For music that sounds as complicated as YOASOBI’s, the tech behind it is surprisingly simple.
The Japanese pop duo’s songs are built to move. Ayase‘s productions pile bright piano melodies over electronic beats and unexpected sonic flourishes, often changing direction before you’ve had time to settle in. Then there’s ikura‘s voice, gliding through even the most densely packed arrangements.
That relationship between music and technology predates YOASOBI. After spending his teenage years chasing rockstar dreams in a band, Ayase turned to Japan’s thriving Vocaloid scene, where a laptop and voice-synthesizing software like Hatsune Miku could effectively turn one person into an entire production studio. He could compose, produce, and give voice to his songs largely on his own — a practice he continues today.
When he began working with ikura, the voice became human, but the ambition of his compositions didn’t necessarily shrink with it. Ayase’s intricate melodies can sometimes sound as though they were written without worrying about the limitations of human lungs. Luckily, ikura is more than capable of keeping up.
And yet, the bigger YOASOBI has become, the more compact Ayase’s toolkit seems. When Mashable asked the duo during a Los Angeles press day to name the five pieces of technology essential to making their music, Ayase’s list included just five items. In fact, after naming the first four, Ayase struggled to come up with a fifth.
“I don’t really use anything other than these,” he said.
It’s a lean setup for the producer behind songs as maximalist as “Idol,” the dizzying Oshi no Ko theme that’s racked up over 688 million views on YouTube and ricochets between musical ideas with seemingly little interest in obeying the conventions of pop structure. But that’s also what makes Ayase’s list interesting. There isn’t one mysterious piece of technology responsible for the YOASOBI sound. The tools themselves are mostly things available to anyone with a laptop and an internet connection. It’s what Ayase does with them that makes the music unmistakably his.
Credit: Ian Moore/Mashable/Getty Images/Apple/Sony
Even the most specialized piece of equipment on the list — the high-end Sony microphone now used to record ikura’s vocals — sits alongside technology considerably more ordinary. Splice gives Ayase access to a vast digital library of sounds. Logic Pro is where he puts everything together. And then there are the EarPods. Yes, EarPods. Not AirPods.
The wired Apple earbuds, which feel increasingly like a relic of the pre-AirPods era, remain one of Ayase’s essential production tools. And he doesn’t use them because he’s stubbornly holding onto the headphone-jack days of yore. For Ayase, their relative simplicity makes them useful. Expensive studio speakers can tell him how good a YOASOBI song can sound. His EarPods help him understand how it might sound to everyone else.
That’s ultimately the through-line of YOASOBI’s straightforward setup. The duo may make some of the most meticulously constructed pop music around, but Ayase doesn’t need an endless arsenal of technology to do it.
He just needs the right five tools.
MacBook Pro
Ayase didn’t need much time to think about his first essential. “The first thing that’s absolutely necessary is a MacBook,” he said. More specifically, a MacBook Pro.
It’s the center of his production setup, the place where the many moving parts of a YOASOBI song begin coming together. For a producer whose music can sound so densely constructed, there is something almost funny about how quickly the answer arrived. There are no secret weapons in Ayase’s tech arsenal, just a laptop.
Of course, what’s on that laptop matters just as much.
Logic Pro
Inside Ayase’s MacBook Pro is the second thing he considers indispensable: Logic Pro, Apple’s music-production software. “The software I use to compose is Logic Pro,” he said. “That’s absolutely essential.”
Logic is where Ayase builds the songs that eventually become YOASOBI tracks, layering together the melodies, rhythms, samples, and electronic elements that characterize the duo’s sound.
It’s also a setup that feels connected to how Ayase learned to make music in the first place. Long before YOASOBI, he was producing Vocaloid tracks on his computer, part of an internet-native music culture built around people composing, uploading, remixing, and discovering one another online.
Years later, the scale is considerably bigger. The basic relationship between producer and computer remains.
Apple EarPods
Then came the most unexpected item. “I have a particular preference for wired earphones rather than headphones,” Ayase said. Specifically, Apple’s wired EarPods.
They’re essential enough that Ayase said he makes music with them. And when Mashable asked why a producer with access to professional studio equipment would rely on one of Apple’s most basic listening devices, his answer revealed a surprisingly practical philosophy.
“I think they have the most basic sound,” Ayase explained.
Of course, he listens to YOASOBI’s music on high-end speakers when he’s making final adjustments. But that’s not how most people are going to hear it. “There aren’t actually that many people who can listen to music on really good speakers,” he said.
So, Ayase tries his songs in different environments. He’ll listen through a car stereo. He’ll play them through good speakers. He’ll listen directly from an iPhone. The EarPods function as his baseline.
“Of all the different environments people listen to music in, I think they’re closest to the middle,” he said. “They give me the most basic sound, so I use them as a reference.”
And no, swapping them for AirPods wouldn’t accomplish the same thing.
“AirPods are different,” he said. “Whether noise cancellation is on or off changes the sound a lot.”
The humble wired EarPods remove some of those variables. Ayase isn’t using them because they provide the most pristine possible listening experience. He’s using them precisely because they don’t. For a producer making music that will eventually travel through everything from expensive headphones to phone speakers, that’s useful information.
Splice
Ayase’s fourth essential is less tangible but gives him access to considerably more sounds: Splice.
“There’s a site and app called Splice that has tons of different sounds,” he said. The subscription-based platform offers producers a massive library of samples, loops, and other sounds to incorporate into their music. “That’s absolutely necessary, too,” Ayase said.
For YOASOBI, it’s easy to understand the appeal. Ayase’s productions rarely sit still for long. Percussion, electronic flourishes, instrumental layers, and other sonic details constantly move in and out of the mix, giving even a single song the feeling of containing several different musical worlds.
Splice gives him a library to pull from while building them. The platform is subscription-based for full access, though a free account offers a limited selection of samples. And after naming it, Ayase again tried to think of what else he regularly relied on.
“What else?” he wondered. The answer, apparently, wasn’t much. “I really don’t use anything besides these.”
Well, almost.
Sony C-800G microphone
There was one final essential: the microphone that captures ikura’s crystal-clear vocals.
“When we’re focusing specifically on making music, there’s the Sony C-800G microphone,” Ayase said. It’s also, by far, the biggest investment on his list. The high-end studio microphone costs nearly $15,000 new — and, importantly, it wasn’t always part of YOASOBI’s setup.
“I didn’t care that much about it before,” he said. “But recently I’ve gotten more particular about it, so I bought one myself.” Now, he said, “We’ve been using it to record YOASOBI songs.”
In other words, don’t take the C-800G as a prerequisite for making great music. Even Ayase made the investment later, after YOASOBI had already found enormous success. It’s less a secret ingredient than an upgrade, one he could make once he knew exactly what he wanted from his recording setup. And if you’re after a similar style of tube condenser mic without the five-figure price tag, there are cheaper alternatives.
Still, for all the software, samples, and digital production that go into a YOASOBI track, the C-800G plays an important role in capturing the voice that has to cut through everything Ayase has built.
And that is the entire toolkit. A MacBook Pro. Logic Pro. Splice. A pricey Sony microphone. And a pair of wired Apple EarPods. For music that can sound as though it requires an entire command center to assemble, YOASOBI’s essentials are remarkably compact. The complexity isn’t necessarily coming from the number of tools Ayase uses. It’s coming from what he does with them.
Maybe that’s the more useful lesson for creators: You don’t need a room full of tech to make something sound enormous. You just need to know exactly what to do with what you have.
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