Nobuyoshi Sano

, better known as sanodg, is a Japanese video game composer, musician and record producer. He is best known for scoring tracks for the Ridge Racer and Tekken series, as well as Drakengard.

Biography

Early life In elementary school, Sano listened to Yellow Magic Orchestra and played Space Invaders, gaining interest in both video games and music. Prior to joining Namco, he had no inclination towards composing video game music, although he did write music with various synths as a hobby. The first synth he bought was a Korg MS-10, borrowing other synths from friends. During his time at university, he studied telecommunication engineering.

Namco (1992–2001) After graduating from university in 1992, Sano found two jobs for Korg and Namco. Disliking the atmosphere of Korg's workplace, he settled with a position as a sound designer at Namco.

Following the transfer of Hosoe, Saso, and Aihara to Arika, Sano composed for Tekken 3 in 1996 with Keiichi Okabe. Serving as the sound director, he took a big beat approach to the music with a slower tempo than the music found in previous games Both Sano and Okabe later worked on the PS1 version along with other colleagues, as well as both the arcade and PS2 versions of Tekken Tag Tournament. In 2000, Sano composed two tracks for Ridge Racer V under the direction of Kohta Takahashi, along with colleague Yuu Miyake and various others. This was the first Ridge Racer game he composed for since Rave Racer in 1995. His final in-house work at Namco was sound design for the unreleased game Starblade: Operation Blue Planet.

Cavia (2001–2010) In 2001, Sano left Namco citing unhappiness with its recent developments, and subsequently joined Cavia as a sound director. Sano and Aihara also sought to emulate the music of Northern Europe. The soundtrack initially received a mixed reception from users, many of whom harshly criticized it for being repetitive and grating. Sano detailed experiences of reading large volumes of negative comments surrounding the music on 2ch on a daily basis.

In addition to Drakengard, Sano composed the soundtrack of Resident Evil: Dead Aim, using a synth-heavy score inspired by Goblin. For 2004's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Sano created drum and bass music to match the game’s sense of speed. The same year, he produced a collaborative album with the company Melody Clip, titled FM Sound Module Maniax. This features tracks from various video game composers written with FM synthesis, including former Namco colleagues Hosoe and Okabe, and famed composers Yoko Shimomura and Yuzo Koshiro. He also served as the music supervisor for Bullet Witch; he requested then-SuperSweep composer Masashi Yano to participate due to his expertise with Hollywood-inspired orchestral scores. Yano and Sano were originally going to collaborate on the score, with Yano composing orchestral parts and Sano handling breakbeat and bass. After Sano combined their parts together, he was dissatisfied with the results and left Yano to compose the entire score alone.

Sano designed and produced KORG DS-10 for Nintendo DS. He formed a trio of the same name consisting of himself, Yasunori Mitsuda and Michio Okamiya in order to promote the program. The three had spoken about their interest in creating a synthesizer for the DS, to Korg's approval. He chose to model the synth on the Korg MS-10 as he bought this synth during his teenage years, and also felt that the DS vaguely resembled the synth.

Detune (2010–present) Following Cavia's disbandment, Sano established Detune, a music software production company in May 6, 2010. Detune developed a follow-up to KORG DS-10 titled KORG M01, intended as a DS version of the Korg M1 synth. In 2012, Detune released iYM2151, a music program for the iPad based on the Yamaha YM2151 sound chip. In the same year, Sano composed "Algorithm" for the game Orgarhythm using iYM2151. The following year, a Nintendo 3DS eShop version of KORG M01 was released worldwide, titled KORG M01D. During 2016 to 2017 he created a series of EDM-styled albums with Hiroyoshi Kato, the first of which was titled EDM IS GAME.

Sano will score the upcoming mobile FMV game Clive is a Good Guy, developed by British game studio Indolent Games.

Works