Michiru Yamane is a Japanese video game composer and pianist.
52 Facts About Michiru Yamane
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Michiru Yamane is best known for her two decades of work at the gaming company Konami, with her compositions for the Castlevania series among her most recognized work.
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Michiru Yamane grew an interest in music at an early age, practicing on the electric organ and piano.
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Michiru Yamane studied composition in college and began working as a composer for Konami in 1988.
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Michiru Yamane was born in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan, on September 23,1963.
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Michiru Yamane began learning electric organ around the age of four, on her family's Yamaha Electone.
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Michiru Yamane enjoyed playing popular rock music on the organ, but grew a fascination with classical music with her piano studies.
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Michiru Yamane began composing around eight years old, and realized by her teenage years that she wanted to write songs for movies or commercials, or be a jazz pianist.
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Michiru Yamane attended a music high school that specialized in advanced piano courses, and focused her studies around harmonic rhythm, counterpoint, and music theory.
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Michiru Yamane decided not to compete at performance with virtuoso players, so decided to attend the Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts and focus on their composition courses they offered.
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Michiru Yamane continued gaming on a friend's Famicom at the time.
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Michiru Yamane started working for Konami in 1988, shortly before her fourth year at college.
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Michiru Yamane held a teaching license at the time, and was teaching part-time, though she felt the job did not suit her.
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Michiru Yamane applied to Konami after finding an open position through her college recruitment office, and was hired.
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Michiru Yamane had never considered specifically becoming a game composer, although she liked games and music.
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At Konami, Michiru Yamane was a member of the Konami Kukeiha Club, the company's sound team.
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Michiru Yamane was nervous she would be required to do frequency modulation programming, but she was only a composer at first.
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Michiru Yamane became involved with the Track and Field games, composing short victory jingles.
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Michiru Yamane compared the synchronicity of sound in shooters to that of Disney animated films.
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Michiru Yamane felt these games were a good introduction to the "Konami sound" and helped build her foundation.
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Michiru Yamane drew motivation from Bach's "Inventions and Sinfonias", which only used two or three simultaneous notes.
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Michiru Yamane believes it is possible she contributed a few pieces as the sound team was busy with multiple projects at the time.
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Michiru Yamane worked on Rocket Knight Adventures and its two sequels; writing music for Sparkster and creating sound effects for Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2.
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Michiru Yamane is primarily known for her work on the Castlevania series.
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Michiru Yamane was asked to write music based on pre-existing themes introduced in earlier games.
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Michiru Yamane felt there was a link with the game's vampiric themes and the classical music she had grown up with.
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Michiru Yamane worked to integrate her classical style with the rock themes previously introduced in the series.
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When working on Mega Drive games, Michiru Yamane was required to program the music into the game, on top of composition.
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The art director, Osamu Kasai, requested Michiru Yamane to join the team.
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Michiru Yamane felt more expressive freedom as she was no longer limited to FM chips and could use real sounds.
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Michiru Yamane used an Akai sampler connected to a computer running Logic Pro and Pro Tools to record music.
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Michiru Yamane continued to remain deeply involved with Koji Igarashi and the Castlevania development team after Symphony of the Night, reviewing artwork and scenario writings for further games.
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Michiru Yamane worked on Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness, which made for challenging compositions.
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Michiru Yamane composed for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS games, which had note limitations like older home consoles.
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Michiru Yamane broadened her listening habits to gain more inspiration and prevent her music from becoming repetitive.
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Michiru Yamane says that her favorite scores were for Aria of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia.
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Michiru Yamane contributed to Suikoden III and Suikoden IV, following in the tracks of Miki Higashino's work on the first two games.
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Michiru Yamane worked on the Winning Eleven series and The Sword of Etheria.
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Michiru Yamane came to this decision after getting a pet cat, and growing a desire to slow down her career and move to working from home.
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Michiru Yamane desired to have more freedom to do projects she wanted, and manage her own time.
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Since becoming a freelance composer, Michiru Yamane has continued to compose for video games, as well as films, commercials, television, and anime.
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Michiru Yamane has composed for Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
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Michiru Yamane's first live performance was a song from Symphony of the Night at the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig in 2006.
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Michiru Yamane wrote music for a Castlevania arrangement box set, and played live at Castlevania: The Concert in Stockholm in 2010.
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Michiru Yamane feels she grew an interest in dark classical through her Bach studies in college.
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Michiru Yamane has drawn inspiration from other composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Chopin.
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In high school, Michiru Yamane listened to Kraftwerk, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yellow Magic Orchestra, with the latter being considered a major influence on many Japanese game composers.
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Michiru Yamane has drawn inspiration, and enjoys listening to Dream Theater.
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Michiru Yamane has expressed inspiration from many genres including techno pop, progressive rock, film scores, folk, jazz, rock, bossa nova, and contemporary classical music.
50.
Michiru Yamane enjoys film scores by composers such as Jerry Goldsmith, and enjoyed American pop in her youth from artists like Barry Manilow, Burt Bacharach, Eric Carmen, The Doobie Brothers, and The Eagles.
51.
Michiru Yamane has expressed enjoying music from other game composers, particularly Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yoko Kanno, and Motoi Sakuraba.
52.
Michiru Yamane explained that Tomb Raider and its sequel influenced the way she thought about sound design.