The Joy of Researching

A game I've had lots of fun making music for1 came out today, and it got me thinking about the pre-production process. The game is set in a traditional Japanese inn and has a focus on its onsen2, and one of the very first things I've been asked was to go hard on that traditional Japanese sound while retaining some familiar tunes in the series. I don't want to dwell too much on the actual work because this is not the right place to do so, but I'd like to share the titular joy of researching. I've done a few Japanese-inspired tracks before (which is why I was picked for this one), and my research had consisted of reading Wikipedia articles and watching YouTube videos. It was always pretty superficial, though, and this time I wanted to have a firmer grasp on it all, even though of course I would've never been able to make something 100% accurate, nor I wanted to. When you look for info on traditional Japanese music there's a lot of talk about scales. It took me a couple of days of…