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The Mashup Makers
~Creating 72 Uniquely Harmonized Songs~
Part 1


▶ Yo Oyama
ZIZZ STUDIO: Audio Producer
In addition to composing and arranging music, as well as working as a recording and mixing engineer, Yo Oyama also plays guitar and bass for the Muse's music.
Favorite Song: "Fruit of Evil" as performed by Aoi Fuji

▶ Katsuo Kawasumi
ZIZZ STUDIO: Songwriter
Katsuo Kawasumi wrote twelve of the Muse's songs in Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord.
Favorite Song: "Shadow Boundary" as performed by Saki Mitsuki

▶ Ikuko Ebata
ZIZZ STUDIO: Lyricist
In addition to acting as the Supervising Director and Production Assistant for Fairy Fencer F: Refrain Chord, Ikuko Ebata also oversaw the Latin translation in "Ignis Fatuus" by Kaori Oda.
Favorite Song: "Ignis Fatuus" as performed by Kaori Oda

▶ Makoto Kitano
Compile Heart: Producer
Favorite Song: "Notes of Faith" as performed by Yui Ishikawa
Pat-1, Section-1
Time for a little chat with ZIZZ...
What made you decide to take on this project?
Makoto
Kitano
At first, my guess is you thought the music would have a very active feel to it, but what did you think when you heard the music would be mashup-focused? (Mashup: A musical technique of combining two different songs into one.)
Yo Oyama
It was certainly an unprecedented idea.
Combining the music of two characters, one light and one dark... I'll be honest, at first, I didn't really see it. But, you mentioned that you'd already been refused by another company, and I remember you saying something like, "We know it's worthy of being rejected out of hand, but please hear us out."
Makoto
Kitano
Yeah that sounds about right.
At first we reached out to another production studio, but they told us: "We get what you want to do, and if it was one song combined with one, that's at least something that's been done before. But three combined with three? Or six combined with six? As interesting an idea as that is, it's just not possible." They came back to us with a lot of other ideas, like asking if we wanted one song with different arrangements, but that just wasn't what we wanted to do.
When thinking about someone who might be interested in this idea, ZIZZ STUDIO came to mind. We had originally planned on asking them to help out with background music but then we thought, "Why not ask ZIZZ STUDIO to do the whole thing?"
Yo Oyama
When I first heard the idea, I had a feeling that this might be pretty tough. Then they said they wanted to do six songs combined with six other songs.
Makoto
Kitano
Yeah, that was the starting point.
Yo Oyama
I said "Look I can't promise we'll be able to do this, but let's start by combining one song with another." Let's try making a Light and Dark song, combine them together, and take it from there. That way, if it didn't work out and we got fired from the project, well, at least we tried. But I was pretty interested at that point.
We went through a lot of testing to match the major key Light song, and the minor key Dark song, but it really impressed me when we managed to combine the first two songs.
I thought, "Whoa, this is actually very interesting!" Plus, there were so many thing I learned from making that first song.
When we got the initial response, "Hey that was great, everybody liked it! Please do the next two or three!" Honestly, I was a little nervous about it!

Makoto
Kitano
After we got that first song done we were like, "Alright, let's move on to 2x2 now!" Take it in steps, you know? Like, how far can we take this?
Yo Oyama
Yeah, you were pretty good at persuading us. You were like "How about you try doing two next? And, if you can do two, you can do three right?"
You were very encouraging and before I knew it we were working on six!
And while it was certainly an interesting project at the start, I feel like it became one that was actually worthwhile in the end.
Everyone
(Laugh)
Part-1, Section-2
We couldn't hear the overlapping words when the songs were combined.
What were some of the issues you had to be aware of when crafting lyrics, and how did you approach differentiating the songs?
Ikuko Ebata
At first we had temporary lyrics (just singing things like "la la la"), but we soon realized that we couldn't really hear the words when the songs were combined because they started overlapping.
When we put together tentative lyrics, we noticed that if the words of the two songs were totally different, we couldn't understand them. I told Kawasumi-San to make them rhyme or something! (Laughs)
Katsuo Kawasumi
At first I was told we had three Light songs and three Dark songs coming in, then remember being told "Alright, just got six more songs!" And I thought, "He really took the job. Oyama-San is really going to write six Light and six Dark songs..."
Everyone
(Big Laughter)
Yo Oyama