Kumi Tanioka

• 1. Hiroshima Roots And Piano Lessons

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  Kumi Tanioka was born in Hiroshima, Japan. Her childhood there included studying music and composition while attending school. She enjoyed listening to video game music because her younger brother was a gamer. Among the composers she grew familiar with were Square employees Hitoshi Sakimoto, Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito. Her favorite pianists at the time were Piotr Paleczny and Hiromi Uehara. Tanioka attended Kobe University where she studied music and joined a choir. She graduated with a degree in musical performance. Although she had planned on performing music as a career, during college she became more interested in composing than performance. This shift happened because of her childhood experiences with video games.

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• 2. Square Enix Sound Effects Beginnings

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  Tanioka began working as a video game composer in 1998. She joined video game developer and publisher Square that same year. Her first game works were sound effects for the Psikyo games Taisen Hot Gimmick and The Fallen Angels. These titles released in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Later in 1998, she composed her first soundtrack to a game in the Chocobo series. That project was Chocobo's Dungeon 2. She worked on it with Yasuhiro Kawakami, Tsuyoshi Sekito and Kenji Ito. Her second work in the series was also her first solo soundtrack. It belonged to Dice de Chocobo, a video game adaption of a board game. She composed for two other projects over the next two years. Those included All Star Pro-Wrestling with Tsuyoshi Sekito and Kenichiro Fukui. Blue Wing Blitz followed by herself alone.

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• 3. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Era

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  After Final Fantasy XI, she composed the soundtrack to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. This role led to her composing the soundtracks to the other five games in the series. Between the games, she worked on the soundtracks to Code Age Commanders, Code Age Brawls, Project Sylpheed, and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon. Unlike the soundtracks to the numbered Final Fantasy games, no songs from the Crystal Chronicles or Chocobo soundtracks have appeared in any compilation albums produced by Square Enix. Songs from the two series have also not appeared in any of the official Final Fantasy music concerts. An exception occurred when Morning Sky from the Crystal Chronicles soundtrack was played in the first Games in Concert performance. That event took place in Utrecht, Netherlands on the 26th of November 2006. Floor Jansen of the band After Forever performed it alongside the Metropole Orchestra.

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• 4. Departure And Riquismo Founding

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  On the 28th of February 2010, Tanioka announced her departure from Square Enix. She left following several other Square Enix composers such as Kenichiro Fukui, Junya Nakano, and Masashi Hamauzu. She joined the composer's group GE-ON-DAN with many other composers like Nakano. In 2011, she became one of the founding members of Ringmasters, a non-exclusive worldwide group of artists and composers. She later left that group. She composed in 2011 music for iOS interactive storybooks including Snow White, The Ugly Duckling, and Hansel and Gretel. Before founding her own independent company, Riquismo, in August 2012, she worked independently. Riquismo is not a full studio. Tanioka continues to work independently. She has said that she decided to become a freelance composer because she wanted to write for a wider variety of subjects. Since its founding she has composed music for Ragnarok Odyssey and MA.YU.MO.RI.

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• 5. World Music And Medieval Instruments

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  Kumi Tanioka's signature style, especially for the Crystal Chronicles games, is that of world music. She has described the musical style for the soundtrack to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles as being based on ancient instruments. The soundtrack has extensive use of many medieval and renaissance musical instruments like the recorder, the crumhorn and the lute. This creates a distinctively rustic feel. It also follows the practices and styles of medieval music. She says the idea came to her while looking at illustrations of the game world. That visual input gave her the idea of making world music where tracks would not be limited to a single country or culture. She feels that specific instruments do not necessarily need to be tied to a specific geographic region. She tries to see how an Indian instrument and a Celtic instrument might work with each other. For the soundtrack to Ring of Fates, Tanioka tried to focus on creating a new landscape containing the same atmosphere.

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• 6. The Star Onions Live Connection

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  During this period she joined The Star Onions, a band made of Square Enix composers that arranges and performs Final Fantasy XI music. The group has released two albums to date. Tanioka likes to incorporate piano music into her soundtracks which she typically performs herself. She did the performances in the Ring of Fates soundtrack without any sheet music. She preferred instead to improvise because she likes to play piano. She took extensive piano lessons as a child. Piano and choral music remain the biggest influences on her musical style. She also claims to have been influenced by music from a wide variety of cultures like Indonesian, Irish and Balinese music. Tanioka has performed live at several events including 2011's Final Fantasy XI-themed VanaCon or 2021's Tokyo Game Show for the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remaster. She likes to do live performances as she feels it connects her with the listener's response to her music unlike when composing where she can only imagine audience responses.

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