[Music] TV/Film/Video Game Composers

[Phaelia]

Who are your favorite Movie/TV/Video Game musical composers? I know this is a niche question but I got to wondering if anyone else enjoys just sitting back and listening to some beautiful original scores.

Mine are Thomas Newman, Joris de Man, Ramin Djawadi, Nobuo Uematsu, and Hans Zimmer, but I am constantly finding more I enjoy and would love to hear of any others people enjoy.

And apologies if there is already a thread for this but I didn’t see it

[Sunderella]

Nobuo Uematsu, Akira Yamaoka are godlike level.

Masayosi Soken, Nanase Hikaru, Noriyuki Asakura, Yugo Kanno, Kousaki Satoru, Jeff Williams ... man so many great artists out there working on anime soundtracks

[Phaelia]

Nobuo Uematsu, Akira Yamaoka are godlike level.

Masayosi Soken, Nanase Hikaru, Noriyuki Asakura, Yugo Kanno, Kousaki Satoru, Jeff Williams ... man so many great artists out there working on anime soundtracks

Checking all of these out for sure! Lately my favorite thing to go to bed to is the Horizon: Zero Dawn soundtrack. I can’t wait for the second game but about half the anticipation is new music

[PrimiOne]

I'm gonna go with relative "unkown" people allthough and I really shouldn't say that because they are composers who have been nominated/won a Oscar or several other prizes ( so the unknown is a bit absurd) but I mean that everyone that likes OST's knows who Max Richter is or Miachel Giacciano but maybe does not know....

Angelo Badalamenti




or Alberto Iglesias

[ParanoiD84]

Jeff van Dyck and Jesper Kyd are both amazing imo for composing game ost's.

[s_bushido]

Yasunori Mitsuda

Mick Gordon
^the drop in that song gives me chills pretty much every time

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Grant Kirkhope.

[Gallahadd]

Bear McCreary. His work on BSG/TWD/AoShield is utter perfection.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A few months ago, I went through and catalogged the composers of my 1,500 track long playlist of music, and classified my favorite composers. I narrowed it down to a few.

• [Composer name] (games they worked on) - # of tracks I have on my favorite's playlist

• Masayoshi Soken (FFXIV) - 110

• Hayato Sonoda (Trails, Tokyo Xanadu, Zwei Illvard) - 69

• Nobuo Uematsu (FFII, FFIII, FFVII, FFVIII FFX, FFXI, FFXIV, Granblue Fantasy) - 47

• Takahiro Unisuga (Trails, Tokyo Xanadu) - 44

• Shota Kageyama (Pokemon BW, XY, ORAS arranger) - 41

• Russell Brower (World of Warcraft) - 32

• Saki Momiyama (Trails, Zwei Illvard) - 26

• Go Ichinose (Pokemon RSE, SM) - 26

• Yukihiro Jindo (Trails arranger) - 25

Wandering Isle (WoW Mists of Pandaria)
Magister's Terrace (WoW Burning Crusade)
Overlord (WoW Mists of Pandaria)

Russell Brower: I am placing him here as the amount of work he has done is understated. Blizzard albums don't list individual tracks. Ie, this composer did this specific track. Instead, we only generally know what themes the composer worked on. Ie, this composer did Mogu music (and there are multiple Mogu tracks). I'll chalk it up to Blizzard's "we don't want to glorify individuals because we want the whole team to take credit for the game" mantra. You can find out who did each specific track by ripping the tracks from the game and looking at the embedded information, but that would be an incredibly laborious process, so I am only going off of what I can find credited on WoWpedia and on WoWMusicAble. Russell Brower has composed 32 themes I really like, and if you separate those themes into individual tracks, the number of tracks I like would probably be at least 50 or 60. Brower's music imbues emotion into World of Warcraft, from the surreal Eversong Woods, to the majestic and stirring anthems of Quel'Thelas, the Dwarves, and the Alliance, to the relaxing atmosphere and dorky themes of Pandaria, to the contemplative moments of respite on the Broken Shore, to the grim, climatic final confrontations with evil in Siege of Ogrimmar and Blackrock Foundry. Among many other themes. His music was awesome, and he will be missed.


Serenity (FFXIV A Realm Reborn)
A New Hope (FFXIV A Realm Reborn)
Namazu theme (FFXIV Stormblood)
Heavensward (FFXIV Heavensward)
Deception (FFXIV Stormblood)
Penitus (FFXIV A Realm Reborn)
He Who Brings Shadow (FFXIV Shadowbringers)

Masayoshi Soken: given I have favorited 110 of his tracks, it may seem like he is my all time favorite composer. Unfortunately, no, as the number is deceptive. If you factor in all of the songs Soken has created for FFXIV (discounting those he collaborated on with other composers, like Uematsu or Narita), then Soken has put 110 great songs out of 448 tracks. So about 25% of the stuff he puts out is great. Soken isn't a bad composer, and he has created a lot of great tracks, but it's most by the sheer volume of his work. Final Fantasy XIV is the current Guinness World Record holder for most original tracks in a video game, after all. A second composer should be brought on so he can focus on making really good tracks over making fifty a year. I'd suggest Tsutomu Narita, who has already done work for FFXIV. (NOTE: according to an interview with VGMO for Shadowbringers, Soken said that the arrangements for the Eden raid were made by two other people. Yet, Soken is credited as the composer on Apple Music. That means VGMDB is the only correct source of information I can find... which may mean that my ratios are incorrect. To be updated later). http://archive.md/ge7P9

Let me be clear: I have tremendous respect for FFXIV's sound team. Coming from WoW, FFXIV has so many musical features. They have boss battle themes. Unique boss battle themes for each trial boss. MULTIPLE boss battle themes for a single boss that changes depending on the phase. A ton of cutscene tracks (WoW hardly has ingame cutscenes at all, just a handful of prerendered cinematics). Day and night tracks for each zone. They also have 40 vocal tracks that are NOT packed with epic choirs singing unintelligble lyrics or singing in latin, but singing clear English lyrics.


Stillness of Night (Trails of Cold Steel III)
Great Awe (Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter)

Hayato Sonoda: arguably one my most favorite composer of all time. Of the games he worked on that I have played (Zwei, Zwei 2, Sky, Crossbell, CS1, CS2, and TX), I like 69 out of 195 of his tracks. So about 35% of his tracks hit the mark. In retrospect, Soken isn't that far off. Both Sonoda and Soken have a huge volume of work. Perhaps I'm more biased towards Sonoda because of the presentation of his work. Sonoda's tracks are spread out across multiple games that have multiple composers, so his tracks stick out in each individual game. When you hear a great track in Falcom game, I go "wow, that must be Sonoda!". Contrast that with FFXIV, where you hear Soken's great tracks and his okay tracks back to back. When I hear a great track in FFXIV, I go "Aha, Soken made a really good one!".


Those Who Fight (FFVII)
Twilight Over Thanalan (FFXIV)

Nobuo Uematsu: I will be frank: I don't get the love for this guy. Yes, he has put out a lot of great tracks over his career, but he doesn't put out a high ratio of great tracks. He has been composing for three and a half decades. He has created 641 tracks for the mainline FF games (FF1-11, FF14) and the 19 tracks for Granblue Fantasy, I can only think of 44 tracks I really like from him. That's less than 7% hit rate. Even if we are generous and remove, say, 50 tracks to account for the remixes of prelude and the Chocobo theme,etc, that's still only slightly more than 7%. That is atrocious. Most of the time, when I like a track that was composed by Uematsu, it's a version arranged by someone else, not the original version (or even Uematsu's arranges). I think the reverence for Uematsu comes from him doing every track for the first nine Final Fantasy games. That, along with the prolific nature of the franchise, has associated his name with what is regarded as the golden age of JRPGs.


Shota Kageyama: this guy made the Pokemon soundtracks great. He created many, many iconic themes, as well arranging otherwise forgettable compositions to make them memorable. It's a shame he left.


Victory is Right Before your Eyes! (Pokemon Black & White)
Elite Four (Pokemon Black & White)
Champion (Sun & Moon)

Go Ichinose: like Uematsu, he was the most prominent name for a prolific franchise. Like Uematsu, I don't think his music is that good, and his compositions only became interesting when Kageyama arranged them.


A Fullfilling Moment (Trails of Cold Steel III)
Weathering Road (Trails of Cold Steel III)
Eliminate Crisis (Trails of Cold Steel)

Yukihiro Jindo: does the sweeping orchestral music for Falcom, both composing his own pieces and arranging other people's compositions. Josef criticizes him, saying he is "creatively bankrupt". It's true that his tracks have a tendency to sound stereotypically "epic orchestra", but he doesn't do that much music anyway, and has a relatively high hit rate IMO. Nothing particularly amazing, but nonetheless memorable enough to make it onto my favorite's list.



Relief Towards Tomorrow (Trails of Cold Steel II)

Hagiuda: does great tone setting music, such as CS2's "Relief Towards Tomorrow".



The Shiver Peaks (Guild Wars 2)
The Tengu Wall (Guild Wars 2)

Jeremy Soule: he can put out good ambient tracks, but his battle music is terrible. His music sounds very samey.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

John Williams - Star Wars/Indiana Jones
Hans Zimmer - Pirates of Caribbean, Batman Begins
Steve Jablonsky - Transformers
Howard Shore - Lord of the Rings
Murray Gold - Doctor Who
Jerry Goldsmith - Original Star Trek films

[Phaelia]

snip

I truly appreciate this well thought out response! I’m adding many of those to my to listen list!

[eschatological]

Lots of anime coverage here, so I'll not talk much about video game/anime composers. In terms of Western cinema/television, I have to go with:

John Williams (everything)
Michael Giacchino (LOST, Rogue One, Alias, Fringe, the reboot Jurassic Park movies)
Max Richter (The Leftovers, enough for him to make this list imo)

I hear people say Hans Zimmer a lot, but I honestly can't think of any memorable score from him. Looking at his Wikipedia page......maybe Inception and Dark Knight, but those aren't really composed pieces, they're......moods....long, atonal harmonies that raise tension...etc.

Gotta throw in Howard Shore as an honorable mention purely for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[Phaelia]

I hear people say Hans Zimmer a lot

I love his Pirates of the Caribbean music and Interstellar.

I also really love Danny Elfmans music, had to throw his name in there.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I hear people say Hans Zimmer a lot, but I honestly can't think of any memorable score from him. Looking at his Wikipedia page......maybe Inception and Dark Knight, but those aren't really composed pieces, they're......moods....long, atonal harmonies that raise tension...etc.

The Rock was actually a pretty good soundtrack, I think that was my first intro to Zimmer. And his Pirates soundtracks are pretty good.

[Femininity]

Joe Hisaishi



Yoko Kanno



Hans Zimmer (probably his finest in my opinion):



Koji Kondo



James Horner



Will add more later probably.

Alan Silvestri



Yoko Shimomura (Pretty much everything she's ever done)



Kenji Kawai



David Wise

[Yunru]

Frank Klepacki, Revo - Sound Horizon, Phyrnna , (Rio Hamamoto Toaki Usami Mitsuhiro Kitadani Yusuke Yamauchi Junichi Nakatsuru), Alexei Zakharov, (Yoko Shimomura + Manami Kiyota + Yasunori Mitsuda+ ACE (trio)) , World Beyond, Pig, Michael Giacchino + Chris Tilton , Yasunori Nishiki , Torotoro Resistance and many more.