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Artist
Hip Tanaka
12+ albums
game soundjapanese
about
Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka is a Japanese composer and musician best known for his scores for various video games produced by Nintendo. Tanaka's first projects with the company were on Nintendo's arcade machines. Music was extremely primitive on these machines, so Tanaka primarily worked on sound effects. His job required him to personally program the sound in binary code as well as to design and install the actual sound equipment on the arcade machines. In creating the score to Metroid, he tried "to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects." He composed the music so as to deny the player a simple melody to hum along with; only after completing the game is any "catchy" music played. Tanaka's music has been greatly inspired by the rock performers of his youth, including The Monkees, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Burt Bacharach. He was also greatly inspired by reggae in the 1980s. He says he also takes inspiration from the visual arts, especially portraiture and photography. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.