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In Silent Hill 3, I have always thought of having songs with vocals included. It's not particularly new in games, but it is new in the Silent Hill world.
Yet, I think that a song, after all, is part of the sound effects. It is
just meant to widen the value and fun part of a game. I guess you can say that video game music is sound effect. Thus, I do not want to have something which is not "effective". Otherwise, it will just be a game with DTM* (laugh).
My music inspiration comes from this aspect. I am not just a composer artist nor a music player (laughter). I think there are two types of video
game musicians like below:
Type 1: Professional people who are good at just writing music. Although he/she is conscious about video games to some extent, but they are not really interested. They can make some "happy" or "sad" tunes, but "video game music" is not "real music" to them.
Type 2: Video game musicians who have experience. Although he/she can make music fit to the games, their sense and
technique are old.
I don't want to belong to either of the two types. I regard myself as a game sound designer, and I always try to think about the best sound performance. The conlusion that I have come to is that using vocals would be the best for this project.
As to Silent Hill 3, I really spent a great deal of time, from picking singers, to composing, and recording the songs.
In this Silent Hill, there isn't an easy way where you are simply given the music and have it incorporated. You must be in control of the all aspects such as music creation, music structure, which instruments to be use, etc. Otherwise, the balance will be falling apart. Of course, when it comes to songs, the communication and consensus with the singers must be based upon the game content. I spent most of my time to getting them immersed in the Silent Hill concept.
The vocals were recorded in Los Angeles. The project was perfect and I was really satisfied with it. I guess the reason I
chose Los Angeles was because I wanted to do something real. "Real" here means to have sound which has thorough communication with the content. It is not "I want to do something with vocal, that's why I do it" (Laugh).
From my opinion, I wanted to show in Silent Hill 3 is that "This is the best way to use vocals in a video
game".
Akira Yamaoka
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Note:
* DTM (desk top music)
The term here refers to music which you can create very easily at your home with your computer. What Akira is trying to say here is that non-quaility music = DTM.
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