Shoji Meguro – Persona 4

Mollie: What is your earliest memory of the Megami Tensei series?

Shoji Meguro: Right after I joined Atlus, I was put in charge of composing the BGM for Revelations: Persona on PlayStation. In Japan, new employees go through a few months of training before officially joining the company; the tune used in the Velvet Room, “Aria of the Soul,” was my very first composition during my training period.

Mollie: Tell us about your musical background. Did you play in any bands? What led you to musical composition? What led you to Atlus?

Meguro: I started learning the electronic organ when I was four or five, and I continued for more than ten years. I learned the basics of arrangement during that time, and around middle school, I began composing original music. I bought a synthesizer and other electronic instruments as soon as I entered high school, and started playing guitar at the age of sixteen. I teamed up with a friend during my high school years and tried my hand at electronic sequencing. And in college, I played guitar in a band with my friend.

I joined Atlus after I finished grad school. I had majored in mechanical engineering, but I convinced my parents that it was extremely difficult to get a job at a major tech-related company due to the recession, and took employment tests at various video game companies. I chose the game industry because at the time, I couldn’t think of any other way of earning a steady salary as a musician. I sent in a demo tape and had two interviews before I was employed at Atlus.

Mollie: Tell us about your composition process. Do you have a routine you follow, or do you sit down at the keyboard when the inspiration strikes you?

Meguro: I take a wide variety of approaches, depending on the song. Mainly, I write down things that come to mind in my daily life, and wait for inspiration to strike as I play keyboard or guitar.

Mollie: What genre of music is easiest for you to work in? Which do you most enjoy?

Meguro: Pop music is the easiest, and I enjoy working on it too.

Mollie: You’re well known for your rock and jazz—do you find it more difficult to compose in other genres? Easier?

Meguro: I generally have no preference for the genre.  However, I’d like to avoid composing ethnic music other than Japanese. I might be OK if I manage to grasp the essence of a particular ethnic music, but I strongly believe that it’s wrong to compose ethnic music while only being familiar with the surface elements.

Mollie: How do you approach the scoring of a Shin Megami Tensei, a Devil Summoner, and a Persona? All have a vastly different sound.

Meguro: I’m not trying to take a distinct approach for each series; it’s more like working on a title-by-title basis, according to its individual flavor. So if the next Persona title is going to be a serious story with heavy occult influences, the music may turn out to be closer to the Shin Megami Tensei style.

Mollie: How did you approach the scoring of Persona 4 versus Persona 3? Did the suburban setting or mystery theme prompt changes in style?

Meguro: Yes, I composed the music of Persona 4 by taking into account the suburban setting and the mystery theme.

Mollie: What music artists have influenced you? Who inspires you? What would we find on your mp3 player right now?

Meguro: I try not to listen to music that much, in order to avoid other people’s music influencing my work. I do believe, though, that the core of my music is influenced by a Japanese fusion band I liked to listen to when I was in high school. The most I hear of current pop music are songs that play on TV programs that cover the hits of the day, and I don’t have an MP3 player. (Though on rare occasions, I’ll listen to CDs by artists who pique my interest.) The closest thing I have to that would be my cell phone, but the only time I use it to listen to music is when I’m on the train and the ladies next to me start talking so loud that I can’t concentrate on my magazine.

Mollie: At least in the West, for a long time video game music was not considered to be “real” music, but now that opinion has changed, as a wide variety of people enjoy everything from the type of music you produce for games like Persona 4, to classic 8-bit music from the era of the Famicom. Was there ever a time when people didn’t take the work you were doing as serious as you would have liked? Do you think there’s been a change in the perception of video game music in the twelve years that you’ve been working at Atlus?

Meguro: I believe it’s the same between Japan and the U.S. I decided to join a video game company only because I learned that with PlayStation and Saturn, you could play game music from a CD. I didn’t own a NES and all I had for SNES were a Mahjong game and a soccer game, so I wasn’t exposed to any game music during that time. As a result, I myself had a biased view of game music, based solely on what I imagined it to be like, and didn’t consider it to be “real” music.

So when I joined Atlus, I thought I could compose PlayStation game music just as I would a regular music CD, but the reality was completely different. I had to compose music using samples of 100KB-200KB in size, and the end results sounded pretty cheap. At times, I was indirectly mocked by the composers who worked on the arranged versions of my songs for the game soundtrack albums.

The situation was about the same when we moved the platform to PlayStation 2, but in Digital Devil Saga, we could use streaming to play about half the songs. And in Persona 3 and Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, all the songs were streamed. That was the point at which I was finally able to express my music without making any compromises, and I felt that I made it to the starting line.

Mollie: We hear Persona art director Shigenori Soejima once asked you to teach him piano. How did that work out?

Meguro: Unfortunately, nothing has come of that yet. Before I can teach him, I need to learn how to play piano better myself. (The piano keys are so much heavier compared to an electronic organ’s!)

Mollie: Tell us about the production of vocal themes. Do you write them for a specific vocalist, or choose one to suit the song?

Meguro: We don’t do any cross-promotions of that sort at Atlus, so I choose the artist that best fits the music and the lyrics.

Mollie: Have you had the chance to listen to Takeharu Ishimoto’s work on Square Enix’s Subarashiki Kono Sekai (The World Ends With You)? It seemed to build on the same kind of vocal / R&B / hip-hop / urban / modern feel that you put together for Persona 3.

Meguro: To be honest, I haven’t. The World Ends With You came out in Japan in July 2007, so I think by the time Persona 3 came out, they were well into development. I wonder if the release of Persona 3 gave Mr. Takeharu Ishimoto a big headache. [Laughs]

Mollie: What sort of high school student were you, Mr. Meguro?

Meguro: I didn’t study at all. I even used to play catch during the short ten-minute break between classes.

Mollie: What sort of Persona do you wish you had?

Meguro: I was born in the year of the boar, so how about Amida Nyorai (Amitabha Tathagata), my patron god?

Mollie: You gained a number of new Western fans thanks to the Persona 3 soundtrack, and no doubt the same will happen again with Persona 4. How does it feel to know that a worldwide audience listens to and enjoys your music?

Meguro: I’m really worried about the English pronunciation… in the Japanese version, the characters spoke Japanese while the music was in English, so I think it was less noticeable. If we had more time and money, I would want to change the vocals in the overseas version into Japanese. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about people saying the vocals sound like “Engrish,” right?

Mollie: Finally, do you have a message for all of your fans in the West?

Meguro: We don’t receive feedback directly from overseas. But through interviews and game sites, I can tell that the fans are very passionate and well informed about the game’s intrinsic nature, and I’m deeply moved by it. We cannot help focusing on the Japanese market when developing games, but we will try our best to give our titles more worldwide appeal from now on. Thank you very much.