Yoko Honda And Cody Matthew Johnson On Composing The Score For ‘Trek To Yomi’

Games Yoko Honda And Cody Matthew Johnson On Composing The Score For ‘Trek To Yomi’ Ollie Barder Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I cover gaming in Japan as well as the pop-culture here. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jun 22, 2022, 03:48am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin ‘Trek to Yomi’ is a visually and aurally evocative game. Devolver Digital Composers Yoko Honda and Cody Matthew Johnson talk about how they created the score to one of this most interesting games released earlier this year, that of the side scrolling action adventure game Trek to Yomi . Naturally, I started on how they got involved with the game, which Yoko responded to first.

“Cody and I went to the Tokyo Game Show 2019 for the first time with his company, Emperia Sound and Music , and met game director Leonard Menchiari . Leonard showed us a demo version of what became Trek to Yomi that he made by himself. We were so intrigued with the concept of the game right away.

I personally thought that I would love to work on this game. I felt an invisible connection with it. Maybe I felt a connection because of my upbringing or because I’m an Akira Kurosawa movie fan.

Cody and I had a solid 18 months before Leonard officially teamed up with Devolver Digital and Flying Wild Hog . We had kept in touch with Leonard and created a suite of inspiration tracks for Leonard to play while he worked and discussed the concept with Devolver. And that’s how we started.

“When we met Leonard at the Tokyo Game Show, he already had a concrete idea to make the score authentic, traditional, and true to Japanese history. From there, we also learned that he loves the legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s movies and the music from them. So what did we have to do? Research.

A lot of it. I was somewhat feeling pressured in a good and bad way, especially because I was the only member of the Emperia team from Japan. I started conducting thorough research on anything and everything about Japanese music, especially from the Edo period because Japanese instruments, scales, and harmony work so differently from what we know through Western music theory and history.

Every day was filled with a series of challenges to learn or relearn the musicality of traditional Japanese music in detail. On top of that, we had to figure out how to incorporate this traditional music into a game score formatm we were fortunate to have 18 months of preparation. ” Whereas Cody had a slightly different take, based on a more holistic approach to the creating game music.

“A couple of years ago I fell deeply in love with the creative possibilities of interactive audio beyond just music, but the holistic approach to elevating an immersive experience through sound, so I started a new company called Emperia Sound and Music that does just that: creative end-to-end audio solutions. Yoko and I went to the Tokyo Game Show in 2019 to meet past, current, and future clients and that’s where we met the creator and director of Trek to Yomi , Leonard Menchiari. After seeing a very early demo of what would later become Trek to Yomi , Yoko and I were enamored with the project and spent most of our trip and subsequent flight home talking about the creative possibilities for what a score for the game might sound like.

We stayed in regular touch with Leonard for over a year while we continued developing this idea and then eventually moved forward with Devolver to create the game. We were there from nearly the beginning and were thrilled to hear Leonard wanted to bring us on for the full development of the game. The landscapes in ‘Trek to Yomi’ to are beautifually done.

Devolver Digital MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry “An immeasurable amount of effort went into the research and careful creation of the score to be as honorable and respectful to Japanese music, specifically Edo period music. The game was very high concept from the beginning, it had always meant to be a caring and delicate fusion of cinefile appreciation of the work of Akira Kurosawa and a strong curiosity and interest in Edo period culture, so it was very clear those two places were the immediate sources of inspiration for the music as well. Knowing from the beginning the exact source of our sounds, musical systems, and limitations was very creatively liberating, we didn’t spend as much time experimenting with different sounds, instruments, processing, etc.

We knew the tools we could work with and studied their capabilities extensively before a single note was written, the intention was focusing on these two elements and finding a careful way to fuse them together to create a unique and fitting sound for the game. ” Having two composers on a game’s score is somewhat rare and not without its logistical complexities. So I was curious how it had worked between Cody and Yoko, to which Yoko responded.

“I think it was a great thing that our strengths lie upon different areas. We lucked out in a way. Cody created an organized asset list to split the work, but we both knew which of us would be more suitable on what track and that helped me a lot to work as a music director as well.

I knew where I had to intervene and check things because I was familiar with Japanese musicality. Sometimes I suggested collaborating on a specific track with a specific method and vice versa, but overall, this process happened quite organically. “To be honest, I had a feeling from the beginning that this game soundtrack would be more cinematic than what we picture for a typical game soundtrack, especially because this game was an homage to Kurosawa movies.

And because we were to score each main character’s theme, we decided to pick specific instruments that illustrate each theme more effectively. For example, we used a lot of Koto (string instrument) and Shinobue (flute) in high range for Aiko the heroine, lots of aggressive Taiko (percussion) for the final boss Kagerou, and so on. This method can be seen in one of Akira Kurosawa’s famous works Seven Samurai , and I would say it also played a significant role in our game scoring process as well.

” The cinematic aspect to this game is a big part of its identity and so I wondered if any other movie or game score had influenced Yoko and Cody’s work. Yoko responded with some interesting examples. The cinematic inspirations taken from Akira Kurosawa’s films are pretty clear in ‘Trek to Yomi’.

Devolver Digital “Not so much influences from other movie or game scores, but I listened to and analyzed countless Japanese traditional music including Nagauta, Gagaku, Ohayashi and more so that they could consciously and unconsciously inspire me from deep inside my musicality. If you’re curious to know more, please check out a Spotify playlist that Cody and I created. It’s called “ Trek to Yomi – Inspirations ”.

“Luckily, we had full trust from the developer from the pre-production stage of this game, and it was mostly the game director Leonard who gave us feedback in detail. Not only did he have a significant amount of Japanese history and Kurosawa movie knowledge, he also had an excellent sense of music in media from his filmmaking experiences. I personally enjoyed his creative feedback and deep historic cinema references informing his decisions and opinions about the music.

” By contrast, Cody tried to keep his gaming influences to a minimum. instead focusing more on cinematic scores. “It is easy to point at some recent games, especially a certain game with a certain “Kurosawa” mode, and say “that’s where the idea of Trek to Yomi ” came from, but actually all of our musical inspiration happened long before these other games had been released or announced.

We explicitly did not look at other video games for musical inspiration. Naturally, we looked at the music of Kurosawa films, specifically his collaborations with the composer Fumio Hayasaka . We took inspiration from many of Fumio Hayasaka’s musical and dramatic choices, these choices often felt contrarian to the dramatic devices of western film composers.

” As for the more technical aspects to composing a game’s score, Cody explained how the FMOD integration worked in following the player’s actions. “ Trek to Yomi plays almost as a 6-hour movie and the audience happens to be in control of the protagonist. The music follows the gameplay very much like the score to a movie might, we rarely repeated the same music (for example, different combat music plays in different areas rather than repeating or remixing the same musical content), and often the gameplay that the music was scoring was only fractionally longer than the music itself so the music didn’t loop as much as traditional video game music.

We had recorded the music with the intention of using alternate takes of performances in the music as well. When the music does loop back to the beginning of a piece, a secondary performance of koto, shamisen, taiko, etc. will play so there isn’t a noticeable loop point.

The music was implemented in FMOD in a way to make sure it always feels organic, as if the players are continuing their own interpretation of the melody, riff, or rhythm as Hiroki fights onwards and keeping the player deep in the action. ” The black and white approach to ‘Trek to Yomi’ really helps to make it stand out. Devolver Digital Finishing up I wondered what Cody and Yoko were most proud of their score for the game and the hopes for the future of their work.

Yoko went first. “It’s all about how we as a team could accomplish our mission to create traditional, authentic, and true to the history Japanese music tailored to this amazing game, Trek to Yomi . Regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that we were collaborative across the world, we produced the soundtrack with live instruments recorded in phenomenal studios and with artisan engineers.

I think this is quite an achievement and I am proud of the whole team including those whom I have never had a chance to meet in person (just yet). “Part of me thinks that I would like to make the most of the Trek to Yomi experience on Japanese music and instruments to more or less incorporate on future projects, and part of me thinks that I would like to stay away from it for a little while to challenge myself with something totally different. Knowing my curiosity more than anyone else, I feel like I’d end up doing both probably around the same time, as working on multiple projects isn’t uncommon in this industry.

” Cody then wrapped up by sharing his thoughts, and his desire to try new gaming genres for his work. “ Trek to Yomi presented a unique opportunity to design and create an extremely unique and high concept musical identity. Rarely do musical creatives have the opportunity to join development at conception and have as much influence and creative agency as we had on Trek to Yomi .

There was an unparalleled amount of respect and trust between the music and development teams, which allowed us to explore and experiment far beyond what is considered normal in game development. Music is rarely optimized as a tool for supporting and expanding the creative identity of the game. It was a treat to be seen as an integral and highly valuable contribution to the creative direction and overall cinematic immersion of the game.

“It’s always a surprise and special moment when the universe offers another project to work on. I’ve been fortunate to work on a handful of wildly creative projects that play to my strengths in recent years, but rarely feel like I’ve been in control of what might come next so this is a tricky question. I used to write a lot of music for orchestra; who knew? I also started my career as a songwriter and music producer, both of which I’ve found my way back to in and out of games.

I also love unnerving and borderline unlistenable electronic music and IDM. A bit of a range here, but finding my way back to some of my roots or pushing creatively far beyond the waters I’ve been swimming in I think would be very fulfilling for me! I’ve never scored a super high-octane first person shooter or a truly disturbing horror game, both are high on the list. ” Trek to Yomi is currently available to play on the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.

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