Composition and Songwriting of Idol Songs

For Songs in the Squid World

I've been involved in creating music for the "Mario" series and "Zelda" series, so I was surprised by the development of "Splatoon" for the Wii U. I said that I wanted to work on the squid world's idol songs.

Immediately after I joined the development team, I participated in a meeting with the planning staff, where I found out that the main storyline had already been completed. A musical duo that started as folk singers... Later, their name would be changed to "Squid Sisters", I based my work off of that material. First of all, for an event called "Splatfest", I started to write songs for them to sing in the plaza.

I kept in mind that they had a folk singing background, so at first, I tried to make a song with those motifs, but the traditional Japanese timber was too strong for the squid world because that made it difficult to feel the unique atmosphere. Therefore, I used melodies and accompaniments that had clear folk elements to adjust to the nuances of folk songs, In addition, incorporating a smooth tone, I made music that reminds everyone of a fictional squid world.

The next thing I worked on were the lyrics, so for squid songs, I had to use fictional lyrics that didn't exist in any other language. Therefore, I wrote the Japanese alphabet in order on white paper, trying to find a pronunciation that sounded squid-like. Once I got to the "na" column, the vowels sounded like "ē" or "ĕ", it sounded like a mollusk... And such, although it was gratifying, after I consulted with others on the team and actually singing it myself to check the sound and whether it's possible for someone to perform it, I wrote the lyrics.

Working Like a Music Producer

Actually, some of the people who listened to the music of the "Squid Sisters" thought the voices were computer-generated, but we actually used real singers. The two people who voiced the "Squid Sisters", because they both had different personalities, I asked both of them to suit that individuality. After all of the growth in these professionals, because it is rich in expressiveness, singing with inflection like folk songs, we were able to partake in various tasks. Just, if we used the raw footage, it wouldn't sound right, so express the squid-ness, the last thing I did was to process the voices with a computer.

The final products, when they were put into the game, I heard the songs of the "Squid Sisters" for the first time. To say it in a normal way, I was very impressed. Fascinated with their singing and dancing, I felt like I was the music producers for these virtual idols。Actually, making idol songs was my dream for many years.

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