Interview with videogame music (VGM) titan Nobuo Uematsu:
Nobuo Uematsu is responsible for all of the music from the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger (with others), and several Final Fantasy spinoffs, including the band The Black Mages, who take Final Fantasy songs and set them to rock music. He has also worked with numerous orchestras on his most famous works, including Terra's Theme, Dancing Mad (both from FF6), Dear Friends (FF5), One Winged Angel (FF7), and many others. What I like about Uematsu's style is his amazing ability to create that perfect song for every town, dungeon, boss battle, etc. He's excellent diversifying the listener's experience as well, dabbling in flamenco, jazz, as well as rock and more classical styles of music. His music makes RPGs true adventure games because the experience playing the game becomes an experience listening to the game as well.
Check out http://rpgmusic.org/ for complete soundtracks from many of the games he's worked on and more. This site is, I believe, relatively new but quite impressive in scope and accessibility. Apparently at some point they promise to put downloadable content up, but I'm not sure how legal that is...
Here are some of my personal favorite Uematsu pieces:
"Other side of the mountain" from FF7 (slow, simple piece but it occurs at a great part in the game)
"Relm's Theme" from FF6 (this soundtrack is probably Uematsu at his best and this is one of many on this that have a "country" feel to them but with beautiful instrumentation)
The last is a piano rendition, but is a really great song: "To Zanarkand" from FF10
So, enjoy the interview and the music!
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