Music of The Chocobo Series - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

Masashi Hamauzu, the composer for Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, was not expecting to be assigned the soundtrack to the game. In the liner notes for the original soundtrack album, he states that he was "still in high school when that lovable character first made his debut in Final Fantasy", but that the "Chocobo Theme" made a big impression on him, leading him to often think to himself that he would "love to try doing this kind of work". The soundtrack was the first solo album that Hamauzu had produced. When he wrote his own Chocobo themes for the Chocobo no Fushigina Dungeon Original Soundtrack, he decided to arrange the opening and ending of the album for a fifty-piece orchestra, which lead to the creation of the orchestrated Chocobo no Fushigina Dungeon Coi Vanni Gialli album. In the liner notes for that album, he explains that his motivation for creating the orchestral works was because "Demand for classical music in Japan is still low compared with other countries" and he wanted "to spread the word on this style of music by any means necessary". He ends the note by exhorting his listeners to "take your time" with classical music such as the album, so that one day they will appreciate it.

Hamauzu has not been involved in the production of any other Chocobo soundtracks. Chocobo's Dungeon 2's soundtrack was composed by a group of five composers, and was the last Chocobo game soundtrack to not be mainly composed of remixes of previous Final Fantasy and Chocobo music. Hamauzu was not involved in the creation of either the remixes or original tracks for these albums. His role was filled by Kumi Tanioka for Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon, Kenji Ito for Chocobo Racing, and Yuzo Takahashi for Chocobo and the Magic Picture Book: The Witch, The Maiden, and the Five Heroes.

Unlike the soundtracks to the numbered Final Fantasy games, no tracks from the Chocobo soundtracks have appeared in any compilation albums produced by Square Enix. Pieces from the series have also not appeared in any of the official Final Fantasy music concerts, although a piece based on the "Chocobo theme", "Swing de Chocobo", has been played at the 2005 More Friends concert in Los Angeles, the 2006 Voices concert in Japan, and in the worldwide Distant Worlds concert tour from 2007 to date. On February 6, 2011 the Australian Eminence Symphony Orchestra played a concert in Tokyo as part of the Game Music Laboratory concert series as a tribute to the music of Kenji Ito and Hiroki Kikuta. The concert included "Treasure Chest of the Heart" from Chocobo Racing, sung by Jillian Aversa.