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Photo: Josep, Banner: Sorcerian (September 6th, 2019)
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Welcome to an unofficial set of analytic spreadsheets focusing on specific musicians' contributions to Nihon Falcom's video games.

Falcom has earned a decades-old reputation for supplying its game products with sound effects (SFX) and background music (BGM) appropriate in-game and well appreciated outside that context. Their musicians and collaborators, using increasingly complex means of production, have iterated upon their work and patched a house style together. In turn, Falcom BGM boasts distinctive and pliable melodies, befitting chord usage, unique arrangement of instruments and rhythm, and plenty of surprises. Fans of their music, such as us, thoroughly praise, criticize, and discuss a variety of topics. We like to scrutinize individual BGM tracks in a score and collect the public histories of Falcom employees and affiliates.

This sheet set's purpose is to determine who composed what. For various reasons unknown, speculated, or hinted at in primary sources, Falcom does not list specific BGM track credits for its musicians per album release, in-game credits, or any other source.

Since the late-1980s, Falcom has credited all of its internal audio developers as "Sound Team J.D.K." (or "Sound Team jdk" since 1995), which evenly distributes credit regardless of how much each person contributed to a game. This contrasts with how a majority of game publishers and developers give specific track credits and responsibilities to specific developers. For example, Yuzo Koshiro famously requested and received credit for his music used in early-1990s console games like Streets of Rage 2. Over time this level of recognition became increasingly common in this industry. However, some cases of relative non-credit remain—either via a "sound team" representing developers' involvement and collaboration on a project, or listing of names without specific track credits.

Our goal with the following sheets is to organize as accurate a history of Falcom music post-1989 as possible by guessing the origins of BGM tracks in each game. We trawl through album releases, unofficially-extracted game soundtracks ("game rips"), and musicians' non-Falcom works in order to learn much about their composition and arrangement styles. This way, we should understand the differences between artists and, thus, which music they likely did for each score.

If you have suggestions or feedback to offer about the project, be sure to discuss the project with us on r/Falcom, its Discord server or elsewhere.
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Disclaimer
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We do not represent Nihon Falcom, nor any members of Sound Team jdk former or present (all rights reserved).

Under Falcom's free-use music policy (https://www.falcom.co.jp/music-use), we have legal clearance to share links to music from Falcom games and albums, ranging from uploads on video streaming sites (ex. YouTube, Vimeo, Nico Nico Douga, etc) to music streaming platforms carrying Falcom music (ex. Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and so forth). Though we have used "game rips" as a primary source for part of our work, sheet contributors have sourced from either their own copies of games or have listened to music lawfully through rips supplied by other owners.

For select research, we have used the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine (all rights reserved) to view older versions of websites owned by Nihon Falcom or the individual game developers/musicians referenced throughout these spreadsheets.

We ignore access requests via the Share menu for this project. If you're interested in contributing guesses to certain sheets or the whole set, please DM one of the coordinators (names below) on Discord via the r/Falcom server.
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Methods and Limits
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Our means for speculating on track composers fall under two categories:

A. Direct confirmation via in-game data or feedback from musicians via social media or related communication.
We link to these online sources within sheets and connect them to related track guesses. In recent years, Chinese fans unearthed BGM data tables from three Falcom releases: Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys (corresponding to tracks from Ys IV J.D.K. Special), VM Japan, and Nayuta no Kiseki. These datasets contain codes assigned to each track which indicate which composer wrote them. Because these games came out each in a different decade, that gives us enough of a foundation to begin the process in Section B.

Aside from these tables, contributors have solicited certain Falcom musicians for track confirmations, such as Atsushi Shirakawa and Ryo Takeshita. This method is generally less reliable than BGM tables because Shirakawa, Takeshita, and others have to recall which tracks they did after a considerable gap of time. Because of this, at least one former musician (Naoki Kaneda) has declined to offer track confirmations due to fears of misrepresenting their work (and others' work) at Falcom.

B. Speculative guesses of composer identity per track/game, based on process of elimination after analyzing musicians' identifiable composition and arrangement styles.
This approach accounts for the variety between contributors' guess tables. Inevitably, Falcom's attempts to enforce a house style on their games' soundtracks make it difficult to figure out who did which track.

For example, a track like "The Merciless Savior" from Sora no Kiseki SC shares enough stylistic elements in common with musicians who worked on that game to make it futile to guess, with any confidence, who made it alone or in collaboration. Our remaining option is to determine who likely didn't compose/arrange a track. We then narrow the options until it's more practical to analyze remaining candidate musicians and make track guesses. When possible, listening to non-Falcom works by musicians can reveal a lot more about their musical styles and evolution, all of which helps clarify ambiguities.

Please keep in mind that, while our goal is to determine who composed which tracks, Falcom musicians share virtual instruments, musical ideas, and arrangement techniques between each other across projects. This can aid or hinder process of elimination. It's roughly as easy to mistake one musician's track for another based on commonalities as it is to accurately separate certain tracks from others and determine their composers based on similar arrangement style. In games where outside musicians, like Yukihiro Jindo, apply their touch to Sound Team jdk compositions, this method loses some utility depending on how severely the arrangers modify the originals.

Given all of the above, we cannot guarantee that our guesses and theories about Falcom music are fully accurate or precise.

One concern is the possibility of biased and/or self-fulfilling analysis and track speculation. Constantly relistening to musicians' works, in turn re-examining our assumptions and foundational knowledge of Falcom-related music, should mitigate the potential of bias in these sheets. We're definitely aware that our collaboration here constitutes a fluid history which Falcom and/or related musicians may or may not invalidate at a later point. Our goal remains to stimulate appreciation of Falcom music and thoughts about its evolution, and there's every good reason for others to challenge our speculation.

Update (2019-12-01) -- Massive leak with 15 years worth of Sound Team jdk data by an unknown Japanese atwiki contributor, including all the music credits of FC/SC/the 3rd, Zero/Ao, Sen I/II/III, Nayuta, Tokyo Xanadu and Ys VI/Origin/Seven/Celceta/VIII, with even detailed notes of the original composer/arranger and music codes. The leaked credits look highly credible and a lot of these are very internally consistent.
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Complete Sheets
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Below's a chronologically descending list of games with at least one full or comprehensive BGM table with guesses and/or confirmations. Though these sheets are "complete", they are open to revision and additions depending on context.

Asteriskes indicate that the game's table isn't complete, but shows comprehensive survey of the soundtrack which has influenced track guesses:

Pre-1993 games:
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (PC-x8)
Dinosaur (PC-x8)
Lord Monarch + Advanced Lord Monarch (PC-98)
Brandish (PC-98)
Popful Mail (PC-x8)
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II (PC-x8)

1993-2000 games:
Brandish 2: The Planet Buster (PC-98)
Ys IV: Dawn of Ys (PC Engine CD, tracks based on Ys IV J.D.K. Special)
The Legend of Xanadu/Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu (PC Engine CD)
The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch (PC-98)
Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan (PC-98)
*Revival Xanadu (PC-98)
The Legend of Xanadu II/Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu II (PC Engine CD)
Revival Xanadu II Remix (PC-98)
Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sang (Super Famicom)
The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermilion (PC-98)
New The Legend of Heroes (Windows)
Sorcerian Forever (Windows)Vantage Master (Windows)Ys & Ys II Eternal (Windows)
The Legend of Heroes V: Cagesong of the Ocean (Windows)
The Legend of Heroes III: White Witch (Windows)
The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermilion (Windows)

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2001-2009 games:
Ys I Complete (Windows)Zwei!! (Windows)
VM Japan (Windows)
Dinosaur Resurrection (Windows)
Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (Windows)
Gurumin (Windows)
Trails in the Sky FC (Windows)
RINNE (Windows)
Ys: The Oath in Felghana Pre Arrange Version (Windows, unused Sound Team jdk soundtrack)
Xanadu Next (Windows)
Trails in the Sky SC (Windows)
Ys Origin (Windows)
Trails in the Sky the 3rd (Windows)
Zwei II (Windows)
Ys Seven (PSP)

2010-2019 games:
Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki (PSP)
Zero no Kiseki (PSP)
Ao no Kiseki (PSP)
Nayuta no Kiseki (PSP)
Ys: Memories in Celceta (PS Vita)
Trails of Cold Steel (PS3/PS Vita)
Trails of Cold Steel II (PS3/PS Vita)
Tokyo Xanadu (PS Vita/PS4)
Ys VIII -Lacrimosa of DANA- (PS Vita/PS4)
Trails of Cold Steel III (PS4)
Trails of Cold Steel IV (PS4)
Ys IX -Monstrum NOX- (PS4)
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Ongoing Goals
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Most soundtracks now have a sheet with some foundation. It's not essential that all tracklists with guesses have detailed notes, but we can always work on detailing how a particular musical piece matches that particular artist.

Sheets started but which still need the most work include:

Popful Mail (Super Famicom)
Brandish VT
Lord Monarch Original
Falcom Classics II
Brandish 4
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Sheet Contributors
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• Josep (runs Falcom Music Channel, started making these sheets as an exercise; lead organizer/researcher, wrote the informative sheets)
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• preta (leading guess contributor and researcher, helps organize Falcom music projects)
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• Pasokon Deacon (wrote this intro, shares and maintains the whole project, contributes guesses, archives webpages)
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• nowano (guess contributor, figured out musicians like Maiko Hattori and Takahide Murayama)
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• Thoraxes (classically-trained composer and BGM analyst)
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• Some Spoony Bard (guess contributor, artist, musician, animator)
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• Yunyo (guess contributor, translator, editor)
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• Arvin (guess contributor, freelance game music composer)
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• Aoki Katsumata (freelance game music composer)
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Special Thanks
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• Kotora (Admin of Chinese Falcom大好き and manager of the Falcom Staff Roll atwiki page) for providing lists of game credits and essential analysis/hidden data (ex. Ys IV/VM Japan/Nayuta composer codes, leak incident) for Falcom games and staff.
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• Yukazu (Author of 妄想シンフォニー and Falcom Sound Team jdk Maniacs@Wiki) for his insightful blog posts, neatly organizing the leaked information in Japanese, his valuable research on Falcom soundtracks and agreeing to cooperate with us.
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• Users on Falcom-related Discord servers who have discussed this topic with us from the middle of 2016 through now.
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• All composers who have supported and contributed to the development of Falcom's music.