"Hang-On" is considered well-regarded for its music, which was composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi. He came to Suzuki's attention after Suzuki heard he played in a band. Suzuki wanted songs for the soundtrack to "Hang-On" that would be like what a band would play. This led to Kawaguchi writing four songs for the game, including "Theme of Love", the game's theme song. Kawaguchi made use of the hardware's PCM sampling and added drum samples to use "Hang-On"'s Yamaha YM2203 sound chip to its maximum potential and create a more realistic soundtrack featuring rock music, which was uncommon in arcade games at the time. He also created the game's sound effects. Kawaguchi did not program his own music into the game; he instead wrote out his soundtrack by hand, made a demo, and gave that to the sound programmer. He has said this was because he did not own a sequencer, and that this method was faster for him.