ffxiv Interview with Composer and FF Superfan Alex Moukala!

[Marauder 58]

We had an opportunity to hear from the Warrior of Funk himself, talking about his recent massive project and a few other FFXIV tidbits. Let's dive in!

For most of us who play FFXIV, we've at least heard the name "Alex Moukala." And if you haven't, you're missing out! Alex is a composer who has worked on a number of projects in Hollywood, runs two YouTube channels depicting his career journey and another for video game covers and reaction content, and in his limited free time, loves to play games and break down why the music is so impressive. 

Recently, our own Ara wrote an article about Alex's most recent project: A cover of Endwalker's "Close in the Distance" with many familiar voices that we've heard in FFXIV, additional content creators, and 1,400 voices from the community. You read that correctly, fourteen hundred. If you haven't seen it, you can check it out right here!

After his project, Alex was gracious enough to sit down and talk with us about the project and his FFXIV experiences, as well as a glimpse into his musical journey. Below will be an abridged, transcribed version of the interview with Alex's answers made a bit more brief, but if you'd like to listen to the complete 49 minute interview, you can do so below.

Q: "So, we know you're a composer and you've worked on projects related to Avengers: Endgame and John Wick, but your love of video games is almost as apparent as your passion for music. What inspired you to become a composer?"

ALEX M.: "Well, first off, thank you for doing your research! I really appreciate when people find out stuff about me like that because many people know me for my funky stuff actually, and that's fun for me, but my really true big love is composing music, especially in orchestras, not just bass. So I appreciate that you call me a composer, because that's what I identify as! To reply to you shortly, the thing that inspired me to become a composer is my relationship with music; and the thing that amplified my relationship with music and that generated it or gave life to it were a couple of things. One of them was my Dad, like my Dad used to play us a lot of music from a lot of old artists like, either artists from Congo where we're from, or artists like Michael Jackson, anything that was popular at the time he showed us. And you know, he's a big fan of music, so me and my brothers and sister also became big fans of music.

At the same time, I also started to like this video game called Final Fantasy 7...and I was born and raised in Italy. I didn't know English! But FF7 was only available in English. I didn't understand the story 100% because I didn't understand the text 100%. But that didn't matter. The impact of the game, both visually and musically, transported me to a different world. And that occurred with every Final Fantasy game that I played, I became a massive fan of Final Fantasy. And I just loved it to death.

Music in video games kind of gives you an almost tangible link to those fantasy worlds. Basically what I'm saying is I grew up really enjoying that. I loved those games, and when I wasn't playing those games, I would listen to the music of those games. And when I say I listened to video game music, I don't mean that I just listened to, oh, "One-Winged Angel" and the big boss tracks that made me feel like a badass; no. I love those, but I also like the, you know, chill tracks that play in portions of the game that people don't remember. Like in FF7, there's "Underneath the Rotting Pizza" which plays in Midgar, there's another track that plays in Shinra Manor where you find Vincent, it's called "The Nightmare Begins," you know all these chill tracks in FF7 or, you know, FF10.

I love the music from those games no matter what genre of music it is or where it plays in the game; whether it's a hype track or an atmospheric track. I think my favorite Final Fantasy track for FF10 is probably one called "Fantasy" or "Phantoms" depending on the translation. It's a very chill, ambient track. There's not even a lot of melodies in it! It just has the power to make you feel like you're in a freakin' ice field, and there's like...these fantasy locations around you, you know. That's the thing, the music transports you to a different world.

When I listen to the music, I also am reminded of all those things that I've learned. So, Crisis Core: FF7 for example, is one of my favorite Final Fantasy games because of characters, because Zack Fair is there - Zack's willingness to go for his dreams and the way Angeal guides Zack as his mentor, telling him to go for his dreams...touched me like crazy when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. When I listen to the music from Takeharu Ishimoto, that he composed for FF7: Crisis Core, I'm always reminded of the life lessons that I've learned from the characters in that game. So, once again, the music grounds you. Not only to the location of the games, the worlds, the characters, but also to the things you've learned. To anybody that knows me, it's quite apparent that I'm a person who chases his dreams like crazy, and the reason why I do - I think there's many, but one big reason is because I played Crisis Core at the right time in my life, and that really changed me.

So yeah. The music has the power to remind me of all those things. Also, the thing I like about Uematsu-san's music, Takeharu Ishimoto's music, Masashi Hamauzu's music, Yoko Shimomura, is that these composers, especially Uematsu, and especially Masayoshi Soken too, these composers make music in so many genres. And they draw inspiration from so many places, usually mixing together styles that may not belong together, but they make it work. And it ends up being super interesting. I've always loved that! So that gave me a love for video game music in general. Final Fantasy especially, gave me an appreciation of so many genres of music that it just, you know, I just loved what the music of the game does. I've always loved it, I still love it now. The more I listen to it, the more these games come out, the more things I discover thanks to it as both a composer and as a listener. It changed my life, really, in many ways.

When I got old enough to start asking myself, 'What the hell do I want to do with my life?' I thought back to all of this, and I decided that I wanted to do something with my life that left an impact in other peoples' lives, that changed the world positively; you know in a small way, but positively. I've always felt like a person who has a lot to communicate and a lot to say, as you probably already might have noticed from this first question, and I figure the best way to communicate all the things I have to say without boring people to death is actually music. Music is the way in which you can communicate stuff that sometimes might be hard to digest, but because it's enveloped in a song, it's easy to understand. And I love that. It's very powerful. It's a power that I've felt because other people have used it on me, like Uematsu! And it's a power that I've wanted to learn how to master just to have the same impact on someone else's life. I think that's what I'm doing right now, and I'm very happy. So...that's what inspired me to become a composer! I know, long answer, but hey that was a loaded question so it's your fault. [Laughs.]"

Be sure to listen to the full audio interview for Alex's complete answer on his journey to becoming a composer and following his dreams! He starts answering this question at 00:20.

 

Q: For this insanely massive project, you could have chosen any piece of music in the game. What made you choose Close in the Distance?

ALEX M.: "What made me choose Close in the Distance? It should be apparent to anybody who played FFXIV that Close in the Distance is probably one of the most meaningful and important tracks in the entire game. Or for the entire portion of ARR to Endwalker, Close in the Distance is one of the most important tracks for many reasons. From the way it was conceived, also, it's such a beautiful track, it sounds amazing, and Jason Charles Miller's vocals are so good. Every time that guy sings on that game I lose my mind!"

Be sure to listen to the audio interview for Alex's complete answer and story on how he collaborated with so many other YouTube creators! You can find this answer in the audio at 08:45.

 

Q: Over one THOUSAND voices! The editing process must have been mind-numbing! What was that like, and were you expecting that many entries?

ALEX M.: "So I replied to that prior in the previous question, I was NOT expecting that many entries, but thank God that Denmo McStronghuge helped me on this project, especially with the video. HuskyByTheGeek wrote the instrumental, I added the orchestration, I added the vocals, Aruvn helped me mix the vocals of the singers as for the choir. Denmo was the one who took care of the video, so he was the one who placed all these videos from all these people and placed them on a screen that you saw in the video. He added SO much, SO much to this project thanks to the video work that he did. It was super hard, by the way. His brain and his computer were very challenged by this. He has had the patience of a thousand men...took quite a few days to work on this, and did an amazing job."

Be sure to listen to the audio interview for Alex's complete answer and story on the editing process between he and his team! You can find this answer at 21:54.

 

Q: What got you started with FFXIV? What job do you mostly play?

ALEX M.: "When the Beta for ARR came out, I think I got invited to play in it, maybe because I was a 1.0 player. I preordered A Realm Reborn and had access to the early access beta. I got to play the Beta with a group of Italian friends, a group of Italians called "Rinoa's Diary." And we freaking enjoyed it. I remember being a street urchin in the streets of Ul'dah, and there was a friend of ours in this community who was level 20 or 30 and he came up to us like 'Guys, I took a chocobo and I started to explore and I ended up in this snowy region called Coerthas, and there's like castles and stuff and dragons, let's go!!' So a team of people who were like level five and level ten and whatever, we all followed this friend of ours with his chocobo and ended up in Coerthas. There was so much exploration in those Beta days that made me fall in love with the world of Eorzea."

"The job I started as was Monk, actually, but then I saw that if you're DPS the Duty Finder queues are freaking endless and I don't really have too much time to play video games as much as I want, so I wanted to optimize it, and I went for a tank class. But a tank class that hits hard and is fun and engaging to play, and is almost like a DPS, and that was Warrior. And that's been my main class ever since."

Be sure to listen to the audio interview for Alex's complete answer and adventures through Eorzea! You can find this answer at 28:35.

 

Q: What's your favorite piece of music in FFXIV?

ALEX M.: "This the impossible question. Not only with XIV, but with Final Fantasy in general, I can't reply to that! There's many pieces of music that I really like. In XIV, some of my favorites are "Shadowbringers," I like the Stormblood opening, I think it's called "Storm of Blood." There's a track called "Scale and Steel" that plays during the Omega/Shinryu cutscene, which is beautifully orchestrated. I like "Close in the Distance." I like especially the bits of the song of hope, I think the track is called "With Hearts Aligned." There are so many tracks that are freaking cool, man. I can keep talking about them for hours, so I can't rename one favorite necessarily. Like the Ramuh theme is really cool. See? I keep naming them!"

Be sure to listen to the audio interview for Alex's complete answer and his breakdown of the Pulse albums and comments from his interview with Masayoshi Soken himself! You can find this answer at 33:40.

 

Q: If you had the opportunity to compose a piece of music for any game or series, what would it be?

ALEX M.: "I think anybody who knows me knows the answer to this—which is Final Fantasy. Why? Because it's such an outlandish thing for an Italian, African guy who started composing music by ear without music theory knowledge to end up working on one of the most illustrious and amazing video games of all time, in a team of composers who are like - the composers at Square Enix are insane. They are beyond the elite, in my opinion. For somebody of my origin story to end up working on something with them would be so impossible, that if it does end up happening, that to me is one of the proofs that you can achieve your dreams if you work hard enough for them. Hard and smart enough to make them work."

Be sure to listen to the audio interview for Alex's complete answer and his thoughts on why it's important to chase that dream! (We believe in you, Alex!) You can find this answer at 37:50.

 

Q: What's your personal favorite game soundtrack of all time? Do you have a favorite composer, for that matter?

ALEX M.: "Mmm...I wouldn't say I have one composer that I prefer over the others overall because each composer has something that is so unique that the others tend to not really have that much, especially with video game music. I can tell you SOME of my favorites. Nobuo Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu are probably among the highest."

"My favorite soundtrack of all time? Oh, and let's not forget Yasunori Nishiki by the way, who's an insanely good composer, who is part of my favorite soundtracks of all time, FF7 Remake. Probably that one, is my favorite soundtrack of all time."

Be sure to listen to the full audio interview for Alex's complete answer and a list of all his favorite composers and soundtracks to check out! You can find this answer at 40:18.

 

Q: Last question...any tips for those trying to be as funky and stylish as you?

ALEX M.: "What the hell? [Laughs.] For those trying to be funky, pick an instrument that you like and try to play it remembering that silence in music matters just as much as notes do. If you want to be funky, you've got to be rhythmic. You've got to play with the silences."

"As for stylish? I don't know if I'm stylish, I just know that I'm myself. People who see my fashion sense - if it even is a fashion sense - people who see that and like it may think I'm stylish because I'm from Milan which is like the capitol of fashion, it's like: no. The reason I like to wear those suits and shirts and stuff is because I played FF7 as a kid and I saw the Turks, and I thought 'Damn, these guys look super cool...that's such a vibe, I like it!' And since a kid I've always liked jackets and blazers and suits and shirts, and for the most part I didn't have the courage to bring out the things that I like when I was younger."

"You just need to be yourself."

Be sure to listen to the full audio interview for Alex's complete answer and encouragement for others. This is definitely a part you aren't going to want to miss! The final answer is timestamped at 43:06.

 

And there you have it! I want to thank Alex personally for putting up with so many Twitter DMs from me, and for sparing time out of his busy schedule to answer questions and put such thought behind them. Alex has definitely become a crucial part of the FFXIV community alongside those such as Zepla, HuskyByTheGeek, Larryzaur, and Mizzteq, who all build this community for the better because of their passion for the game. Thank you all for reading and listening, and we hope to see you next time!

What do you think? Were you intrigued or encouraged by anything Alex said? Let us know below!