The cliché goes that video games have come a long way since Pac-Man. The same can be said for their soundtracks. Stereotyped in the beginning as noisy bleeps, bloops and tinny MIDI melodies, video game music is now a genre-spanning global phenomenon that fuels album sales, countless playlists, and packs out concert halls around the world. It’s long beaten snooty allegations of not being “real” music. And a huge part of that growing appreciation and awareness can be credited to a man often hailed as the Beethoven of the video game world. Nobuo Uematsu is a prolific Japanese composer, best known for his groundbreaking work on the Final Fantasy video game franchise. Beginning with the first entry in 1987, Uematsu-san’s scores evolved with the technology, transcending the “bleep-bloop” limitations of early console hardware to crafting sweeping, symphonic experiences in the 2000s and beyond. He’s as iconic to his medium as film composers Ennio Morricone and John Williams are to theirs, and just as influential. Developing a musical language that served the visuals and immersive storytelling, Uematsu practically drafted a blueprint by which countless other video game composers have worked since. Not bad for a self-taught musician. Humble beginnings Born in 1959 in Kōchi Prefecture, Uematsu first taught himself to play his sister’s piano when he was 11 years old. But his parents discouraged him from pursuing a career in music. Instead, he enrolled to study foreign languages at Kanagawa University, far enough away from his hometown and the disapproving eyes of his folks. He played keyboards in several groups, before landing gigs scoring television commercials and even a soft-core pornographic film. In 1985, while working part-time at a music rental shop, he landed a job at video game developer SquareSoft, writing music for various action, racing and shooting titles that were largely unsuccessful. Later, he was invited by fellow employee Hironobu Sakaguchi to collaborate on what was to be the dispirited game designer’s last roll of the dice — hence, the game’s title: Final Fantasy. Released in 1987, the fantasy role-playing game was a surprise blockbuster, both in its native Japan and when it was exported to America on the then-booming Nintendo Entertainment System. The rest is gaming history. With each new release, Square’s influence and importance grew, and so too did Uematsu’s music, reaching wider audiences. Now on its 16th main entry (plus countless more spin-offs), Final Fantasy’s music is among the most successful and beloved video game music of all time. It’s been a fixture of orchestral performances of video game music ever since 2003, when the inaugural Symphonic Games Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany became the first of its kind outside of Japan. Final Fantasy music has also reached the world of pop music, via Florence + The Machine and Rina Sawayama. It has been adapted into the realms of hip hop and big band jazz by Grammy winners Knxwledge and Jon Batiste, respectively. And it even featured in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. But some of the most intriguing reinterpretations of Uematsu’s arrangements arguably come from Uematsu-san himself. Reworking his legacy on the live stage The 65-year-old musician has adapted Final Fantasy compositions into ferocious heavy metal and progressive rock, with his bands The Black Mages and successively Earthbound Papas. In recent years, however, he’s focused on deconstructing his work in solo mode and with the help of a stripped-back ensemble, named conTIKI. It’s in this latter mode that Uematsu recently toured Australia, performing to sold-out audiences in Melbourne and Sydney. “Has anyone played a Final Fantasy game?” he asked, tongue-in-cheek, onstage at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The roars of approval that greeted him proved it was essentially a rhetorical question. For anyone that’s poured in the tens, if not hundreds of hours required to reach the end of each epic narrative, Final Fantasy’s countless musical cues instantly evoke emotional responses: a moving romance, a challenging battle, dramatic highs and desperate lows, the triumphant swell of adventure. Although his music has become synonymous with grand gestures, the Melbourne performance began as a stripped-back affair, Uematsu performing selections from his 2022 solo album, Modulation, which rearranged Final Fantasy’s most iconic moments as synthesiser-led solo performances. Playing along to backing tracks and switching the voicings of his lead instrument, it gave the impression of watching the maestro at work all those years ago – alone with his machines and dreaming up elaborate scores to worlds of swords, sorcery and sci-fi. Although not as visually stimulating as the globe-trotting Distant Worlds concert series (where prestigious orchestras perform alongside footage from the Final Fantasy games), there’s an inherent imagination conjured by the music that cannot be stripped away. Opening – Bombing Mission (from Final Fantasy VII) morphs from a stirring, scene-setting build into a racing pulse of dramatic bottom end and descending staccato patterns. The dreamy plucks and counter-melodies of Blue Fields (from Final Fantasy VIII) evoke mystery and tranquillity in equal measure. Much more than a classical composer Each Final Fantasy game delivers its own standalone story, setting and characters — an entire world requiring sound. Uematsu not only rose to the challenge but proved to be ahead of his time in bringing his love of rock, pop and electronic music into movie-style classical music. Battle on the Big Bridge (from Final Fantasy V) demonstrates his love for progressive rock, fusing athletic rhythms with technically dense dashes across the keys. Meanwhile, his Elton John fandom can be heard in romantic ballads like Melodies of Life (Final Fantasy IX), No Promises To Keep (Final Fantasy VII: Rebuild), and Eyes On Me (Final Fantasy VIII), which is one of the most commercially successful singles associated with the gaming industry. Sung by Chinese pop star Faye Wong, Eyes On Me topped Japan’s Western Singles Chart for 19 consecutive weeks after its February 1999 release. The following year, it became the first video game song to win Song of The Year (Western Music) at the country’s Gold Disc Awards. Square Enix, the games empire behind Final Fantasy, fully grasps that Uematsu’s music is a key strength to its worldwide popularity. As well as issuing his scores on multiple formats, it has supplied an increasing demand for Final Fantasy music by releasing multiple arrangement albums covering solo piano, choral, Celtic, chill-out “café” music and beyond. A future beyond Final Fantasy After doling out stripped-back, reinvented versions of Final Fantasy’s greatest hits on the Melbourne Recital Hall stage, the 65-year-old showed off something completely different. He was joined onstage by Rie Tozuka, who performed live narration of short stories she’d written, accompanied by storybook visuals and original music by Uematsu. Her childlike “Akarigatari” fables drew from Japan’s historic yokai [ghost] story tradition: playful encounters with a know-it-all water imp, a fish-bodyguard “from the other side”, and a Grim Reaper’s apprentice in training. Each of them showcases Uematsu’s ability to flesh out simple stories with sonic dimension and emotional depth. There’s also original material performed by the full conTIKI band, including the first performance outside Japan of the short story Oni Begone, in which a young boy befriends a benevolent forest demon. Wild, kaleidoscopic animation accompanies The Child That Hatched From An Egg, enlivened by back-and-forth vocals between Tozuka and singer Xiao, alongside electric guitar, percussion, and some of the climactic DNA of One Winged Angel (one of Uematsu’s most famously apocalyptic pieces). After a career spanning more than 70 separate soundtracks, Uematsu believes his days of composing an entire game score are behind him. “I don’t think I have the physical and mental strength to do it anymore,” he revealed earlier this year in a widely circulated interview. Shortly after, in August, he told NewsPicks that “game music cannot develop further” if developers continued to settle for copying Hollywood-style soundtracks. The conTIKI project is absurd fun, and shows a new path forward for Uematsu, proving there’s plenty of creative life left in a composer who legitimised video game music as a global art form.
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