Soyo Oka

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Soyo Oka
Background information
Also known as DJ Alice
Born April 9, 1964
Japanese flag Hyogo, Japan
Occupation(s) Musician, composer, performer
Instrument(s) Piano
Years active 1987 - present
Website http://www.dj-alice.com/

Soyo Oka (岡　素世 (おか そよ) Oka Sóyo, b. April 9th 1964) (also known as DJ Alice) is a Japanese composer and musician, most recognised for her video game soundtracks during the 1980s and 1990s.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Oka was born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo, Japan. She first started learning to play the piano in 1970 when she was six years old, and she started composing music nearly a decade later in 1979, when she was fifteen.

Oka attended the Osaka College of Music in Osaka, Japan, majoring in Composition. During her time as a student, she began studying the music of Koji Kondo, and started composing music for video games, feeling that composing video game music would be a promising career. She was later hired by Nintendo as an inhouse composer in 1987, and had the opportunity to work on a game score with Koji Kondo (whom she still holds in high esteem to this day).

Having left Nintendo in 1995, she has worked and continues to work as a freelance musician, including work as a producer, composing scores for television, radio, software, websites and CD-ROMs in Japan. She also performs on piano for various events and projects. Companies she has worked for include Sony, Mitsubishi, Seiko, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Yamaha and Toshiba, amongst others. It is unconfirmed whether she has worked on any more video game soundtracks since 1997, although in 2000 as part of her RocketBaby interview, she mentioned that she may be working on some game soundtracks for Sony Playstation 2 and Sega Dreamcast. Whether these projects came to pass or not is unknown.

[edit] Musical Style

A large amount of Oka's music is fairly liberal and distinctly jazz based, often making use of irregular time signatures and uneven phrase lengths. More commonly heard are musical traits such as syncopation, changes in tonality (modulations) and a wide selection of modern jazz chords and voicings, of which are perhaps the largest staple of her music. Considering the limited sound capabilities of the NES and SNES Nintendo consoles she composed for (particularly in terms of polyphony), this was quite an accomplishment. However, even though much of her music has a modern sound, the majority of her work is still consonant and thematic, and frequently utilises melodic lines and hooks.

The majority of her work shows clear influence taken from Koji Kondo's music, and as a result, occasionally her soundtracks are confused for having been written by him (particularly Super Mario Kart). Additionally, she has cited Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy, Stravinsky, John Williams, Lyle Mays, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Queen, and Chick Corea as some of her musical influences.

[edit] Works

Approximately half of the games Oka has worked on have not been released outside of Japan. These have been denoted with a "(J)".

[edit] Nintendo Entertainment System

[edit] Famicom Disk System

[edit] Super Nintendo Entertainment System

[edit] Sony Playstation

  • Lagnacure (J) (1997): sound effects
  • Battle Bugs (J) (1997): composer


*Most of the material on this score was originally composed by Koji Kondo for the Super Mario Bros. series of games on the NES, and as a result, Oka predominantly worked as an arranger for this project; only two of the pieces of music are original and entirely unique to the game.

**The SNES version of Wario's Woods has a largely different soundtrack, though a small amount of Oka's music is used. It is likely that she had no direct involvement with this project.

[edit] Notes and References

[edit] External Links

[edit] Related Music Releases

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