Music of Chrono Trigger - Creation and Development

Creation and Development

Chrono Trigger was scored primarily by Yasunori Mitsuda, with assistance by veteran Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. A sound programmer at the time, Mitsuda was unhappy with his pay and threatened to leave Square if he could not compose music. Final Fantasy developer Hironobu Sakaguchi, one of the three designers for the upcoming Chrono Trigger, suggested he score the game, remarking, "maybe your salary will go up." Mitsuda reflected, "I wanted to create music that wouldn't fit into any established genre...music of an imaginary world. The game's director, Masato Kato, was my close friend, and so I'd always talk with him about the setting and the scene before going into writing." Mitsuda has said that he was unsure of how to start, saying that he "must've tried to start writing the music 4 times" and that it took "a month and a half" before he knew how to compose the music for Chrono Trigger.

Mitsuda slept in his studio several nights, and attributed certain songs, such as "To Far Away Times", to inspiring dreams. He later attributed this song to an idea he was developing before Chrono Trigger, reflecting that the song was made in dedication to "a certain person with whom I wanted to share a generation." Mitsuda tried to use leitmotifs of the Chrono Trigger main theme to create a sense of consistency in the soundtrack. He also suffered a hard drive crash that lost around forty in-progress tracks. After Mitsuda contracted stomach ulcers, regular Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu joined the project to compose ten songs and finish the score. Mitsuda returned to watch the ending with the staff before the game's release, crying upon seeing the finished scene. Mitsuda considers Chrono Trigger a landmark title which helped mature his talent. While Mitsuda later held that the title piece was "rough around the edges," he maintains that it had "significant influence on my life as a composer." At the time of the game's release, the number of tracks and sound effects was unprecedented, causing the soundtrack to span three discs in its 1995 commercial pressing.