Akira Yamaoka on composing music for the Silent Hill movie and games

While a game’s visuals and gameplay usually get the lion’s share of attention, the music and the sounds are important as well. Just ask Akira Yamaoka, music composer for Konami‘s Silent Hill series. With Silent Hill 5 (PS3, Xbox 360) currently in development, Mr. Yamaoka shared his insights on what it was like to come up with the music for the Silent Hill movie and games.

Find out what Mr. Yamaoka had to say after the jump!

With twenty years of experience composing music, Akira Yamaoka has had a lot to bring to the table as far as the audio for the Silent Hill games and movie were concerned. In a recent interview, Mr. Yamaoka openly discussed what it was like to help to bring the atmosphere of Konami‘s Silent Hill to life.

According to Mr. Yamaoka, he wanted to make the Silent Hill movie like the game, audio-wise and not the other way round. Thus, he made use of interactive music similar to that of Konami’s Silent Hill game for the PlayStation 1. Nevertheless, even Yamaoka admitted it’s possible to “go deeper” than merely having the background music change depending on what’s happening in the game.

Does that mean that Yamaoka will be implementing new stuff for Konami’s Silent Hill 5 (PS3, Xbox 360)? Perhaps, as the following statement suggests:

Hmm, after all, the next one’s going to be on a next-generation platform, so we’ll utilize Dolby surround sound of course. We’re trying to do some new things, but it’s nothing like the type of interactivity I was just talking about. The music presentation could be more detailed.

At the end of the day, Mr. Yamaoka believes it’s all about the interactivity. Since game music and sound composers are part of the creative team behind games like Silent Hill, Mr. Yamaoka thinks that they should be given the recognition they deserve.