Ask Sound Director Masayoshi Soken Your Questions

[AesaThornrun]

How do you decide which songs will have lyrics, such as Wayward Daughter, and which ones won't? What's your process for coming up with the lyrics?

[Nucah]

What's your approach to developing music for a new expansion? How do you decide the tone and feel of the different themes that you create?

[Eerendialis]

Was there a specific reason as to why Susan Calloway wasn't featured in the main Expansion theme for Shadowbringers? I mean the theme is amazing and you did a great job, but I think a lot of the fans are wondering where Susan disappeared to.

[KalinOrthos]

Your music feels like it comes from many different places, like rock, funk, rap and dance. Are there any artists that you take inspiration from?

[Sailysium]

For my question can we start to see many mount music changed away from the default that been used since heavensward. It would be great each of the beast tribe mounts for example to play a theme related to the beast tribe’s area or theme in their questline. Demi Ozma Mount could play blade soon arsenal. Other Eureka mounts could play Eureka zone themes and so on.


Keep up the good work on the music of FFXIV!

[Sloprano]

Hey Soken, the music still checks out, great stuff. This one though is for the hard-working community managers.

In the brief moment of ludicity before you realize this isn't a music related question and corporate pride compels you to delete this post, please hear this plea:

Please pass on the request to make job skillsets, in complete form, from previous expansions available to use and when used limit the participation in Duties only through Party Finder and premades. Just like how you're doing with Blu.

This is appealing to your empahty coming from a tour of six years on Scholar. The current iteration and lack of awareness shown by all official channels about how since Heavensward only taking away stuff and making moment to moment fights not fun but tedious as you define by role and not letting the job stand on it's own feet. It is not only making my interest in the job wane, but the whole game as a result.

Thank you for reading this, now feel compelled to delete this wish.

[Kazran]

Are there any celebrity musicians (like Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, Etc) you would like to work with and have them perform for one of your songs for the game?

[hyperion995]

Sometimes it's hard to find the name of an in-game song. This information could be useful for those looking to purchase the album with their favorite song, or obtain the orchestrion in-game with their favorite song. In addition, some song names have strong ties to lore, or are references to the setting and enhance immersion. Would it be possible to add a UI element in-game which displays the name of the currently playing track, regardless of where you are (works in field, raids, trials, etc)?

[Ceasaria]

You have composed many music for this game but there are a very few of them which give me the old RPG vibe as Azys La, Zurvan theme or some music from PotD (imported from 1.0, so composed by Nobuo Uematsu + T9 1st part).
What I feel by listening to them is the sensation of "mystery", "strange" and his derivatives.
I like very much this kind of music because of the use of a synthesizer, I guess.
So, would it be possible for you to create more music like that in the future for area, dungeon, boss and more ?

[Marche100]

Hey, Soken! Love everything you and your team do!

I don't know if you can say anything right this minute, but are there any plans to make more compilation albums like "Untempered: FINAL FANTASY XIV Primal Battle Themes" and "Time and Again: FINAL FANTASY XIV Raid Dungeon Themes" in the future? I absolutely love listening to all the primal themes and raid themes from A Real Reborn/Heavensward on my way to/from work and school, so I think a Stormblood/Shadowbringers compilation album or two would be awesome! Not to mention, I always love new opportunities to support FFXIV's sound team, so please let me give you more money!

All joking aside, thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions! Hope you and the rest of the team have a fun 14-hour stream!