Go Shiina

Masaru Shiina (椎名豪, Shiina Masaru, born May 16, 1974), known professionally as Go Shiina, is a Japanese music composer, primarily for anime and video games. Formerly employed at Bandai Namco Entertainment until 2017, he was best known during his time with the company for writing music for a number of games in the Tales, Mr. Driller, and God Eater series.

Biography

Born in Yokohama, Japan, Shiina was taught how to play the electronic organ from his parents when he was growing up.^[1] Although he was not a dedicated musician before becoming a composer, he was at one time a member of a Megadeth cover band who also played J-pop music. Shiina enrolled at Dokkyo Junior High School. After being rejected by 46 companies, including a jewelry company, a finance company, and a fast food company, he was hired by Namco (now Bandai Namco Games); he had little prior experience with video games.^[2]

Creating music for old arcade releases using Namco's sound trackers felt more like computer programming than composing for Shiina, but he has said that the experience helped him out when he would have to use MIDI sounds in future games. The songs he composed for the first Mr. Driller were deemed unfitting for a puzzle game by some of the staff and they almost didn't make it into the final product.^[2]

Shiina's first solo project was Mr. Driller G. He was given extensive access to live instruments and an incredible amount of creative freedom, setting the stage for his later work. The scores for future games in the Mr. Driller series would also be composed exclusively by Shiina.

When he began writing songs for Tales of Legendia , he originally tried to follow in the footsteps of the lead Tales series composer Motoi Sakuraba, but was later inspired to develop his own style for it.^[2]

In September 2017, Shiina announced that he had retired from Bandai Namco.^[3][4]

Musical style and influences

Go Shiina's music is characterized by dramatic melodies and unusual arrangements. His soundtracks contain a wide range of musical styles, including jazz,^[5] orchestral, fusion, and rock, and he often mixes different genres and instruments together for unique sounds. Many of Shiina's songs use live string sections, slap bass, audio filter effects and artificial languages.

He has said that he can write music in any genre, as long as he is motivated, and has also stated that "when I write a song, the time it takes me depends on whether I know the singer's natural voice. The genre doesn't matter..." Shiina feels that there are two types of compositions: "some tracks can stand alone as musical pieces, and some only work when you hear them in the game," and he often alters or leaves out certain songs when putting together albums. When composing vocal or instrumental tracks, he often sings the parts out loud.^[2]

For the soundtrack to God Eater, Shiina explained that the creative nature of the story pushed him to be creative with the music as well. He looked around for a variety of instruments from many countries, and some of the styles and instruments featured in the score include Japanese traditional music, African rhythms, and the Indian sitar.^[1] He has also done string arrangements for bands.^[6]

Works

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Go Shiina.

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Go Shiina on Twitter (in Japanese)
• Go Shiina at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Go Shiina discography at VGMdb