The Music of Ys: Falcom Sound Team jdk

The most famous anonymous band in video games.

The first sound of Ys was written by an eighteen-year-old. Yuzo Koshiro composed most of Ys I, with a handful of tracks by Mieko Ishikawa; for Ys II the ratio inverted, Ishikawa carrying the bulk of more than fifty songs while Koshiro contributed signature pieces including "To Make the End of Battle." Between them they wrote melodies that players have hummed for nearly forty years.

From late 1988, Falcom folded its composers into a collective: Falcom Sound Team jdk, founded under Ishikawa's leadership. The house rule, unusual then and now, is that the team signs as one: individual track authorship is officially unrevealed, a deliberate tradition meant to make the music belong to Falcom rather than to stars. The separate jdk BAND, first active 1990 to 1996 and revived in later forms, is the performing arm, contracted musicians who play the catalogue live and on arrange albums.

THE NAMES BEHIND THE NAME

A collective with a memory

Koshiro's beginning

Ys I and II were among Koshiro's first scores, written on the PC-8801's FM chip before he left Falcom in the 1989 staff exodus. Their influence on RPG music is difficult to overstate.

Ishikawa, the constant

Ishikawa joined Falcom in 1987, led the sound team through its founding decade, and remains at the company as a director: the living thread from the first Ys to the current one.

The live tradition

Falcom has sold its music as a product in its own right since the 1980s, soundtrack albums, arrange albums, and concert bands, which is why Ys tunes survived eras when the games themselves were hard to buy in the West.

The Music of Ys: Falcom Sound Team jdk

THE NAMES BEHIND THE NAME

THE FIRST WORD