Came to learn a bit about great innovative composers from around the world? Well you have come to the right place! Welcome back to Compositions on Composers!  This week, we are featuring Koji Kondo, an amazing Japanese video game composer who has proved how video games can be an important medium for creating and showcasing innovative music. When many people hear about video game music, they rarely take it seriously. They say it’s simplistic, tinny, or for people living in their mom’s basement. Due to this bad reputation, some video games containing very artful and inspiring soundtracks can easily be overlooked. While it’s true that video game tracks at times overuse temp tracks and samples (as is also true in many films), we will see that this view doesn’t represent all video game soundtracks. In the 1970s, as we learned last week, technology advanced so that developers could use computers to create hundreds of unique and interesting electronic sounds. These electronic sounds would be utilized in the early techno and synth music around the world by composers like last week’s Ryuichi Sakamoto but also by composers for the newly created medium of video games. So let’s dive right in, but first, a little bit of video game history.

If you asked your parents about what kinds of video games were around during their childhoods, they would most likely mention Pong and Pac-man. Maybe if they were involved in early video game culture they would even mention having an Atari 2600 or frequenting the local video game arcade with their friends to play games like Space Invaders or Dragon’s Lair. Regardless, these simple little games defined early video culture. By the early 1980s, these short games and an influx of video game consoles from Japan and the United States flooded the market, many very expensive, and all trying to bring gaming from the arcade to the home. Unfortunately, the heavy market saturation and high prices led to an enormous recession that almost completely destroyed the video game industry. This catastrophic event would later be named the Video Game Crash of 1983. During this recession, it seemed that video games would forever be limited to being simple arcade experiences for kids, but then one company changed this forever, Nintendo.

Though now a multinational company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, Nintendo was originally founded in 1889 as a Japanese Hanafuda card game company. The company stayed small for decades, and by 1963, company head Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of founder Fusajiro Yamauchi, realized that their market was limited and that they needed to refocus their product lines and target audience in order to grow. They attempted to enter many industries but all attempts were failures. They didn’t hit their stride until they finally tackled the Japanese toy industry in 1966 with toys such as the Ultra Hand and the Love Tester. In the 1970s, as video games become the new popular toys for children, Nintendo began to move into this market. It was around this time that a young product developer named Shigeru Miyamoto was hired to work in the new medium. Miyamoto would design the Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Arcade games, which concretized Nintendo’s position in the market. After the Video Game Crash, Nintendo was the company to revitalize the industry in 1985 with their famed home console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console single-handedly brought the industry back from ruin and the company would continue to make critically-acclaimed video games for the following decades. The launch of the NES was when our composer, Koji Kondo, finally came into the picture after being hired in 1984 to work on the console.

Koji Kondo was born on August 13, 1961 in Nagoya, Japan. He first began playing music in his electronic organ lessons at the young age of five. Throughout his childhood and teen years, Kondo joined a cover band, enjoyed listening to early electronic music (maybe even YMO from last week), and played video games at local arcades. He then attended the Osaka University of the Arts, and though he was never classically trained in music, he worked in electronic music, making him an appealing candidate for Nintendo. When sent a recruitment message in 1984 to become a sound programmer, Kondo excitedly accepted and joined the rapidly expanding company. He was hired alongside Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka in order to score each video game and design all of the sound effects. His first project was the widely popular Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out in 1984, which took much of its inspiration from Rocky, an American film. Kondo helped to compose the game’s opening theme among other tracks. Despite the NES’s hardware limitations (only five possible sound channels with hardly any options for dynamics or the like: two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise generator, and one digital sample channel), the three composers worked to make fun and fitting songs for their games.

Kondo would move on to compose the soundtracks for Nintendo’s biggest and best game series including The Super Mario series and The Legend of Zelda series. The first editions of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda sold over sixty million copies worldwide and will forever be cherished as video game classics. Of his first main project, the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack, the first piece he composed was “Water Theme”. He actually composed it before the “Main Theme”! Kondo wanted to help convey the game’s main theme of having fun, so he used bright and catchy melodies with fun beats. The “Water Theme” features a waltz time signature (3/4), which was unique since most compositions are in 4/4 time, and the “Main Theme” exudes cheer and child-like fun. He would compose the soundtracks for the following installments in both series until after completing the soundtrack to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998). From this point on, Kondo began to collaborate with fellow composers in his works or act as a supervisor.

Melody is Kondo’s biggest strength when composing. With his melodies, he creates amazing and fitting atmospheres that perfectly suit Nintendo’s games. He can compose touching and emotional moments such as in “Grandma’s Theme” from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (2002) which plays when the main character Link must leave his grandmother and home island in search for his kidnapped sister. It’s bittersweet as we hope that Link will see his loving grandmother again soon. He also greatly captures adventurous and exciting moments such as in “The Great Sea Theme” from Wind Waker. The bass arpeggios in the left hand create the waves and the bright trumpet melody expresses Link’s joy as he goes on the adventure of his life looking for his sister and trying to save the kingdom.

In the soundtrack for Super Mario Galaxy (2007), Kondo composes space-age pieces from another world full of cheer like in “Gusty Garden Galaxy”, empty tranquility like in “Space Junk Galaxy”, and epic drama like in “Final Battle”. In his soundtracks, Kondo also uses dynamic composition. This means that the music changes as the player moves or engages in certain activities. Maybe when the player goes underwater the music distorts or becomes calmer or as they approach certain places the volume changes. To pull from Super Mario Galaxy again, in one world, the Freezeflame Galaxy, there are two separate areas, fire and ice. The same song plays throughout the level, but depending on which area you are in, the music instrumentation changes. In the fire area, African drums and low reeds are used to create a song of heavy and sweltering heat. In contrast, in the ice area, light and high-pitched choral electronic sounds create a frigid and distant sound. These artistic choices make video games more interactive and immersive, improving the experience for players.

Thanks for reading to the end of this post! I was only able to scratch the surface of Koji Kondo’s career as he has composed hundreds of pieces for dozens of games, but I hope you enjoyed this post nonetheless. I just found it so interesting how Kondo interpreted the innovation of new electronic sounds in such a different way from last week’s Ryuichi Sakamoto. See you next time on Compositions on Composers!

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Welcome back to Compositions on Composers! This week, instead of introducing the most famous and quintessential composer of a genre and then introducing a modern composer influenced by them, we are taking a slightly different approach. We will explore how two separate composers were inspired by electronic sounds, which were newly available due to technological advancements, and how they implemented them into their music. Electronic sounds are commonplace in music today, but they have only really existed for the past 50 years. When you consider the many centuries of music history, half a century of time covers a very small amount of such an expansive history. So, how did composers and their music adjust to the advent of electronic sounds? There was no precedent for the technology and it provided opportunities to break musical conventions in many unique ways, but who took a chance on this risky technology? Though many experimental bands and composers in Europe and North America pioneered in the world of electronic sound (Kraftwerk, Art of Noise, etc.), we will travel to Japan to observe two of their approaches to the new technology. To start this journey, today, we will learn about the revolutionary and ground-breaking Japanese composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto. (By the way, special thanks to a classmate for introducing him to me in the comments on the Mozart post.)

Sakamoto was born on January 17th, 1952 in Tokyo, Japan. Born in a time soon after World War II, Sakamoto came from humble beginnings. His father was an editor and his mother a hat designer. Japan was still recovering from the war during Sakamoto’s childhood, but Western intervention and post-war growth led to a booming Japanese economy. The new economic growth and Western involvement helped Japanese culture to grow and expand and allowed for Western technologies and music to enter the country. Sakamoto cites English rock and French Impressionism as the two most influential genres of his career. In fact, “Tell Me” by the Rolling Stones was his first record and French composer Claude Debussy left an important mark on him by influencing his perspective on left and right hand melodies. Sakamoto started playing music himself by age 3 when he first began learning to play the piano, and he started composing his own music by age 10. He would continue his music education at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he graduated with a master’s degree in music in 1976. It was at university where Sakamoto first became acquainted with electronic music.

During and in the immediate time after his studies at Tokyo National University, Sakamoto freelanced with a number of collaborators. Two that he particularly bonded with were Haroumi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. The three young musicians would then form the group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) together in 1978. YMO, like their contemporaries, were far ahead of their time. They took elements of classical music, traditional Japanese scales and melodies, and brand-new digital electronic sounds and techniques in order to create a fresh and innovative sound. At the time, the kinds of sounds and techniques that they were using were perceived as oddities by some. For example, see how baffled and confused the host of Soul Train was when the band came on to perform Tighten Up in 1980! However, many others and music visionaries around the world viewed the band’s pieces as futuristic masterpieces and would soon follow in the band’s footsteps towards a more electronic sound. YMO influenced the New Wave, synthpop, electro, and video game music genres that came after them with songs like Ballet, Firecracker, Tong Poo, and Technopolis (surprisingly, this came out in the 1970s).

After YMO “broke up” (never made official) in 1984, Sakamoto remained relevant with an extremely successful solo career. His first solo album, Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, came out in 1978 while the group was still together, but the album made it clear that Sakamoto had the potential to continue growing on his own beyond YMO. This first album only had six tracks, but each one made a significant impact on the music industry. More specifically, Thousand Knives and Plastic Bamboo were outstanding tracks, and Grasshoppers showcased Sakamoto’s potential as a pianist, which he would increasingly show as his career progressed. Sakamoto also collaborated with many other bands and artists such as the Talking Heads, David Sylvain, Iggy Pop, and Thomas Dolby among many others.

As Sakamoto grew older, he began to compose more classical piano albums such as Playing the Piano (2009) with songs like Amore and A Flower Is Not A Flower. He has also composed over thirty film scores, including those to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) with David Bowie, The Last Emperor (1987) which won a Grammy and an Oscar for Best Score, Black Rain (1989), and The Sheltering Sky (1990). He has even composed video game soundtracks and mobile phone ringtones. Over the course of his decades-long career, Sakamoto has won many awards and has also made an everlasting mark on the music and film industry.

Thanks for reading today’s post! I really loved learning a bit about Sakamoto and the music scene in late 20th-century Japan and I hope that you did too. Sakamoto is still quite a celebrity in Japan today and continues to compose amazing music and soundtracks, so if you liked what you heard here then I encourage you to look up more from him. Among Sakamoto’s most recent works, he scored the Oscar-winning movie The Revenant and released a more ambient and relaxing album called async, with some of my favorites on it being honj and ubi. Next week, we will explore another approach to the new electronic sounds that a Japanese composer took around the same time. See you then!

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After last week’s introductory exploration into the roots of jazz came to a sudden end in the 1950s, many questions were left unanswered. What tree grew from those great jazz roots? To answer this, we look to revolutionary jazz composer and bandleader Wynton Marsalis. Inspired by classical composers such as Mozart and Beethoven and influenced by the likes of Duke Ellington, Marsalis has modernized the jazz genre but always kept its roots at heart. He composes and performs in all sub-genres from classic to contemporary and best represents the changing genre today.

On October 18th, 1961, Wynton Marsalis was born in New Orleans, the very same city where jazz was born several decades before. He received his first trumpet at the age of six, and soon after, his parents realized that Marsalis possessed an extraordinary amount of talent and skill in playing trumpet. By age eight, Marsalis was performing in the Fairview Baptist Church band, playing traditional New Orleans music. As a teenager, he started branching into playing for more professional bands, including the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, the New Orleans Symphony, and the Creators, a popular New Orleans funk band.

At the age of 17, Marsalis was admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. He was the school’s youngest ever admitted student. Excelling in his studies and musical performances, Marsalis was awarded Tanglewood’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. In 1979, he then moved up north to New York City to study at Juilliard. Walking in the footsteps of Duke Ellington, Marsalis began gigging in small clubs and at minor events. Word of his talent quickly spread and Marsalis soon signed on to Columbia Records. His first jazz album with the record company sold well and was critically acclaimed. By 1981, Marsalis had formed a band and started touring the United States. For the next fifteen years, he inspired the next generation of aspiring musicians with his swinging melodies and reminiscent jazz tunes. Above, you can see Marsalis from this touring time period of his life. In the photo, he is playing trumpet for the Haydn Trumpet Concert in Eb in a Boston Pops concert.

Today, Marsalis has won 10 Grammys, in both classical and jazz recordings. Marsalis has also received The National Medal of Arts, an Honorary Membership to Britain’s Royal Academy of Music, and the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He even won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1997, the first jazz musician to ever receive this great honor. The Pulitzer Prize was for his two-hour jazz oratorio Blood on the Fields. The piece recognizes the cruelties on which this country was built through bringing attention to slavery and the harsh treatment of Native Americans. In terms of the general auditory experience, this piece stirs lots of different emotions and can feel harsh at times and hazy at others. If you are overwhelmed and having trouble picking out which sections to listen to, I recommend Forty Lashes and Move Over.

Besides Blood on the Fields, some of Marsalis’s other notable songs are Black Codes (I love this one), Cherokee, and Jig’s Jig.

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