Hidenori Maezawa

Hidenori Maezawa (前沢 秀憲) is the founder of the music production company Picnic and the man most hardcore video game fans wish to refer to as the creator of the distinctive "Konami sound".

Maezawa's introduction to music was when his older brother became a big fan of the Beatles. He enjoyed listening but didn't start composing his own music until he was 20. Composing became his livelihood when he decided he wasn't capable of playing instruments, and therefore couldn't play in a band.

Maezawa's big break came in 1986 when he answered a job recruitment ad for Konami, who were soliciting programmers for home development. He was hired for his technical and composing skill, and was immediately pressed into service assisting Kinuyo Yamashita on her soundtrack for Castlevania.

After that soundtrack, Maezawa continued to program music for Konami games, most notably the NES version of Contra, in which he and future Pure Sound founder Kiyohiro Sada pioneered the use of the PCM channel for drums, a device Sada, Yamashita, and many other developers would use in future NES games.

He left Konami's video game division in 1992 to join Konami's music label as a music director. After several years working on other forms of music for the label, he left Konami to start up his own company, Picnic, which he continues to run. In addition to video games, Picnic records for various media including pachinko machines, motion pictures, and traditional Japanese music.