact the FM synthesis had on both video game and popular music in general. He also described his first experience with a popular (then) arcade game, Space Harrier:

“Not just in game music, but in regular music too, all synthesisers before the FM synthesiser was released were analogue. Analogue synthesisers could only make very stereotypical synth sounds. With the introduction of FM synthesis, various instruments, like string, wind and percussion instruments, could all be played on one FM chip. When I first heard the music for Space Harrier at the arcade, it was so good that I thought there must’ve been a CD inside. That was when it began. I think it changed everything.”

Here’s where the interview gets interesting – Koshiro was asked about his upbringing under the tutelage of the world-renowned Joe Hisaishi, or as he knew him, Mamoru Fujisawa (藤澤 守). Apparently, Fujisawa was a friend of the family:

“I remember learning from Joe Hisaishi around my second or third year in elementary school. The reason I ended up learning with him was because my mother taught the piano to his wife. At the time, he wasn’t as famous as he is now, and was just doing regular jobs in music. Since I was just a kid, I didn’t know much about the kind of work he was doing. He was a great teacher.”

He was asked if there were any secrets the composer had taught him, in which Koshiro explained that his learning had to be adapted, due to his young age:

“Since I was so young, I didn’t study anything specific about composition with him. The kind of things I learned didn’t involve musical scores. He’d play an intro phrase, and have me continue it. I had to make music on the fly. I think that proved very useful for me.”

In case you were wondering if Koshiro has still got it, you can sample one of his most recent compositions from Kid Icarus Uprising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPwTTQb6D8

Of course, the interviewer had to ask Koshiro about one of his most iconic soundtracks, the original soundtrack to The Revenge of Shinobi. The actual question posed was regarding any goals he set with the composition for the game:

“It was a sequel, of course. I’d played Shinobi a lot at the arcade, and I knew the songs, so I wanted to make something like an extension of those. As I was looking into it more, I started listening to the latest music at the time, which was club or disco music. I thought it’d be interesting to combine that style with the Japanese taste that Shinobi had. So there are some embarrassing parts here and there, like a track similar to Prince’s Batman song. I was listening to that kind of music at the time, you see. It wasn’t like now where you can listen to old songs whenever you want, so we were limited to the music we listened to at the time. Back then, if it was Prince, then all I’d listen to was Prince. I wanted to have that kind of cool music playing in games. I was trying to mix that kind of music with different kinds of Japanese-style music and cool overseas stuff with a club sound.”

To put it into perspective, his compositions are so beloved that live, symphonic arrangements for them have been performed. These include orchestral arrangements for The Revenge of Shinobi, ActRaiser, and Streets of Rage.

If you’ve played any of the games Koshiro-san has worked on, what are some of your favorite compositions?