Yasunori Mitsuda (光田 康典, Mitsuda Yasunori) was born on January 21, 1972. He is a Japanese composer who is most famous for creating music for video games. His work includes games from the Chrono, Xeno, Shadow Hearts, and Inazuma Eleven series, as well as other titles. Mitsuda began composing music for his own games while in high school. After high school, he attended a music college in Tokyo. While still a student, he received an internship at the game development studio Wolf Team.
After graduating from college in 1992, Mitsuda joined the company Square. He worked there as a sound effects designer for two years. Later, he told Square’s vice president, Hironobu Sakaguchi, that he would leave the company unless he could create music for their games. Sakaguchi agreed and assigned Mitsuda to work on the soundtrack for Chrono Trigger (1995). The music from this game has been called some of the best in video games.
Mitsuda continued to compose music for other games at Square, including Xenogears (1998) and Chrono Cross (1999). He left Square in 1998 and became an independent composer. In 2001, he started his own music studio and record company, named Procyon Studio and Sleigh Bells. Mitsuda has also created music for anime series, films, and television programs. He plays the piano, guitar, and sometimes the Irish bouzouki during concerts.
Biography
Mitsuda was born on January 21, 1972, in Tokuyama, Japan, and grew up in the Kumage District of Yamaguchi Prefecture. He began taking piano lessons when he was five years old, but he preferred sports and stopped taking music seriously by the time he was six. For a while, he wanted to become a professional golfer. By the time he reached high school, Mitsuda decided he wanted to become a music composer. He was inspired by the film scores of Vangelis for Blade Runner and Henry Mancini for The Pink Panther. Mitsuda became interested in personal computers after his father bought him one, which was uncommon at the time. He started programming computer games and composing music for them, while also taking classes focused on technology.
After finishing high school, Mitsuda decided to move away from his hometown to live independently. With support from his father and sister, he moved to Tokyo and enrolled in the Junior College of Music. Even though the school was not highly regarded, Mitsuda received valuable instruction from professors who were professional musicians. These professors often took him to live music events and helped him with tasks like carrying and setting up equipment. Mitsuda worked for free in exchange for this experience, which gave him a better understanding of the Japanese music industry. As part of his studies, he was given an internship at the game development studio Wolf Team, where he studied under composer Motoi Sakuraba. Later, Mitsuda saw an advertisement for a sound production job at Square in a magazine called Famitsu. He applied for the position and joined the company in April 1992.
At Square, Mitsuda’s official job was as a composer, but he often worked as a sound engineer. Over the next two years, he created sound effects for games such as Hanjuku Hero, Final Fantasy V, Secret of Mana, and Romancing SaGa 2. In 1994, Mitsuda told Square’s vice president, Hironobu Sakaguchi, that he would quit unless he was allowed to compose music. Sakaguchi assigned Mitsuda to work on Chrono Trigger, telling him that if he completed the project, his salary might increase. Mitsuda was the sole composer for the game, creating 54 tracks for the final release. He worked very hard on the score, often staying up until he collapsed, and would wake up with ideas for songs like the game’s ending theme. His intense work caused him to develop stomach ulcers, and he had to be hospitalized. Nobuo Uematsu helped finish the remaining tracks for him.
Chrono Trigger became a major success, and its soundtrack was popular with fans. Mitsuda considers it his most important work, saying it helped him grow as a musician. He believes the game’s success was due to its use of folk and jazz music, rather than the more common "semi-orchestral" style in game music at the time. After Chrono Trigger, Mitsuda composed the soundtrack for Front Mission: Gun Hazard, again working with Uematsu. Uematsu noted that Mitsuda worked so hard that he eventually had health problems from stress. Mitsuda composed music for three more games with Square: Tobal No. 1 and Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Hōseki in 1996, and Xenogears in 1998, which included the first ballad in a Square game, the Celtic ending theme "Small Two of Pieces" performed by Joanne Hogg. During this time, Mitsuda also released albums with rearranged versions of his music, such as Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time and Creid, a Celtic arrangement of Xenogears music. In July 1998, Mitsuda left Square to work as a freelance composer, becoming one of the first Square composers to do so.
After leaving Square, Mitsuda composed music for only one more original game with the company, Chrono Cross, a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Since then, he has worked on over a dozen games, including Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, a spiritual sequel to Xenogears, and major titles like Shadow Hearts and Luminous Arc. Mitsuda has also composed music for the anime Inazuma Eleven and the independent album Kirite. In 2001, Mitsuda founded Procyon Studio, a company to produce his music, along with a record label called Sleigh Bells. Initially, the company only included Mitsuda and a few sound producers, but it later expanded to include other composers. Procyon Studio also created additional albums, such as Sailing to the World and Colours of Light, a compilation of Mitsuda’s vocal compositions. The studio was involved in co-designing the KORG DS-10 synthesizer program for the Nintendo DS and its successor for the Nintendo 3DS, KORG M01D.
By the late 2000s, Mitsuda began working as a producer for a team of artists. In the 2010s, he composed scores for the Inazuma Eleven series, Soul Sacrifice, and Valkyria Revolution, with the latter being his first fully solo game soundtrack in nearly a decade. Around the same time, Mitsuda started composing for non-video game media, including NHK-produced television shows and anime series like Black Butler and adaptations of Inazuma Eleven. In 2017, Mitsuda served as the lead composer for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, managing the game’s audio budget, booking musicians, scheduling, and proofreading music sheets. He described this as the largest project he had ever worked on. He also composed for the game’s expansion pack, Torna – The Golden Country, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
Musical style and influences
Yasunori Mitsuda says he composes music by "just fooling around on my keyboard" and letting melodies come naturally. He sometimes creates songs while sleeping, such as the ending theme for Chrono Trigger and "Bonds of Sea and Fire" from Xenogears. His main inspiration comes from visual items like paintings. His music often uses simple elements, and he mentions Minimalism as an influence. The final battle themes for Chrono Trigger and Xenogears use only a few chords, with the latter using just two. Mitsuda has listened to many music genres, especially jazz, which he learned from his father. He grew up listening to jazz musician Art Blakey and the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra before exploring classical music. He is also inspired by Celtic music and has made two albums in that style. His Chrono Trigger soundtrack includes sounds from Japanese shakuhachi flutes, Indian tabla drums, and the sitar. He names Maurice Ravel, J.S. Bach, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, Antonín Dvořák, and Gustav Holst as favorite classical composers. He says his modern influences are too many to list because he listens to so much music.
Mitsuda considers the soundtracks for the Chrono series, Xenogears, Xenosaga Episode I, and the album Kirite as his favorites. He says all his soundtracks are "representational works" that show who he was as a composer at the time. His favorite pieces include "The Girl Who Closed Her Heart" and "Pain" from Xenosaga Episode I and tracks from Kirite. When starting a soundtrack, he spends one month gathering information and artwork about the game to ensure his music fits the game's world and story. He finds it easier to be inspired with visual representations. Mitsuda says he does not save his best work for popular games, as he aims to create music that matches each game's needs. He also tries to make strong pieces for games he feels do not deserve them, hoping to improve the player experience. Most of his video game soundtracks are for role-playing games, but he enjoys working on projects that are different from his usual work and is interested in other music genres.
— Yasunori Mitsuda, 2008
Legacy
In 1996, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra first performed Mitsuda's music from Chrono Trigger live at the Orchestral Game Concert in Tokyo, Japan. This performance was also released on an album. The first time Mitsuda's music was performed by an orchestra outside Japan was in 2005 at the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany, where music from Chrono Cross was played. Mitsuda arranged versions of music from Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross for the Play! A Video Game Symphony concerts in 2006. Music from these games has also been performed at other events, such as the Video Games Live concert series and by the Eminence Orchestra. In September 2009, music from Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross made up one fourth of the music played at the Symphonic Fantasies concerts at the Kölner Philharmonie in Germany. These concerts were part of the Game Concerts series and produced by Thomas Böcker. On April 30, 2010, the piece "Scars of Time" from Chrono Cross was performed at the Fantasy Comes Alive concert in Singapore.
Mitsuda's music for Xenogears has inspired fan-made albums. A licensed tribute album called Xenogears Light: An Arranged Album was released in limited quantities by the fan group OneUp Studios in 2005. This album includes 20 tracks from the Xenogears score, arranged for acoustic instruments like piano, flute, guitar, and violin. Another album, Humans + Gears, was created as a digital album by OverClocked Remix in 2009. It contains 33 remixes of Mitsuda's work. Remixes of Mitsuda's music also appear on Japanese Dōjin albums and on English remixing websites like OverClocked Remix.
Music from Chrono Trigger has been arranged for piano and published as sheet music by DOREMI Music Publishing. Sheet music for Chrono Cross tracks, arranged for solo guitar and guitar duets, has been released by Procyon Studio. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Chrono Trigger, Mitsuda and his group, Millennial Fair, performed songs from the game in Tokyo on July 25–26, 2015. The event, called The Brink of Time, included Mitsuda playing piano, guitar, and Irish bouzouki. During the event, Mitsuda announced that a long-requested arrangement album, To Far Away Times: Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross Arrangement Album, would be released by Square Enix Music on October 14, 2015.