YMO
これと言って注目すべき新製品が少ないので、場繋ぎとして個人的に関連のある話題に少しだけ言及しておきます。
🧵 Yellow Magic Orchestra & ringtones: a thread.
— Ringtone / Tech Product Bangers (@techprodbangers)
YMO is a Japanese synthpop band (Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yukihiro Takahashi), known for their groundbreaking electronic music. Let's explore their connection to ringtones…
(1/5)pic.twitter.com/MuAISlTGzH
March 10, 2026
着メロがらみで言及いただいてたTPBさんの、YMOへの言及。
フリークでは決してないけど私自身、書こうと思えば長々と書けます。ただ、そこは割愛。
彼らに私は音楽に対する音楽家の向き合い方を強くインプリントされていたと今更ながら思います。それは戒めのようで、スローガンのようで…。
カテゴリーとしてテクノポップとされているけど、彼らの個人作にはアンビエントも前衛音楽もニューウェイブもパンクもあり。閃いたものや練りに練ったものをあるべき姿で表現する、それでいいじゃないかと。ジャンル分けが必要とするならその表現者名でいいじゃないかと。
ジャンルどころか色んな要素を混ぜ合わせて一人の音楽家の音楽が紡がれるだろうに、またそれを旧来のカテゴリに分けてどうすんじゃというのを、自分は今も思います。これからもたぶん思うでしょう。
YouTubeを見ると、楽曲や音色を再現したりアレンジしたものが多数見られ、ただただ感嘆するのですが、私がそこに手を出そうという気持ちにはどうもなれないんですよね（そもそも自信がない）。
System Arcadia
数年前にインタビューにお答えした相手から久しぶりにメールが来て、着メロ時代のことを聞きたいと。
TPBさん仰るようにやっぱり今Ringtoneに少し注目が集まってるみたいですね。
もっとも注目度をパーセンテージで示してもさして数字は大きくないと思われますが。
そんで、どうもチャッピーによると、私が関連するかどうかに関わらず2000年そこらの日本の着メロの文化については極めて情報が少ないのだそう。ってことで、返信したメールの文章をそのまま載せます（英文なので、興味があれば訳してみてくださいな）。
誤解を与えぬよう、背景から説明してあります。
To avoid any misunderstanding, I’ll explain the background in a bit of detail.
I started working on ringtones around the year 2000. At that time, Crypton Future Media’s main business was importing overseas sampling CDs and sound effects libraries. One of the staff members proposed an idea to promote those products by converting the sounds into a format that could be played on mobile phones, which many people owned.
Back then, communication bandwidth was extremely limited, and in the beginning we had to compress everything into very tiny files—sometimes as small as 5KB. Because of this limitation, the focus shifted to how we could make sample materials sound interesting within that strict 5KB constraint.
At the time, it was common for ringtone services to sell arrangements of famous songs. However, because of the approach above, our content became quite different, and it started attracting attention from enthusiasts.
The sound chip used for ringtones at that time was made by YAMAHA. It could handle both FM synthesis and ADPCM-compressed audio at the same time, while the MIDI data itself had to remain extremely compact. By making full use of these features—and sometimes even exploiting bugs—we tried to create content that would surprise or amuse the users.
When Crypton Future Media launched a mobile website called NorthSound for J-Phone (later Vodafone and SoftBank), we initially needed a stock of about 100 tracks, and we had to add two or three new tracks every week. Eventually the project began attracting attention from both J-Phone and YAMAHA. Later, when a new site called Melodiclover was launched jointly with YAMAHA, we needed about 200 tracks in stock. There were four full-time staff members working on it, and we handled the workload at full speed.
So the main reason I created hundreds of ringtones is simply because that many were required. Another factor was the technical limitations. With the 5KB size restriction and the lightweight sound chips, each piece could be very short and didn’t need to reach the level of completeness expected from a full track. The trade-off, however, was that I had to keep generating new ideas constantly, almost without pause.
Both NorthSound and Melodiclover centered around “club music.” However, when I first started working on ringtones, I actually knew almost nothing about techno or house music. I had to study them intensively. At that time the internet didn’t have much useful information yet, so the only reliable sources were CDs and vinyl records. Most of my salary went into buying them.
Since the top priority was simply to produce enough tracks, I turned every idea that came to mind into a finished piece. In reality, aside from sleeping, I was almost constantly thinking about the next track to create—searching for ideas and preparing the next piece.
One of my personal favorites is a later piece called Life Style #591. I would say it became the starting point for the technique I later used when providing music for DJMax and other rhythm games—building tracks by incorporating various vocal sampling materials.
I may have mentioned this in a previous interview, but in a rural city like Sapporo it’s actually very difficult to find excellent singers, instrumentalists, or people who can write English lyrics. Because of that, when I’m asked to provide vocal tracks for games like DJMax or other rhythm games, it’s honestly quite challenging.
In recent years, the spread of AI has begun to reduce that disadvantage somewhat. However, there are still many people who criticize you the moment they hear the word “AI,” so I sometimes wonder when we will reach an era where we can simply enjoy making music freely again.