Masashi Hamauzu - Musical Style and Influences

Musical Style and Influences

Hamauzus composes music in many different styles, often using multiple styles throughout the various pieces of a soundtrack. He mostly creates classical and ambient music, and uses the piano predominantly as an instrument. He frequently incorporates dissonance to provide an atmospheric effect. In Unlimited Saga, for example, the style of his compositions mix classical marches, tango music, electronic ambiance, instrumental solos, Bossa nova, and jazz.

He cites animation composers Hiroshi Miyagawa and Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra, impressionist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, and his father as major musical influences. During his adolescence, he enjoyed listening to the works of Sakamoto and Miyagawa. While attending university, he developed an appreciation for classical music, especially the compositions of Ravel and Debussy.

Read more about this topic:  Masashi Hamauzu

Famous quotes containing the words musical, style and/or influences:

    “I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
    When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
    With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
    Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
    The skies, the fountains, every region near
    Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
    So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”
    —André Malraux (1901–1976)

    “Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)