Posted from SEMO:

For those who don't know, Takenouchi started off working with the Konami Kukeiha Club on games such as Metal Gear 2, Space Manbow, and X-Men where he pioneered club music and various technological innovations. He left to work for Sony on projects such as Circadia, Bravo Music, and TomaRunner before becoming a teacher. More recently, his career has revived with contributions to Ace Combat X, Demon's Souls, and Cave's arranged albums.

To learn more about him and the principles of the company, check out our interview with him here. It includes insight into all those projects, the alliance, the Konami Kukeiha Club, and game music production in general.

What do you think about the concept of this alliance? Are you impressed by its current membership or would you like to see more. Do you think it could change the way Japanese game music is produced in future or is it more of an official representation of the networking that already goes on in the industry?

all I can say now is that we can't know if this alliance is just a nominal club, or if it will really impact the industry.

I hope for the latter.

More collaborative efforts on soundtracks, yes please.

someone who worked on SD Snatcher and Metal Gear 2 couldn't even read music or play an instrument when they started?

I feel so inadequate

if you ever get the chance to talk to Takenouchi again, please ask him if he knows what happened to Masahiro Ikariko (IKA-chan) after Policenauts. The only thing after that I know he worked on is SFX for the Silent Scope games.

as for the Alliance....I'm not quite sure what to think. It's kind of depressing to actually see some of the "ex-<company>" names on that list....I have no problem with people getting into freelancing and stuff, but it's a reminder of how the industry is still in flux all around the world.

(what does the kanji that I can't see in this OS on that list say? it's before some names, but not others....)

One thing that does come to mind when thinking about what I'd like to see the alliance focus on - self-documentation. Thanks to personal homepages and sites like VGMdb and GMCL, fans have done a pretty good job piecing together the work histories of various composers, but it would be great if the alliance could encourage their members to create personal sites about their work - detailing when they joined and left certain companies, what roles they played in games where the credits aren't explicit, how much they contributed to certain scores. This isn't critical information, of course, but it would be very much appreciated.

Don and I can ask him that. I know he also handled Silent Hill: The Arcade. I basically think he heads up KCE Osaka's Arcade division.

Well, most of those people have been freelance for a while now. Exceptions are Fukui and Yamane who only just recently left for teaching and semi-retirement respectively. I guess it still shows that the days of the in-house sound team are dead and we're now more following the American approach of contracting external specialists.

I'm interested too. I can only decipher so much through Google Translate.

There's more documentation out there than is published currently in English, but there's definitely room for improvement. I'm currently working on a games database that covers most of the big names, but I'm interested in some of the lesser-known ones.

I think a lot of composers realize the worth of self-documentation. Takenouchi was kind enough to elaborate on some of his Konami credits to give full details about roles, co-composers, etc. Basiscape also eventually updated their official website to include most information after I struggled for years. Hopefully I can convince SuperSweep and Noisycroak to do the same. It's impossible to trudge through game credits for some of the super-obscure games.

Well this Ge-On-Dan alliance group is apparently already putting together their first arranged album.

"アレンジアルバム第一弾のアレンジャーがほぼ確定。近日公開予定！"

Yeah, I'm really excited for the upcoming albums. TECHNOuchi told me there are two.

http://www.squareenixmusic.com/musicnew … m=&ucat=2&

Oh, unless this was recently added (haven't checked today) and they are going to reveal the first album to the public.

There have been quite a few additions too...

ID:039 Eriko Imura (ex-Namco)
ID:040 Hirokazu Koshio (Taito)
ID:041 Taro Fujikado (Mega-Alpha)
ID:042 Maki Kirioka (ex Konami, Procyon-Studio)
ID:043 Michiko Naruke
ID:044 Tetsuya Shibata (ex Capcom, Unique Note)
ID:045 Yoshino Aoki (ex Capcom, Unique Note)
ID:046 Hideaki Utsumi (ex Capcom)
ID:047 Toshikazu Tanaka (ex SNK)
ID:048 Noriyuki Iwadare
ID:049 Kenichi Okuma
ID:050 Yoshitaka Hirota (ex Square, Twintail Studio)
ID:051 Masafumi Takada (ex-Grasshopper, Sound Prestige)
ID:052 Kou Hayashi (ex-Compile)

Apparently, Kou Hayashi is also set to join as well. No word yet on Nagata...

Given a) this is attached with its original soundtrack, b) Asada (the Cave guy) attended their gathering the other day, c) it's about time to announce a Death Smiles II soundtrack, I fear it will end up as yet another album that less people can purchase than composers might expect. Even if it turns out true, however, perhaps collective bargaining power can change something.

Just last night I thought of something else that I'd like to see the "alliance" do: secure the rights to release old soundtracks which had no official release, whether they do it commercially or freely, digitally or in CD form.

Obviously there are many things that would have to be worked out with developers and publishers who hold rights, as well as co-composers who aren't part of the alliance, but we all have at least one or two games we've always wished would get full soundtrack releases in some form (and some of us even hope for the release of tracks intended for games but never used). I'm sure at least a handful of those composers worked for companies which have since gone defunct, leaving the possibility of proper soundtrack releases in jeopardy.

(I wonder how EGG Music goes about getting the rights to music back from when most composers probably didn't think about taking at least partial ownership of such work. I guess the fact that many of the games are from long defunct companies helps)

also: initiating talks for the digital releases of out of print albums.

I'm also kind of curious what plans there are (or aren't) for reaching out to the fans in a way that makes them feel involved (and thus generates good PR).

I'm not saying this is necessarily a good (or even workable) idea, but I'm envisioning something like having one or two different composers do a personal fan letters Q&A column each month, or holding contests where fans are given a selection of songs to arrange or perform and then given rewards like signed albums and such. Just a possible thought to float out the next time anybody here is in talks with them.

I'm going with my gut feeling that it is not a Death Smiles II arrange album. Of course, I could be wrong, but Cave seems to like, at least recently, releasing their arrange albums after the OST comes out. You know, maximize their profits (and the profits of those who sell them on YJA afterwards...). I'm immensely excited either way and can't wait until they come out next year.

Dais: Yeah, EGG Music is already the closest thing to what you're thinking, and since Hally is also part of Ge-On-Dan, he can bring that experience to the table.

On the flip side though, even Hally has mentioned that the old music that he's dug up and re-presented through EGG are perhaps a bit too obscure for most vgm fans even. 

I had also wondered just how EGG's parent company (Amusement Center) went about securing publishing rights for the music, but perhaps being digital distribution has some sort of loop-hole that they were able to exploit/bypass the rights issues. (only a conjecture though).