Tune Glue 023: Yuka Kitamura

An interview with the Japanese composer who created soundtracks for numerous FromSoftware games, including 'Dark Souls III', 'Bloodborne', 'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice', and 'Elden Ring'

Yuka Kitamura

Photo courtesy of the artist

Yuka Kitamura is best known for the orchestral music she made in the shadows. At legendary Japanese video game developer FromSoftware, where 33-year-old Kitamura worked for the past 11 years, her compositions were never the main course, but they were an inescapable, binding wax. In the first FromSoftware game Kitamura is credited on, 2013’s mecha jail Armored Core: Verdict Day, her song “Death Count” descends into players’ cracked resolve after they flip on Hardcore Mode, its apocalyptic male choir inhaling their hope like a chicken bone. 

Kitamura worked on 2022’s magisterial open-world role-playing game Elden Ring, too. Her theme for waxen Elden Ring boss Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon drips slowly until Rennala gets more pissed, and then it hardens, and its choir’s indolent oohing starts glinting like steel instead of tears. And Kitamura’s handprints are all over FromSoftware's unforgiving Dark Souls series, which promoted FromSoft to notoriety after the first game released to, at first, a perplexed and then obsessed crowd in 2011. During Dark Souls III’s final, blazing boss fight with the Soul of Cinder, one can hear one of Kitamura’s most famous compositions: a swollen brass section encases the chalky Kiln of the First Flame in spit and grit until, like a balloon, it pops, and out whooshes a delicate string of piano. While mashing your controller, swinging your protagonist's weapon around with the hope that death = glory, a part of you zones out to notice this piano confetti. Everything’s all right in the wasteland, for a few seconds. And then your weapon makes contact.

Kitamura weaves this arresting quality into every video game soundtrack she’s worked on, which is why fans dreaded her departure from FromSoftware when she announced the news in August. But Kitamura, now an independent composer, isn’t leaving games behind. Ashley Bardhan interviewed Yuka Kitamura over email for two weeks in January, 2024 to discuss her new life as a freelancer, her old love of video games, and the unforgiving winter.

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Ashley Bardhan: Are there any video game soundtracks you wish you wrote? 

Yuka Kitamura: Actually, I like adventure games quite a bit, so I have a dream to be involved in such a work. I’d like to work on games that depict the changing seasons and simple everyday life, such as the Harvest Moon [farming sim] series, or the Professor Layton [puzzle adventure game] series, which is an intelligent but heartwarming game about a unique world. I also aspire to work on games with an artistic worldview, such as the [2018 platform-adventure] indie game Gris.

What season would you say your music is most similar to and why?

When I was with FromSoftware, I think that many of the songs were “harsh winter” kind of songs due to the worldview of the games I was involved in. After becoming independent, I feel that I have been able to add more colors to my music, such as spring, autumn, and mild winters.

What is your fondest memory of growing up in Hokkaido?

Hokkaido is a land of abundant nature when you get away from the town for a while. It was a pleasant land with four distinct seasons (although we were buried in snow up to our waists in winter) and not that many people, so I remember growing up in Hokkaido playing and exploring nature in my childhood.

What do you think is the most difficult part of winter for you, either now or when you were a child? 

The most difficult thing I remember [from my childhood] was that the ground was icy and slippery, and I often fell down. On days when it snowed, snow would pile up on top of the icy road, so if you accidentally walked on it, you would fall down spectacularly! Especially when I was in a hurry and was about to be late for school.

What music did you listen to as a child? Did you always have strong opinions about what good music sounded like?

My family always had some kind of music playing in the house and in the car, so I listened to a lot of music. I started learning the violin at the age of five, so I preferred to listen to classical music, especially music that featured violin solos. [But] because of my family’s influence, Queen, Adiemus, and Coba (a Japanese accordionist) were my especially favorite music. As for my opinion on what good music is, I was not yet able to express it linguistically at the time, but I think I was guided by the feeling that it “touches the heart.”

Tell me about the first video game you ever played. What were your favorite parts?

I think the first game I played was F-Zero (1990) on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), influenced by my father’s playing. I remember hearing its famous “Big Blue” song and thinking that it was easy to understand.

Have any video games changed your life? In what way?

I have loved games since I was a student, so it is difficult to choose just a few. [But] there were two games that inspired me to become a composer. 

The first one is the [Game Boy Advance fantasy RPG] Golden Sun (released around 2001-2002). I was in junior high school at the time, and I remember being very impressed by the soundtrack composed by Motoi Sakuraba. There was a sound-test mode quietly implemented where you could listen to nearly 100 soundtracks, and I spent hours “ear-copying” some of my favorite songs by keeping them playing on a loop.

The second game is [GameCube action-RPG] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (released in 2003). Likewise, the soundtrack was very nice. I remember reading the liner notes with excitement about the recording environment and the particulars of the soundtrack, such as the use of ancient instruments from the medieval and renaissance eras. I felt a stronger admiration for the composer.

What does “fantasy” mean to you? What are some things in your life that make you feel like you’re in a fantasy?

I feel that fantasy is an element that stimulates people’s imagination and playfulness and brings “the unusual” to their daily lives. I enjoy the sense of the unusual in movies and video games by imagining myself existing in the world through visual information. In contrast, I feel that listening to music is more like an experience in which my emotions become one with the music.

What do you feel like came most naturally to you while composing music for FromSoftware? 

The theme song for Dark Souls III was the most natural composition; it was selected as the theme song from some stock songs I had written at the time.

What is your favorite song you composed for FromSoftware? 

I have several favorite songs, so it is very difficult to choose the best! But, it might be the ending theme song for the [2018 adventure] PSVR game Déraciné. This song went in a different direction than the music for other FromSoftware titles I have been involved with. [The game] is dark, yet has a beauty and tenderness in it. I remember it was very fresh for me to write music for.

I love your song for Sister Friede in Dark Souls III, it sounds to me just as delicately complicated as she is herself. When you composed songs for boss fights, did you feel like you needed to understand the character first? Or was it more about capturing the environment, the difficulty of the fight…?

The content of the music for the boss fight varies depending on what kind of experience I want to provide the player, so it is difficult to say which is more important. However, when I write music for a boss battle, I first understand the background of the character. From there, I imagine the circumstances that led to the boss’ antagonism, the emotions of the boss, the environment where the boss fights in the game, the appearance of the boss, and the emotions [it will instill in] the player. I express these elements in the song.

Were you always interested in dark fantasy aesthetics?

There are many different directions for songs in the world of dark fantasy, but at the time I found beauty in the sound of dark, refracted music, and I felt that listening to it soothed my own heart. I wanted to write music that would reach out to people’s negative emotions, and that is how I became interested in the beauty of dark fantasy.

Songs like the theme for Rom, the Vacuous Spider in [2015 gothic RPG] Bloodborne really creep me out. Do you ever feel unsettled by your own music?

I am not that anxious about my own compositions because I am used to hearing every detail, but when I am recording instruments for a piece, I wonder, “Will the performers be willing to play this? Am I being musically reckless?” I sometimes feel anxious in that different way.

What was the last song that made you cry?

It was difficult to narrow it down to one song, so forgive me for giving this answer: The channel The First Take on YouTube makes me cry at a high rate. I am moved by the people singing [in a single take] and the arrangement of the music.

Describe your usual process for writing music. Is there anything you do differently now than when you started professionally composing in 2011?

The composition work I do is primarily “expressing what the client wants to express,” so I spend a lot of time understanding the client’s intentions. That hasn’t changed since 2011, but the biggest change is that I am now independent [since] 2023, which gives me the opportunity to be exposed to a more colorful view of the world.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging about writing music for a client instead of for yourself? 

Yes, I enjoy writing music from the inspiration that comes to me, but when I receive a commission from someone else, I am offered a world that I could not imagine on my own, and I create music as if I were playing in that world. I feel that the music I write for a client is an experience that allows me to encounter music that I would not have come up with on my own.

What have you been enjoying about being an independent composer? Have there been any unexpected difficulties?

Like I said, I enjoy feeling like the music I write is becoming richer and richer as my number of clients increases the kinds of “worlds I could not have imagined on my own.” In terms of unexpected difficulties, it was more difficult than I had imagined to manage my work schedule, contact, and other administrative tasks all by myself, and there were times when I could not find time for production. I realize how much support I had from the people around me when I was a company employee.

What is the most inspiring instrument in your house right now, and why?

Even now, the violin is an exciting instrument for me. I basically compose on the keyboard, but the melodic ideas I come up with by playing the keys are very different from the melodies that come out when I play the violin, actually. And I find that more natural melodies often come from playing the violin.

What do you love about playing the violin? What does it offer you that other instruments don’t?

I have not been able to spend much time practicing my instrument these days, so when I incorporate an instrument into a song, I basically edit it. Even so, I love the moment when I can play the melody I want to express as I want to express it, or when a phrase I recorded freely fits a song more perfectly than a phrase I thought of in my head. I have tried to use all the instruments I have touched, such as my voice, guitar, saxophone, cello, and percussion instruments in my songwriting, but I have touched the violin for the longest time in my life. The part where I can play intuitively is something I feel that no other instrument can offer.

As an artist, what do you want to be most known for? 

My current desire is to create music that touches people’s emotions, so I hope to become famous for creating music that touches people’s hearts.

I’m noticing you often talk about music being something that lives in your heart. If you could only pick one song or melody to describe it, what would you say is the song of your heart?

(I don’t quite get the meaning of your question!) For me, music is very intimately connected to my emotions. I feel that the songs that come to mind change in many ways depending on the type of emotion I am feeling on any given day. For example, the main theme song of Dark Souls III, for me, expresses feelings of sadness and lamentation. That is the kind of feeling I have.

More information about Yuka Kitamura can be found at her website.

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Photo courtesy of the artist

Thank you for reading the twenty-third issue of Tune Glue. Video game music touches people’s hearts!!!

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