Final Fantasy Explorers composer Tsuyoshi Sekito recently started a four-part column to talk about his current work on the game. In the first part, he talked about his early struggles creating the game’s main theme. This time, he shares a bit on his music-making process.
Sekito starts out by saying that people often mistake the job of producing video game music and some kind of flashy work, but explains that it’s actually consists of doing a lot of repetitive and quiet work.
At first, most of it starts on paper with documents and key visuals, then afterwards, you spend a good deal of time working out an image in your head. Then finally, you get to actually make the music.
For Final Fantasy Explorers on Nintendo 3DS, since it’s an action RPG, Sekito thought about the game’s tempo while starting out with the field (dungeon) music, normal battle, boss battle, and the hometown’s four track demos.
From this point, he believes that we’ll be hearing more tracks that gives you an idea about the world of Final Fantasy Explorers and what type of music the game will feature.
According to Sekito, the game’s development is currently at a phase where he can play it while listening to the demo tracks he composed for it, thus far, so if there’s something he feels that is a little off, he can simple just do it over by adding more or taking away what he feels might be excess.
Today, he shares some of his thought process that went into making the field/dungeon 1 track and the normal battle.
Starting with the field and dungeon theme, where Sekito had thoughts such as “it’s tough being a hero, but they’re still cool,” “must continue advancing,” “night time is dark,” “I want a small sense of hope,” “I might step on it, if I do then trouble will occur,” and so on.
After putting all that together, he aimed to produce music using the thought of “the atmosphere is dark and damp, but there’s still a small feeling of hope waiting,” along with some notes like have as few instruments possible playing at a time.
Next, he talks about working on the battle theme, starting with “heated feelings,” “attacking with weapons,” “co-op,” “I need a potion,” “defeat enemies, but who are the enemies? Is it inside me?,” “don’t over-think, just fight,” “heroes fight, they fight and win,” “protecting is important,” “a refreshing feeling,” “feeling scamper,” and etc.
Once all that was put together, he got the idea of “giving the hero a supporting cheer, and firing up while grasping victory,” with notes like “immediately start out with an exciting theme melody!!” “keep the electric bass and guitars going steadily,” and “regular usage of the drum set to go with the rhythmic instrument”.
Sekito ends his column with a smalls sample of the “Field, Dungeon 1” track:
He’ll also be sharing the Normal Battle track on his next column.
Final Fantasy Explorers is currently in development for Nintendo 3DS.
