Mighty No. 9 Composer Manami Matsumae On How She Creates Music

Mighty No. 9 composer Manami Matsumae—known for composing music for a number of Capcom games (including Mega Man) in the past—recently answered questions from the game’s backers, pertaining to various subjects, such as how she goes about composing music and more.

“Songs usually come to me when I’m at my keyboard plucking away at home,” Matsumae says in reply to a question asking whether she finds inspiration while she’s out and about. “There are all sorts of instrumental timbers, right? I think to myself, ‘let’s try making a song in this timbre today,’ and when I play… it comes to me.”

“Nothing comes to me until I start playing,” she adds.

Matsumae then discusses at what point she generally feels that one can begin composing music for a game.

“That comes more or less last. The game has to be pretty much done,” Matsumae shares. “The stage’s setting and the kind of scene the theme will be used for have to be firmly set. Game music always gets put on the back burner… If you make something before everything has been decided, you’ll be asked to redo it later, and you would’ve wasted your time.”

“You don’t have to wait for the game to be 100% complete to start composing; 75% works just as well. You have to work as hard as you can, and make everything in one burst.”