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00:00This is a very big game. This is a very big soundtrack.
00:06In the musical universe of Shadows, there is the flight covering the score.
00:12There is Teke Teke doing music for Naoe's special key moments.
00:19There's Thunder Drum featuring Tig's doing Yasuke moments.
00:24I will keep this close. My thanks, Lady Nene.
00:29We also have source music in the game. That's traditional Japanese music.
00:38When we start any pitch process, we want to get a broad spectrum of composers to bring in their music.
00:43And then we scramble it and we do a blind listen.
00:45We didn't guess that it was the flight. The team just targeted in on their pitch.
00:49It was creative. It brought the world to life. So it was a slam dunk from the start.
00:54Rather than looking back at the history of Japan, it's looking at how the culture of Japan has influenced modern films, modern games.
01:05At the same time, we didn't just want to write Western Hollywood music and then have them play at the top of it.
01:12But we always want to kind of include those instruments.
01:16It's great having new instruments to work with because it keeps you fresh.
01:20Doing the stealth music for Naoe was really interesting and exciting.
01:25Joe had the idea of getting whispered vocals as if it was inside Naoe's head.
01:31Not what people would normally ask you to do because there's dialogue in the game and we don't want to confuse people.
01:35But it just works when you're creepy, especially if you play with headphones on. It's really cool.
01:40When I came on the project, I saw a sizzle reel with a song by Teke Teke.
01:52And the coolness factor was amazing. It's like, oh my God, this fits.
01:58It's funny that the audio team and music team and the development team find them almost at the same time.
02:10Then everyone was, we need that band and was just, this is perfect.
02:21They asked us to be us and to write music within the world of shadows.
02:27So in a way it was like working on a new album, kind of.
02:32So it was inspiring to interpret this shinobi a little bit different.
02:42So I wanted more real shinobi, what was their philosophy.
02:48It's different than Bushido. Bushido is for samurai.
02:52For example, in Bushido, die in a battle, it's honor.
02:57But for shinobi, death is too easy to escape from suffering.
03:03They have to survive to complete the mission.
03:06I wanted to bring that philosophy with the lyrics.
03:14At a certain point, the creative director said, let's associate Teke Teke with Naoe.
03:19Next question is, what could we do for Yasuke then?
03:23I was in a music festival in France and I met those two super nice guys, part of Thunder Drums.
03:31When I explained the type of music that we needed, the guitarist was like, we have to do this.
03:37We have to do this. I have all the gear.
03:39A few weeks later, we found Diggs, the author.
03:43We were really lucky.
03:45It was like a nice match.
03:52I was like, okay, here we go.
03:53Even though I'm Tanzanian, I've never written any of my songs in Swahili.
03:58So I had to just channel energy from somewhere else.
04:02You do the same.
04:05There's some really beautiful metaphorical stuff.
04:08I was trying to be poetic.
04:09Well, you were poetic.
04:10It was very poetic.
04:11You were very poetic.
04:13I can't.
04:15A lot of the tracks started with Felix and I jamming on a drum kit and a guitar,
04:20which is probably not how a lot of video game scores are written.
04:25I will have that.
04:27And it's something that Felix and I have done together for a decade.
04:29We've heard it so much.
04:31Is this going to work?
04:33And then Tiggs coming on and then the flute and it's just these little steps.
04:37Of course, like a lot of Taiko drums was a big part of how we wanted to blend
04:44a more traditional drum kit and Japanese influence.
04:49Certain words, if you translate them from English to Swahili,
04:52the word becomes ten times longer than what it is.
04:56It became a whole challenge of like keeping a certain flow.
05:00The clarity of the message and the story is just fantastic.
05:04It's also so catchy.
05:06Yeah, super catchy.
05:07Super catchy.
05:08If anything, we hope that people hear these tracks and when they come in they're like,
05:15whoa, like where did this come from?
05:17This is cool.
05:18And we have a version of the main team where Maya, the singer from TKTK and Tiggs
05:25the author are talking to each other in two different languages.
05:28And it gives really something special and something that when you listen to it, yeah.
05:33That's it.
05:34This is our game.
05:39We are using a lot of diegetic music.
05:42We did work, Benedict and I, with two producers, Japanese producers living in Canada.
05:48They were able to find a great musician like Yukihiro Goto, a master of the bi-war,
05:54that were great at crafting all the folk songs we needed.
05:58When we're looking at the traditional Japanese instruments,
06:00there's such a beautiful range of shapes and sizes and sounds.
06:05I'm really happy we were able to bring the importance of the Sushibue and Naoi's arc.