Welcome to RadioSEGA, if you are not a member register today!

SEGA's Tomoya Ohtani Interviews Mario & Sonic Rio Sound Directors

The first part of SEGA’s interview takes a look at the game’s musical inspirations.

The SEGA Blog has posted a special interview on the music to Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games hosted by one of the company’s sound directors, Tomoya Ohtani. In it, he speaks with the game’s two sound directors, Teruhiko Nakagawa (3DS version, out now) and Kenichi Tokoi (Wii U version, June 24th) on all things pertaining to how the game’s music came about. Below are excerpts from the first part of the interview.

Starting off, the duo talk about the main concept behind the music itself: the country Brazil.

Nakagawa: This is the first Olympic Games held in Latin America and since Brazil is known for their samba music, we felt that we should go with Brazilian music this time.

Ohtani: And it was okay to move forward, just like that?

N: Yep, there was no objection.

Tokoi: Well, it’s Rio! We started by researching what sort of music is in Brazil. At the beginning of the project everyone shared different types of music that they felt Brazilian and studied what Brazilian music is.

N: At first we thought, Brazil and Cuba are both are Latin right? But as Tokoi and I kept researching…

T: There were specific rhythms. We had a Brazilian percussionist listen to our music samples and he commented “This song has Cuban rhythm”. We didn’t have a clue what samba supposed to feel like.

 

Nakagawa talks further on utilizing Brazilian music:

N: We definitely wanted the Brazilian feel and rhythm, which was our priority. We were able to incorporate many local musicians; we had wind instruments, brass sections, and a Brazilian string instrument called Cavaquinho, a six string guitar, electric bass, harp, a mixed chorus and an accordion. It was great that the guitarists were Brazilian; I realized afterwards that even the bassist was playing with a Brazilian rhythm. I had composed the song with a Latin rhythm and soon found out our bassist had difficulty playing, until we changed it to a Brazilian rhythm.

 

The last parts focuses on the recording that was done from assistance from other musicians and further look into the what the game’s main theme is centered around. 

T: So for our recording, we had members from Unidos Da Tijuka and Salgueiro, winning teams from 2014 to play the base part for a day. We started with the main theme, but it took longer than we expected, so we talked about how to proceed and figured it out the parts along the way.

O: How did you record the catchy part of the song? Have you decided the parts beforehand and planned accordingly?

T: We did have it planned, but we recorded it last. We had lots of catchy parts that everyone contributed so we recorded and kept these parts. We figured it’s easy to record all the base parts first, so we kept to that method and put it together later.

O: So you recorded all of the basic patterns first and then recorded other orchestra sessions.

T: Yes, after that recording went pretty smooth. In Brazil, apparently there’s a genre category called AXE and our main theme belongs in that genre.

N: Yeah, apparently it’s pop-like samba.


Read up the entire interview over at the SEGA Blog. Part two drops soon, where the duo will speak on the main theme's development plus the creative process behind the game's music.

18th June, 2016 - 23:05 GMT Twinny Article viewed 1436 times 0 Comments

Comments:

There are no comments for this article.

You need to be logged in to post a comment.
Please login using the boxes at the top of the page.
Now PlayingFavourite Button
RadioSEGA on the Web
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Discord
Youtube
Instagram
Steam
irc.surrealchat.net - #radiosega
Top 10 Requests
Top 10 Requests
Friends of RadioSEGA
|
http://www.segadriven.com/
|
http://www.lastminutecontinue.com/
|
http://www.sonicstadium.org/
|
http://www.summerofsonic.com/
|
https://terraplayer.com
|
https://dreamcastyears.co.uk/
|
https://twitter.com/segaguys
|
https://kngi.org/
|
https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/
|
https://outrun86.wordpress.com/
|
https://16bap.theclassicgamer.net/
|
https://puyonexus.com/
|
https://yakuzafan.com/
|
https://shenmuedojo.com/
|
https://www.thesegalounge.com/
|
https://www.fromashestofire.com/