Industry faces: Akira Yamaoka

Today, sound design in video games is one of the most important parts of a holistic work. Thanks to well -chosen music and sounds, a gamemeeter with a sound engineer creates a “right” mood for the narrative of history. In such reasoning, a series of games Silent Hill is very often mentioned, namely a person who is directly in the response for her sounds – Akir Yamaoku.

The future composer was born on February 6, 1968 in one of the largest port centers located on the shores of the Sea of Japan – Niigat.

The history of this city, like the life of our main character, is very significant for the Japanese people. So, Niigata was to be the goal for atomic bombing in the period of the 2nd World War, but at the last moment it was replaced by Nagasaku.

From childhood, interested in the design, Akira decides to shine his life to this direction, choosing a Tokyo University of Arts, and the faculty – an industrial and interior design. In the same period, Yamaoka gets acquainted with the world of music as a composer. On a computer acquired for study, several primitive applications were preinstalled to create and process sounds. Thus, a new hobby arose – sound editing and writing music. In the future, spending more and more time on a hobby, Yamaoka begins to set his work at local competitions and competitions, it is at one of the similar events that the producer from the company Game Freak, which was developing the development of the game Smart Ball. Being a long -standing fan of the video game, Akira agrees to become an assistant composer Yasuhiko Fudu, who was responsible for the soundtrack of the platformer.

Continuing to develop their musical skills https://nationalbet-casino.co.uk/ in 1993 joins Konami as a project composer Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2.

Over the next 3 years, Yamaoca has been working as a sound engineer or composer of such games as the International Superstar Soccer, Snatcher, Vandal Hearts yet in 1997 he is not offered to take part in the creation of the soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Night. Having fully debuted in the field of design, in 1997, Akira Yamaoka joins Team Silent, which was entrusted with the development of a new game.

Thinking about soundtracks to various games, Yamaoka saw one big problem in them – mediocrity. Silent Hill, according to the author, was supposed to become a new milestone of game music, set a new trend in sound design. Instead of ordinary background music, it was decided to use various kinds of noises and sounds in order to maintain the atmosphere. All music in Silent Hill is an attempt to make people experience emotions in the absence of a visual series.

The composer meets the new millennium at work on the musical accompaniment of the games Beatmania and Gradius, parallel to the development of the sound environment in Silent Hill 2. Adhering to his special style, Yamaoca writes the original soundtrack, in which there is one of the most famous video game compositions – Theme of Laura.

Following the quiet hill, Akira acts as a sound director and second composer in Contra: Shattehed Soldier.

Writing new compositions to Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution, Yamaoka returns to the Silent Hill series of games not only as a composer. Sharing his vision of the project, which scooped up from the film Suspiria, and bringing various edits to the structure of the first two games, Yamaoca becomes producer 3, and then the subsequent parts of the series.

According to the musician, production requires a completely different set of skills and therefore was much more difficult for him than the sound design. For the soundtrack itself, the composer began to conduct auditions for the role of the chief vocalist, in the future his choice will dwell on the roles of Mary Elizabeth McGlinn and Joe Romers.

Following his own path, Akira Yamaoka writes soundtracks for many projects: