Mieko Ishikawa is one of Falcom's earliest composers, and now, a director for the company. She began composing in the late 80's, and retired in 1994 after The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch. The first two tracks I want to explore are from Sorcerian:
This captures her style perfectly. Next we can look at a battle track:
Another of Ishikawa's very impressive feats was being the sole composer of Ys III: Wanderers of Ys. The epic welcoming theme:
Here is another standout track:
And this probably the most famous of the soundtrack:
Moving on she composed in Dinosaur alongside Masaaki Kawai. It had a much darker and somewhat twisted tone compared to Ys III. This is from the FM Towns Version:
Afterwards, we move towards the more lighthearted Popful Mail. Atsushi Shirakawa gave me all his composer credits, which resulted in the remaining coming down to Ishikawa. First is the opening: Distant Valhalla:
Menu:
The next two are arranged versions from the Sega CD version. These are most likely arranged by Hirofumi Matsuoka:
And the last song is from the Super Famicom version, possibly also arranged by Hirofumi Matsuoka:
Afterwards, we continue with The Legend of Heroes II. On Twitter, a usernamed "The Spoony Bard" had asked Atsushi Shirakawa what he had composed. As a result, the remainder of the tracks fall under Ishikawa. We assume that Kawai is gone by now and the soundtrack was only between Shirakawa and Ishikawa. Here's a track by Ishikawa:
And my personal favorite from the game:
After this. 4 new members would join in 1992. They are Naoki Kaneda, Hirofumi Matsuoka, Masaru Nakajima, and Takahiro Tsunashima. They would take on the role of composing and succeed Mieko Ishikawa. Ishikawa would contribute a small number of tracks for The Legend of Xanadu and The Legend of Heroes III, but she would completely disappear from composing and instead focus on her role as one of the directors for the company which she still does to this day.
One thing I want to mention is that the version of Brandish VT's soundtrack that is uploaded there is of very bad quality. A superior version can be heard at another great Falcom source: The Falcom Music Channel.
This is taken from an interview about the development process of Ys IV: featured are Mieko Ishikawa, Naoki Kaneda, Atsushi Shirakawa, and Takahiro Tsunashima. Credit to shmuplations for the translations:
Composing Ys IV
with the Falcom Sound Team J.D.K (Mieko Ishikawa, Atsushi Shirakawa, Takahiro Tsunashima, Naoki Kaneda)
—I still haven’t played Xanadu or Ys IV yet, but I have been able to listen to the music for Ys IV. My first thought: unmistakably Falcom. (laughs) It was like, this could only be the music for the next Ys game.
Ishikawa:Thank you. Can I take that as a compliment?
—Of course!
Ishikawa:The big premise for Ys IV was that it was a direct sequel to Ys, so naturally the music had to have all the classic hooks from those songs… you could call it destiny. (laughs) Living up to that was a ton of pressure on us, the sound staff, so to hear those words from you makes mesohappy, and is a huge relief.
—So it was very stressful, composing the Ys IV music?
Ishikawa:As a composer, having the color and tone of the music decided beforehand makes things easier in one sense, but if you aren’t able to break away from that, then you worry that listeners will feel like everything sounds the same.
“First Step Towards Wars”, an example of the “zundara” galloping rhythm.
—I see. By the way, what do you all of you feel the “Ys sound” is?
Shirakawa:Yeah, it’s the galloping basslines. zu!-ta-ka, zu!-ta-ka…
—Ah, ahhhh. I get it now. Yeah, Ys music really does have a lot of that rhythm pattern, now that you mention it.
Kaneda:A classical melody on top of a zundara rhythm… that’s pretty much Ys right there. To me at least.
—Right, right. You know,Michio Fujiwara, who is a friend of the Falcom label, often says the music of Ys has a lot in common with classical music. I would say it’s not just Ys, but all of Falcom’s melodies have a unique quality. Sometimes the melancholy is so sweet and pointed, I’ve even shed tears…Tomohiko Kishimotowas saying that his roots were heavy metal, and I can feel that in the mood of Falcom’s music.
Kaneda:That’s because we base our music on heavy metal and classical.
—Ahh, does that mean you’re a metalhead?
Kaneda:Hah, maybe I am. Right now I’m obsessed with Deep Purple. Uh oh–looks like I’ve just outed myself! I’ve been into other stuff lately too though, like African music.
—That explains your short hair then. And for the rest of you, what music have you been into recently?
Tsunashima:I really love karaoke. I’m always listening to ZARD, B’z, WANDS… and I’m anexcellentsinger! My dream is to have my voice in a game. It’s what I really, ♬ re~a~la~la~lyyy wa-a-nttt! ♬
Ishikawa:I knew it wasn’t my imagination! You’ve been off-time a lot lately, just behind the beat! You bastard, you’ve become one of those offtime proglovers! We’ll just have to “beat” that out of you.. a strict march should do it!
A few years ago I got the idea to interview Atsushi Shirakawa (Tenmon). I reached out to him, and with the help of a few people, I got the chance to ask him questions. This resulted in the following interview. A little known fact is that I also wanted to interview the late Hirofumi Matsuoka, but he unfortunately passed away before I got the chance to. Here is the interview:
The only pictures we had of the Falcom sound team of the 90's are with are inside the Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan booklet. For years we didn't know who was in the picture, but now we know thanks to KIM (Naoki Kaneda). He told me:
Left to Right: Satoshi Arai, Naoki Kaneda, Atsushi Shirakawa, Kishimoto, Endo, and (maybe) the Mixing Engineer.
