Yasunori Mitsuda

Yasunori Mitsuda is a Japanese musician and composer of video game and soundtrack music. He has been the lead composer for several games in the Xeno series and has contributed to the music of several others. He founded Procyon Studio, a music production studio, and Sleigh Bells, a record company.

Biography
Mitsuda was born on the 21st of January, 1972 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan (in the former city of Tokuyama). He began learning classical piano at the age of five but quit a year later. He got into computers in the 4th-5th grade of elementary school due to owning a personal computer (which at the time was rare), with which he experimented with composing electronic music as well as making basic games. In high school, Mitsuda gained a serious interest in composing soundtrack music after watching movies such as Railman, and decided to enrol in Tokyo's Junior College of Music.

While in the college, Mitsuda got a job as an intern with Wolf Team (now merged into Bandai Namco). This internship lasted for about a year, during which time Mitsuda worked under Motoi Sakuraba, a composer with whom Mitsuda would work on various projects later in life. After finishing his college course, Mitsuda got a job as composer and sound engineer at Square's sound team in April 1992.

Mitsuda's first substantial piece of composition work at Square was the soundtrack for , which Mitsuda claims is his "landmark" work. At Square he worked with Tetsuya Takahashi to write the music for Xenogears. He also produced arrangement albums of his soundtracks, such as.

Mitsuda left Square in 1998 to become a freelance composer. In 2001 he founded his own music production studio, Procyon Studio, and alongside it a record company, Sleigh Bells. He has worked under this label until the present day, composing music for games in the Xeno series as well as other video games such as ', soundtracks such as ', and independent projects such as .

Relevance to the Xeno series
Mitsuda is one of the leading composers across the Xeno series as a whole, being responsible for a substantial amount of music for many games in the series.

Xenogears

 * Composer (all tracks)
 * Arranger
 * Performer (keyboard)
 * Music producer

Xenosaga Episode I

 * Composer (almost all tracks)
 * Arranger and orchestrator
 * Music producer
 * Music programming
 * Performer (keyboard)
 * Synthesiser programming
 * ProTools operator

Xenosaga Episode II

 * Composer

Xenosaga Episode III

 * Composer (Song of Nephilim (Xenosaga III ver.))

Xenoblade Chronicles

 * Composer (Ending Theme - Beyond the Sky, Beyond the Sky (Acoustic Arrange))

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

 * Composer (Xenoblade II - Where It All Began -, Elysium, in the Blue Sky, Elysium in the Dream, Where We Used to Be, The Towering Yggdrasil, Our Eternal Land, We Are the Chosen Ones, Over the Sinful Entreaty, Ever Come to an End, Shadow of the Lowlands, The Decision, A Faint Hope,, Past From Far Distance, With People and Darkness, The Power of Jin, Praetor Amalthus - The Acting God -, Orbital Ring, Our Hope, Parting, The Tomorrow With You, Escape - Going Through Clouds -, , White All Around Us, One Last You, New Area, , , , Peaceful Mind, , Skill in Action, One Last You (Piano Arrange))
 * Sound Producer (Audio budgeting, musician booking, schedule management, sheet music proofreading)
 * Recording coordinator
 * Copyist
 * Performer (percussion)

Torna ~ The Golden Country

 * Composer (The Beginning of Our Memory, Over Despair and Animus, Our Paths May Never Cross, A Moment of Eternity)
 * Music producer

Xenoblade Chronicles 3

 * Composer