Tsuyoshi Sekito

Tsuyoshi Sekito (関戸 剛) is a Japanese video game composer, arranger, and musician who has been employed at Square Enix since 1995. As a composer, he is best known for scoring Brave Fencer Musashi (1998), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) and The Last Remnant (2008). He also plays the guitar in the rock bands The Black Mages and The Star Onions; both groups arrange and perform compositions from the Final Fantasy series.

Biography
Tsuyoshi Sekito was born in Osaka, Japan. His career as a video game composer began at the end of the 1980s when he joined Konami's sound team. The first game he scored was Space Manbow in 1989. The following year, he created the music for SD Snatcher and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake along with several other composers. He was subsequently assigned to score the sports titles Double Dribble: 5-on-5 (1991) and Soccer Superstars (1995) and the cartoon adaptations Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers (1991) and Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (1993), often as the leading composer. In 1994, he created the soundtrack to the arcade game Lethal Enforcers II: Gunfighters with Yuichi Sakakura. He left Konami in 1995 to join the Osaka branch of Square.

After joining Square, Sekito did not compose any games until 1998; his first assignment for the company was to create the music for Brave Fencer Musashi. In 1999, he assisted in scoring the soundtrack to Chocobo's Dungeon 2 by creating 12 pieces. His fellow composers were Kumi Tanioka and Kenji Ito. The following year, he composed music for the Japan-only All Star Pro-Wrestling along with Kenichiro Fukui and Tanioka. Sekito went solo for the game's sequel, All Star Pro-Wrestling II (2001), and was joined by Fukui again for the third and final installment, All Star Pro-Wrestling III (2003).

In 2002, after Sekito and Fukui's collaboration on All Star Pro-Wrestling, they decided to arrange some of the pieces in the Final Fantasy series, composed by Nobuo Uematsu. The two presented their arrangements to Uematsu who enjoyed their work. Although hesitant at first, Uematsu agreed to join Sekito and Fukui in forming the rock band The Black Mages; Sekito served as the group's guitarist. In 2003, Keiji Kawamori, Arata Hanyuda, and Michio Okamiya also joined the band. The Black Mages have released three studio albums, and have appeared at several concerts to promote their albums.

To create the music for The Last Remnant, Sekito utilized his guitar collection for different tracks and used different guitar sounds and techniques including detuning and delay effects on the album. Sekito did not use an orchestra for the game's music, but chose particular instruments and players to make the music an assortment of the best for each part.

In Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Sekito felt unrestricted while composing music for the Nintendo 3DS, saying that he was able to create songs that would make a game player feel that were in a large world even on a small device due to the game console's 3D graphics.

For the game Final Fantasy Explorers, Sekito had to begin composing music with very few visual effects finished, and thus composed a wide variety of music to fit however it turned out.

Musical style and influences
Sekito cites heavy metal bands Van Halen and Dream Theater and film score composer Jerry Goldsmith as musical influences.