Words and music on the way to ElysiumLeggi l’intervista in italiano a pagina 1
– English adaptation courtesy of Riccardo Piccinini
We are all waiting anxiously for the new Monolith Soft game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Announced in January 2017, the game sees the return of Tetsuya Takahashi as executive director of the game and the new entry of Tetsuya Nomura, artist known for his works on the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix, who realized some of the design of in game characters.
Yasunori Mitsuda returns as the music composer. He started his carrer with Nobuo Uematsu and Noriko Matsueda on Chrono Trigger, to venture on the Xeno saga, working on Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles, and other works, like Inazuma Eleven and Soul Sacrifice. He didn’t score Xenoblade Chronicles X, which soundtrack was composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, the man behind the Attack on Titans music, which influence can be heard throughout the entire game.
I simply loved Xenoblade Chronicles, much more than X. Imagine my surprise when, talking with a friend about the game, I learnt that a friend of his worked on the game soundtrack. A couple of days later, with the aid of a good beer, I managed to have a pleasant talk with the singer about her experience in Japan.
Thus I present to you all this interview with Sara Di Bella, chorister of the ensemble Anúna, group you can follow on their Facebook page or their official site:
NintendOn: Tell us about yourself, your career and your groupSara: I’m a lyrical singer, and a big fan of Anúna, ensemble directed by Michael McGlynn. I always knew I was going to be part of this choir and during a Summer School I had an audition which I won and I have worked for them for 5 years now.
NintendOn: How did you get the job offer to work on Xenoblade Chronicles 2?Sara: We did many projects this year and we were in Japan during this February, for a collaboration with the nõ theatre. In that period, our agent procured the job with Mitsuda for the recording of 4 tracks of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I don’t know how many tracks the complete soundtrack has.
NintendOn: Not with Nintendo? It was handled directly by the composer?Sara: Yes, we didn’t have contacts with Nintendo, just with the composer. Mitsuda himself asked for Anúna, because he always wanted to collaborate with our director.
NintendOn: Have you ever worked on other game OST
Sara: Not me in person, but the group scored the soundtrack for Diablo 3.
NintendOn: Not you?
Sara: No.
NintendOn: That’s unfortunate, I would have dove another interview after this one
*Everyone laughs* (I cry inside a little – Vincenzo)
NintendOn: Do you have any experience with videogames?Sara: Yes, I have. I owned a SNES with various games like Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts, one of my favorites, Super Mario Kart, Tintin and many others.NintendOn: Before starting recording, how much do you know about the game story?Sara: We didn’t know anything (and still don’t) about the story. We knew something about the setting, what kind of tone was needed by the director and we were given indication about the circumstances or the time of day in case of tracks changing with it.
NintendOn: Does the performance follow strict guidelines or is left more open to the artists own interpretation and sensibility?
Sara: I believe that in our case we were given a lot of freedom because, as I already said, Mitsuda deeply loves the director of our choir. We got the scores, the tracks and a direction to follow, but there were always changes, depending also on the possibilities of our choir, to better capitalize on our unique elements. Mitsuda was always present during the recording, he talked very often with our director and agreed with his propositions to change something 90% of the times.
NintendOn: So it was Mitsuda that adapted to your group?
Sara: It was more like that he came to realize our true potential. Some things were made better if adapted to our very particular skillset. For example, we have a deep bass Slovenian voice, so often our director proposed to lower even more his tone to give the track more depth.
NintendOn: Did you have any chance in meeting someone from Monolith or Nintendo?Sara: No. In Japan we had agents as mediators, so we only had the chance to talk with other two guys that worked on the orchestration, other than with Mitsuda himself of course. They helped him in many ways, not only by doing interpreter works, I don’t know if they were his pupils.
NintendOn: Did the pieces you scored gave you powerful emotions ? Have you ever listened to the soundtrack of the first two games?
Sara: Absolutely, they are marvelous! I never listened to the other games soundtracks.
NintendOn: What other jobs did you do with Anúna?
Sara: It happened often that some of our audio was used for television advertisement. One of the few unique things we produced, of which I am very proud of, was the vocal arrangement, made by our director, of the Princess Mononoke theme by Myazaki, and I sang the solo part, in Tokyo.
NintendOn: Was it done for a particular occasion?
Sara: No, our director simply loved this theme and asked Joe Hisaishi to create a vocal transcription of the track. It’s possible to find it online and we hope that when we return to Japan, mister Hisashi will come to listen to us, considering that we usually have Studio Ghibli members among our audience.
NintendOn: Compared to other work environments, how was the experience?Sara: It was a relaxing experience, apart from the Japanese organization. If you are 5 minutes late there, it-s general panic, change is never accounted for and plans b don’t exist. There is no flexibility in case of an unexpected event. We registered for 3 and a half days, almost always inside the studio until the result was good enough for the game. The sound engineer was ours too, not theirs. He was Brian Masterson, of Windmill Lane Studio, a great friend of our director, who recorded all of our albums.NintendOn: Was the record easy ? How many of you were there?Sara: We are a vocal only group, so without instrument it was a relaxed and easy recording. We are officially 25, but we loose someone when traveling. In that occasion we were around 15.
NintendOn: Would you like to give you voice to a game in particular, or more in general, would you like to repeat this experience?Sara: I found the experience to be excellent. Thus, if I could register other soundtracks, I would do I gladly. I would love to sing for Kingdom Hearts. In the end, Mitsuda was happy by our performance.