I was listening to a Ryo Yonemitsu favorite the other day "Tower of the Shadow of Death" from the Perfect Collections Ys IV Vol. 2 and wondered: is that trumpet/horns ensamble real? No one was credited but they sound real (and I'm pretty sure they are).

"Bronze District" on Vol. 3 is the same sort of thing; the saxophone on there sounds too real to be fake. It's definitely not. I mean, I've heard lots of game music before and can generally tell when the instrumentals are synthesized and when not. This was 1994, and I'm sure they didn't have that kind of sound manipulation quite yet.

Now I'll also point to OutRun 2 Sound Tracks with "Life Was a Bore"; the horns section sounds like it could be real, but it's most likely not.

So why aren't the players credited on some albums that use real instruments? It must have something to do with the artist not being recognized as a celebrity? Maybe the player(s) just aren't widely recognized enough to get into the credit/liner notes.

Anyone chime in...

For the Yonemitsu tracks, I believe they were all "arranged and performed" by him. I wouldn't have any reason to think otherwise. I'm going by my copy of "Very Best of Ys", which states that for TOTSOD from Vol. 2.

In general, I don't care a great deal about who plays what as long as it sounds good, but it is nice when putting random names together (ex: Toru Iwao playing as the lead guitarist in A.S.H. and for Motoi Sakuraba).

Or there isn't enough space to credit them.

Most of performers' info on "Staff Roll" from Vagrant Story was omitted because they were scratch studio musicians.

Most CDs that I've seen DON'T credit non-frontline musicians. Be they classical or not, though usually the name of the group is, unless it's a film soundtrack, in which case they tend to be a hodgepodge of studio players...

-Joshua

Most of the performers were omitted from the liner notes because there were too many to list.

Old topic bump...Just a great arrangement.  It's hard to tell, though dynamically, it doesn't sound as real as other horn sections I've heard (For example the Chicago Horns), so it's very possibly synthethized.  Ryo's the shizznit...