Michiru Yamane (Japanese: 山根ミチル, Hepburn: Yamane Michiru; born September 23, 1963) is a Japanese video game composer and pianist. Her music is influenced by old-style music, traditional music, and rock music. Johann Sebastian Bach and Yellow Magic Orchestra are two important influences on her work. She is most famous for her 20 years of work at the company Konami, where she created music for the Castlevania video game series.

Michiru became interested in music when she was young, practicing on an electric organ and piano. She studied music composition in college and started working as a composer for Konami in 1988. As part of the Konami Kukeiha Club, she worked with other musicians on many Konami video games. Her most important work includes the Castlevania games Bloodlines (1994) and Symphony of the Night (1997).

Early life and education

Yamane was born on September 23, 1963, in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. At the age of four, she began learning to play the electric organ on her family's Yamaha Electone. She also started taking piano lessons soon after. Yamane enjoyed playing rock music on the organ but became interested in classical music through her piano studies. She began writing music at the age of eight and later decided she wanted to create songs for movies, commercials, or become a jazz pianist. She attended a high school that focused on advanced piano lessons and studied music topics such as harmonic rhythm, counterpoint, and music theory. Around this time, she also played video games at local arcades. Instead of competing with highly skilled musicians, she chose to attend Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts to study composition. In college, she learned how to write music for large orchestras and completed a special project about Johann Sebastian Bach, a famous German composer. She also continued playing video games on a friend's Famicom during this time.

Career

Yamane began working for Konami in 1988, just before her fourth year of college. At the time, she had a teaching license and was teaching part-time, but she felt the job was not a good fit. She found an open position at Konami through her college's recruitment office and was hired. She had not planned to become a game composer, even though she enjoyed games and music.

At Konami, Yamane was part of the Konami Kukeiha Club, the company's sound team. She was nervous she might have to do frequency modulation programming, but she started as a composer. Later, she learned to use computer music sequencing programs in graduate school. Her first work at Konami included the main themes for King's Valley II and Risa no Yōsei Densetsu (1988). She also composed short victory jingles for the Track and Field games. After that, she worked on several games for the Game Boy, Famicom, MSX, and arcade systems. Many of her early projects were shoot 'em up games, such as the Nemesis series and Detana!! TwinBee. She compared the timing of sound in these games to that of Disney animated films. Yamane said these games helped her understand the "Konami sound" and build her skills. At first, she found it difficult to work with only three sound channels on the Famicom, which limited her ability to create complex music, but she eventually learned to work within those limits. She found inspiration in Bach's "Inventions and Sinfonias," which also used only two or three notes at a time.

Yamane's first role as a lead composer was for Ganbare Goemon 2 (1989). She learned to edit sound samples from senior programmers. She is credited for music in Contra: Hard Corps, but she does not remember composing it. She believes she might have contributed a few pieces during a busy time for the sound team. She also worked on Rocket Knight Adventures (1993) and its sequels, writing music for Sparkster and creating sound effects for Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2. Around this time, Akira Yamaoka joined Konami and worked with Yamane on later projects.

Yamane is best known for her work on the Castlevania series. After moving to Konami's Tokyo office from Kobe, her boss thought she would be a good fit for Castlevania: Bloodlines (1994), which was already popular for its music. She felt pressure to create music that matched the game's vampiric themes and the classical style she had grown up with. She combined her classical influences with the rock themes from earlier games in the series. When working on Mega Drive games, she had to program the music into the game herself. GamesRadar+ called Bloodlines her first major success as a composer.

The next Castlevania game, Symphony of the Night (1997), was made for the PlayStation. The art director, Osamu Kasai, asked Yamane to join the team. The PlayStation used CD-ROMs, which allowed for higher-quality music and sound. Yamane felt more freedom to create music without the limits of older systems. For Symphony of the Night, she used artwork by Ayami Kojima as inspiration. She recorded music using an Akai sampler connected to a computer running Logic Pro and Pro Tools. This was the first time she included rock music in a game, and it became one of her most popular soundtracks. She also created all the sound effects for the game due to a shortage of staff.

After Symphony of the Night, Yamane continued to work with Koji Igarashi and the Castlevania team, reviewing artwork and story ideas for future games. She composed music for Lament of Innocence (2003) and Curse of Darkness (2005), which were challenging projects. She also worked on games for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, which had limited note capabilities like older consoles. To avoid repetition, she expanded her listening habits for inspiration. On Portrait of Ruin (2006), she collaborated with Yuzo Koshiro. The last Castlevania score she wrote was for Order of Ecclesia (2008), which she worked on with Yasuhiro Ichihashi. She said her favorite scores were for Aria of Sorrow (2003), Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia.

While working on Castlevania, Yamane also composed for other games. She contributed to Suikoden III (2002) and Suikoden IV (2004), following the style of Miki Higashino's work on the first two games. After Sota Fujimori joined Konami in 1998, Yamane worked with him on Gungage (1999) and Elder Gate (2000), blending her classical style with his modern electronic music. She also worked on the Winning Eleven series and The Sword of Etheria (2005).

After composing music for over 40 games at Konami, Yamane left the company in 2008 to become a freelance composer. She made this decision after getting a pet cat and wanting to slow down her career to work from home. She wanted more freedom to choose projects and manage her time. Since becoming freelance, Yamane has composed for video games, films, commercials, television, and anime. She has considered making a solo album. Games she has composed for include Otomedius Excellent (2011) and Skullgirls (2012). Though no longer working directly for Konami, she has continued to create music for Castlevania and has composed for Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Yamane occasionally performs in live concerts. Her first performance was a song from Symphony of the Night at the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig in 2006. She wrote music for a Castlevania arrangement box set and performed at Castlevania: The Concert in Stockholm in 2010. In 2015, she played with other Japanese composers at the Game Sound Maniax concert in China.

Musical style and influences

Game Developer magazine described Yamane's music as having an "old, gothic, Victorian style." Yamane said her interest in dark classical music began during her college studies of Bach. She was also inspired by other composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Chopin. In high school, she listened to Kraftwerk, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), with YMO being a major influence on many Japanese game composers. She was also inspired by and enjoys listening to Dream Theater. She has found inspiration from many music types, including techno pop, progressive rock, film scores, folk, jazz, rock, bossa nova, and contemporary classical music. She enjoys film scores by composers like Jerry Goldsmith and listened to American pop music in her youth from artists such as Barry Manilow, Burt Bacharach, Eric Carmen, The Doobie Brothers, and The Eagles. Yamane has also expressed appreciation for music from other game composers, including Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yoko Kanno, and Motoi Sakuraba. She explained that Tomb Raider and its sequel influenced how she approached sound design.

Works

Yamane helped create music for more than 40 video games at Konami. As part of the Konami Kukeiha Club, Yamane often worked with other people who compose music, arrange musical pieces, and program sound effects for games.