Ask Sound Director Masayoshi Soken Your Questions

I remember the whispering of the Shadowbringers main theme originally from not wanting to be too loud in the office. Are there other instances like that in the soundtrack?

Aside from guest composers like Okabe or Uematsu, do you arrange/compose all the music in XIV yourself or do you have assistants, or co-composers?

Is the music of XIV recorded using live instrumentation or virtual instruments on a computer?

When will new music be made for feast and frontline maps?

What was the inspiration behind the updated Gunbreaker Sounds? Would you support giving players the option to choose between different sounds for skills in General?

Soken I love your work, one of my favorite songs being "The Stone Remembers" the Peaks Night Theme.

I was wondering how does a brainstorm session go for you when making the music and it's transition into piano for the night themes? Is it done on piano first and then translated into the normal instrumentation or do you have a specific way you write the music with the main melody in mind?

Thank you for answering our questions. <3

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Can we get more variety in the future to background music during quests and boss music (before endboss bosses)? Most of the pieces are from ARR times, they got very repetitive. It saddens me to hear the great new pieces of e.g. dungeon music to be interrupted by a very well known ARR boss theme.

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I wanted to add to this because I was going to ask the same question, but particularly wanted to mention the Twinning - the music there is amazing and I love how fast-paced and intense it makes the dungeon feel, but going into the mid-level boss battles feels less exciting than the rest of the dungeon because of the generic music.

Was it very difficult to implement the 'performance' function for the Bard job? Specifically fitting it into FFXIV itself, which is a huge game.

P.S. I am deeply appreciative of its addition and the capability of playing instruments loudly in public social spaces.

Most "final areas" in the games (ARR beast tribe strongholds, Azys Lla, the Tempest) have music that plays all the time and doesn't get interrupted by the normal battle theme - but this isn't the case in the Lochs, where battle music plays as normal. Was this intentional or an oversight?

I know you do music for FFXIV but Will you also be working on FFXI R2 music as well?