The music of Shoji-san is generally very heavy and hard-hitting. With his signature harsh beats, distorted guitars, and often beautiful melodies made up of synthesizers, piano, or strings, his compositions are sure to leave an impression. He seamlessly blends the worlds of rock and electronic together, showing no bias to either side, giving his songs a unique flavor. I was fortunate enough to ask Hidenori a couple questions regarding his career and music. Check it out below!

01.

What was your musical background? What bands or artists influenced you?

As a guitarist, I was influenced by HIDE of X Japan (from the Japanese artists) and Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe (from the overseas artists). I used to imitate their guitar work when I was in high school.

As a composer, I was strongly influenced by Liam Howlett of The Prodigy. I still remember the impact I had when I first heard his music, which is both electro and full of rock spirit.

02.

How do you approach writing music for an interactive medium such as video games? Do you find it difficult creating a song for gameplay where the player might determine when the song will begin & end?

This is not an easy task, as there is no clear-cut right answer in the matter of expression, but that is also the fun part.

The main focus of our sound team is to make the scenes in the game come to life, and our job is to add to the excitement of the gameplay. We always put our shoes in the player, and think about “what kind of music would I want to hear? What kind of changes would excite me?” We believe it is important to produce music from the players’ point of view.

It would be difficult to create interactive musical expressions without constantly thinking about these questions, and I believe the best result would be for the music to be so natural that the player would not even recognize the beginning and end of a song. I would even go further and say that I do not think it is necessary for players to remember what kind of music is being played.

03.

Many of your compositions have a high energy with heavy electronic beats or distorted guitars, and yet there is usually a catchy melody on top of it all. Do you think of the melodies first? Or do you work on the tone & energy of the song first?

As mentioned in the question above, we want to establish the scenes, so we look at the tone of the song first to make sure there is no conflict between the song and the scene or gameplay we are responsible for. The energy and sense of power comes after that, but in the case of emotional scenes, sometimes the melody and harmonies are created first.

04.

With rock music playing such a big role in your work, do you have any favorite guitars? Is there one you find yourself picking up more than others?

I often use a DS496 from Sugi Guitars, a Japanese manufacturer of high-end guitars. I really like it because it is easy to play and has a wide variety of sounds that can be produced.

When I want more power, I often use a semi-custom guitar with Bare Knuckle pickups or a Rich B from B.C. Rich. I use different string gauges and tunings on each guitar depending on the song I am playing.

05.

On many of the soundtracks you've worked on, you've often included endings to songs that didn't have one in the game, unlike many game soundtracks where the music fades out. Do you write these endings exclusively for the soundtrack releases?

To explain this, I would like to go back to a story that happened in 2004 when we were working on the soundtrack for F-ZERO GX/AX, before the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series began. I once talked to a graphic designer from the same team who listened to the F-Zero GX/AX soundtrack, who asked me, "Why is it that artists' albums have song endings, but all game soundtracks fade out? It just seems like a collection of data, and very mechanical." Today, fade-outs are less common, but back in 2004, it was natural for game soundtracks to end with a fade-out, so I remember being surprised and sympathetic to his opinion. Since then, I have created endings for the game titles I have worked on that were not in the game.

As a result, this approach has been recognized by the public as an added value to the soundtrack, and it has now become part of the common culture among the composers of Like a Dragon, and has been passed on to younger composers.

In recent years, as games have become more interactive, there have been more opportunities to play the end of a song within the game. For example, in games such as Yakuza 6: The Song of Life and the Judgment series, the end of a song is often created from the time when the music is implemented into the game.

06.

Throughout the Like a Dragon / Yakuza series, you've sometimes included traditional instruments such as the Shamisen or Spanish guitar. Did you have to learn these instruments for the games?

When we started developing Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin! (2014) I took Shamisen lessons from a certain teacher at my own expense and was able to play at least my own songs.

I could not learn the Spanish guitar until I learned it from someone, but I learned the Rasgueado technique from YouTube and other video sites and used it to add flavor to my own songs. Spanish guitar is a very deep instrument, and I would like to learn it properly one day.

07.

The Like a Dragon / Yakuza series is continuously evolving with games such as the Judgment titles and the recent Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, do you find it difficult having to develop the sound of the series?

As I wrote in the liner notes for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, "developing a series of games is a battle against getting stuck in a rut.” The same goes for sound, which is always a challenge for us, as we are constantly looking for different genres and approaches, changing composers, etc., to keep users from getting bored.

On the other hand, we also need a sense of security that the game is "just like Like a Dragon" so we have to be careful to strike a balance between the two.

08.

What are some of your favorite tracks you've worked on in your career as a game composer?

I like "Jungle Stage" from Super Monkey Ball because it is a short song that expresses my personality, and "ZEN" from F-ZERO GX/AX is a good example in my career of a song that was written from the player's perspective, so I have a strong attachment to it.

From the Like a Dragon series, "Chiru wa Setsuna" (Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin!, 2014) comes to mind. It was the first song that fulfilled my desire to use a quiet song to emotionally direct the final boss battle, so it has a strong place in my heart.

I also have very fond memories of "Clay Doll On The Cradle" from Yakuza 3. This song was a very difficult project, and even after writing about 15 demo songs in about 3-4 weeks, I could not get a coherent picture at all. However, one day I made a mistake in setting up the DAW and played the piano with deep delay and saturation, and at that moment all the dots connected and the image that had not come together was formed in that moment. I remember finishing it in about a day after that incident. I still can't forget that strange feeling of being struck by lightning.

To name a few others, the never-released songs from Binary Domain are some of the most unique experiments of my career, and I still like many of them because they are so ambitious.

09.

Any word to your fans around the world?

I have always made songs with the global market in mind, not purely the Japanese market, so I am very happy to see that people overseas are even more supportive than in Japan. In the future, I plan to create songs not only for the Like a Dragon series, but also for a wide range of other SEGA titles, so please continue to support me in the future!