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Yuzo Koshiro

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Yuzo Koshiro was born in 1967 in Hino, near Tokyo. His mother was a pianist and taught him to play at the age of three. In 1975 he took lessons for three years from Joe Hisaishi, after which he taught himself. In secondary school he began making music on the NEC PC-8801 computer, including imitations of game music by Namco, Konami and Sega. He received his first commission in 1986, at the age of eighteen, from Nihon Falcom. For that company he wrote, among other things, the music for Sorcerian and the first Ys games.

Music and breakthrough

Afterwards he worked as a freelancer. For Sega he made The Revenge of Shinobi in 1989, with house and techno-like music mixed with traditional Japanese sounds. ActRaiser from 1990, by contrast, had a classical, orchestral sound. In 1990 he founded the company Ancient with his mother and his sister Ayano. He made his music for the Streets of Rage series, between 1991 and 1994, with outdated PC-8801 equipment and a programming language of his own. Critics call those soundtracks revolutionary and far ahead of their time.

Influence

Koshiro wrote music in genres such as rock, jazz, symphonic, house, electro, techno and trance. He is regarded as one of the most important innovators of chiptune and of game music, and he showed that the limited sound chips of the 1990s could produce dance-floor sound.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Go Straight and notice the driving bass line and the drums, which make the track sound like a club record. Try to hear which sounds come from a chip and which are more like real instruments.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Mentioned in other articles

See also

Categories: Artists8-bit and chiptune