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Artist Biography For 田中宏和

Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka 田中宏和 たなか・ひろかず Tanaka Hirokazu Is A Japanese Composer And Musician Best Known For His Scores For Various Video Games Produced By Nintendo. Hirokazu Tanaka Got His Start In Music At The Age Of Five When His Parents Enrolled Him At The Privately Run Yamaha Music School In Japan. He Studied Piano From Age Nine To Age 11 When His Musical Training Ended. His Mother Played Recordings Of Classical Music And Film Soundtracks Regularly Which Gave Tanaka An Appreciation For Those Forms Of Music. Tanaka Became Interested In Rock Music When The TV Show The Monkees Aired In Japan When He Was Nine Which Prompted Him To Start A Band With Some Friends. From Nine To 30 Tanaka Played In And Out Of Groups On Various Instruments Including Guitar Keyboard And Drums And In Various Styles From Rock To Jazz And Fusion. Tanaka Entered College As An Electronic Engineering Major But He Saw Little Success Since He Was More Interested In Electronic Applications For Music Than What His Professors Considered More Useful Pursuits. In 1980 Tanaka Saw A Newspaper Advertisement For A Sound Engineer Position At The Nintendo Video Game Company A Position He Secured For Himself. Meanwhile His Current Band Had Made The Finals In A Music Competition A Major Breakthrough In Their Quest To Get Signed With A Major Label. Nevertheless Tanaka Chose To Work For Nintendo And He Left The Band. Tanaka's First Projects With The Company Were On Nintendo's Arcade Machines. Music Was Extremely Primitive On These Machines So Tanaka Primarily Worked On Sound Effects. His Job Required Him To Personally Program The Sound In Binary Code As Well As To Design And Install The Actual Sound Equipment On The Arcade Machines. Nintendo Began Development Of Its Famicom Home Video Game Console In 1984 Known As The Nintendo Entertainment System In North America And Europe And Tanaka Worked On Early Titles Including Duck Hunt And Kid Icarus. The New System Had Three Tone Generators And One Pseudorandom Noise Generator With Which To Produce Melody Harmony Percussion And Sound Effects Which Would Usually Interrupt A Note . Though A Vast Improvement Over The Simplistic Sound Of The Arcade Machines The Nintendo Hardware Still Left Tanaka And The Other Composers Severely Limited In The Complexity Of The Music They Could Write. Even Though Sound Tools Had Been Written For The Famicom Tanaka Continued To Write His Music Alongside His Custom Playback Libraries Written In Assembly Language A Fact He Credits With Helping To Set His Work Apart From That Of His Colleagues. By 1986 Tanaka Was Writing Over A Third Of The Music For The Famicom's Games. This Increase In Sound Technology Coupled With The Composing Talents Of Tanaka And His Coworkers Such As Koji Kondo Helped Raise The Popularity Of Game Music In Japan. The Increased Attention Spurred Good-Spirited Rivalries Between Many Game Composers A Development That Bothered Tanaka Since It Forced Composers To Write In A Way That He Felt Was Contrary To The Atmosphere Of The Games Themselves. It Was This Dislike That Inspired Him To Compose The Subdued Themes Of Metroid. In His Words He Tried "to Create The Sound Without Any Distinctions Between Music And Sound Effects." He Composed The Music So As To Deny The Player A Simple Melody To Hum Along With Only After Completing The Game Is Any "catchy" Music Played. At The Time The Metroid Soundtrack Was Criticized As Being Too "heavy" But Today The Score Is Widely Regarded As Tanaka's Masterpiece. Tanaka Also Worked In A Programming Capacity For Nintendo. He Had Always Wanted To Get More Into Project Development And It Was This That Inspired Him To Design The Game Boy Camera And The Game Boy Printer. Tanaka Began Work On The Score For The Pokémon TV Series In 1997 Where He Has Composed Nearly All The Songs For The Japanese Version Of The Series - However Shinji Miyazaki Composes The Incidental Music Along With Junichi Masuda Go Ichinose And Morikazu Aoki Composers Of The Music In The Games And With A Couple Of Very Rare Exceptions Tanaka's Music Does Not Appear On Any Western Translations Of The Show. He Says He Never Took The Job Too Seriously And That The Unprecedented Popularity Of The Franchise Took Him Completely By Surprise. Because The Series Was Not Directly Produced By Nintendo The Company Told Tanaka That He Could Not Continue To Work On It. This Prompted Tanaka To Quit Nintendo In 1998. He Went To Work For Creatures Inc. A Game Developer And Producer Of Pokémon Cards. When The President Of The Company Left In 2000 Tanaka Took The Position Which He Holds To This Day. Tanaka's Music Has Been Greatly Inspired By The Rock Performers Of His Youth Including The Monkees The Beatles Simon And Garfunkel And Burt Bacharach. He Was Also Greatly Inspired By Reggae In The 1980s. He Says He Also Takes Inspiration From The Visual Arts Especially Portraiture And Photography. He Eventually Became Known As The Mentor Of Yuka Tsujiyoko. Video Game Soundtracks Incomplete * Space Firebird 1980 Sound Effects Only * Donkey Kong 1980 Sound Effects Only * Pac-Man Fever 1982 Album Sound Effects Only * Urban Champion 1984 * Balloon Fight 1984 * Wild Gunman 1984 * Duck Hunt 1985 * Gyromite 1985 * Stack Up 1985 * Wrecking Crew 1985 * Kid Icarus Paltena No Kagami In Japan 1986 * Metroid 1986 * Super Mario Land 1989 * Mother With Akio Ohmori Ritsuo Kamimura And Keiichi Suzuki 1989 * Balloon Kid Balloon Fight GB In Japan 1990 * Dr. Mario 1990 * Hello Kitty World 1992 Famicom Port Of Balloon Kid * EarthBound Mother 2 1994

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