Biography
Aliases: Soya Oka
Home Country: Japan
Soyo Oka was born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo, Japan on April 9, 1964. She began her work in music at the age of 6 when she started playing the piano. She attended the Osaka College of Music and studied music composition where she decided that there was a future in making music for videogames. While in school she studied the work of Koji Kondo and electronic music in general. After school, in 1987, Oka began working for Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto. She composed music for several Nintendo games. In 1995 Oka quit Nintendo to pursue her own work as a freelance artist. Recently she has been making music for TV commercials and other advertising and writing columns in music magazines. Oka has worked freelance for Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Seiko, Sony, Toshiba, and Yamaha.
Oka may be doing work on more videogames soon, but her primary goal is to score movies. She also wants to release a solo album.
Some of her influences include Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy, Stravinsky, John Williams, Lyle Mays, YMO, Queen, and Chick Corea. She also respects the videogame music work of Yoko Kanno and Koji Kondo.
Oka enjoys videogames like Gradius, and also games that heavily involve music such as Parappa the Rappa, Unjama Ramy, ADepth, Dance Dance Revolution, and various other Beatmania titles.
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