Dude I forgot so many great snippets from this soundtrack. The game over theme??? Beautiful! Even the way it freezes for a second when you die and then just chucks you into the abyss with that stupid happy little theme that made me want to throw my controller through the tv. In other news, how did your anger problems develop as a child?
Sounds like a sequel might be a good idea ;D? Also the underground music! I was really thinking you would be talking about it some time. But yeah so much to talk about, limited time...
7:33 Charles basically plays the arrangement of the Ground Theme from Super Smash Bros. Brawl 9:32 Charles basically plays the begining melody of the Ending theme from Super mario World Just goes to show how interconnected these things are, no matter what mario game we're talking about
i think it was CJ or someone a mario oddesy speedrunner was watching other mario game speedruns and he said the more mario games he sees the more he realizes all the music in odyssey is just remixed versions of old games. the music in the series evolves for sure but they always keep it in theme so nicely
@@GameyRaccoon No, it wasn't. They did like to use it as a resolution to their songs though. The fact that the final chord is major instead of minor makes it a Picardy Third. There are some good videos about the use of the Picardy Third throughout music history.
Spent too much of my childhood years trying to finish this game without dying XD. I wish you would have talked about the underground theme a little, I always loved that.
Its very inspired by "lets not talk about it" by the band friendship. apparently koji kondo was a big fan of western music, especially fusion jazz: Theres a good video about this: th-cam.com/video/dBNJ5cAxcQ8/w-d-xo.html
@@xbb88fx afaik the Mario main theme is inspired by river people. The underground theme is inspired by let's not talk about it, I'd recommend to check it out because it's very awesome
I work at a warehouse where we drive forklifts and we have to honk the horn at every corner. Sometimes someone would honk the rhythm pattern for the first 6 notes of the super mario theme, and someone else would honk back the seventh note. Now that's an iconic theme that even with just the rhythm pattern of the melody, you can already recognize it.
As a kid I noticed the harmonies and bass and drums and stuff as a kid who was a huge fan of Mario. Once I got into music though, I looked into the Mario theme and actually noticed how complex it is.
Oh man, there's a lot of fun to be had when exploring video game music from the 8-bit era. One of the great textural tricks was to use really fast arpeggios to give the impression of block chords--saved limited polyphony on early game systems.
It's been argued that Nintendos focus on making good music for the games was a huge reason they became so dominant in the 80's. Other game developers didn't really hire composers to write soundtracks before Nintendo did. Personal favourites from that time are Metroid, Zelda and Castlevania, both for the gameplay and the music.
Me and my friend would always play the mario theme on piano in High School, much to the non-delight of our teacher. That secondary dominant voicing is so recognizable, all we had to do was play that chord for him to go "NO!" from his office lol.
What I love most about early video game music is how much composers did with such limited sound tech. The NES and Game Boy had 4 channels for sound: 2 square waves, a saw wave, and a noise channel (IIRC). So at most you could have 3 notes + percussion at any given time. And composers found ways to imply complex harmonies and different styles/genres, creating beautiful and iconic music.
what's interesting is there's a 5th channel on the NES, which can only play samples. Some composers used samples (like sunsoft's bass sample) to add an extra note. Also, the NES has a triangle wave, not a saw.
I was always amazed by this theme and the (syncopation?) between the main notes and the background bass notes. Whenever I see piano tutorials on it they rarely cover that
You really break down the music really well, and in such a way that makes it interesting! On most channels music theory is very boring. This helps me get better at piano too!
When I started listening to samba music, I was surprised how much the rhythms and chord progressions and melodies reminded me of a lot of familiar video game music, especially throughout the Mario franchise. There's a great deal of influence. I'm sure it's not just specifically samba, but that's a great jumping off point.
It seems to me that Japanese musicians really took to the Latin rhythms and there is a ton of bossanova in video games music - eg. Final Fantasy and for the faster beats, eg.Sonic has a fair bit of samba. Australian jazz ensemble The Consouls really bring it out in many of their brilliant jazz covers.
A great example of how you can read into the harmony is the video of Tom Brier playing it. He hadn't seen or heard the piece before being handed the sheet music and being advised that it was something of a fast tango, and his first attempt through as written gave him a few snags (he even commented "I think you got me on this one"), but then he slowed it down to "tango speed" and really dug in and found beautiful harmonizations. I also highly recommend his take on the end theme for Zelda.
It’s also important to note that this was made on a base NES cart. No chips to push what the hardware could do, they had to fit 32 stages onto a cart on a system originally designed to play Donkey Kong. This really puts the limitations into perspective. Hence, why the damage sound is the same as going down pipes.
8:30 Soyo Oka did something like that on the Super Mario All-Stars menu theme in the SNES. Ohhh Charles!! You should TOTALLY listen Excitebike VS by Soyo Oka, specifically the VS version of the game, not the regular Excitebike. That soundtrack is craaaaazy specially for a 8-bits soundtrack.
I remember a couple decades ago doing a midi extraction of the music and sound effects from an emulator just to see what was going on. I was a bit surprised how it was actually voiced among the three pitched parts; the way the square waves and triangle waves line up often create the implied appearance of other notes. For instance, in the phrase where you discovered the melody had a G# rather than a G, the upper two voices are initially in thirds up to and including the G#-A-C in the melody, and then subtly switches to sixths under the A-C-D. The ear expects the thirds to continue. This is one of the many creative tricks in the 8-bit sound that keeps me up at night.
Super Mario on NES… The first console game I ever played. You should also do a review of the Persona 5 OST - would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your videos!
This is a really awesome video. Have you ever heard the 8-Bit Big Band's version of this? It's absolutely amazing! Plus, Postmodern Jukebox does a really swinging version of this during concerts as a backdrop to some really awesome tapdancing.
There’s another thing that you would probably get a kick out of analyzing: The Jeeves and Wooster theme, which is also in Swing style. The composer Anne Dudley was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for her work. I mean, just listen to the main theme and it’s variations. They absolutely slap.
Glad to hear your description of swing. I tired to figure it out mathematically once and it’s truly tricky. I would argue it phases depending. It’s certain too small of a difference to notate
You need to start doing Final Fantasy 6 songs man. That soundtrack is ALL TIME. I haven't played it in 20+ years and the soundtrack is still burned into my brain.... the whole thing straight up SLAPS.
I like how the theme kind of informs a lot of other themes in mario games over the years. Just noodling around you almost ended up just passively playing bits from songs in later mario games.
Part of why a lot of the old 8-bit songs were so insanely memorable, is because of their limitations. Instead of the generic sounding orchestral stuff you'll get in a lot of newer games (like Skyrim or Halo) which sound nice, but don't have that "ear worm" feel to them, you had tunes that were super simple yet memorable. Instead of 20+ instruments, you had 4 sound channels to work with, it HAD to be simple yet catchy, because of the hardware limitations. And because of that, you can instantly recognize them, and get them stuck in your head.
Just a head's up Shigeru Miyamoto's biggest influence was Jazz. The entire Mario soundtrack that he wrote borrows heavily from songs released in Japan years prior that were either Jazz or City Pop. You can hear the influence heavily in the theme song from the track from T-Square "Sister Marian" at about a minute into the song.
Played that a few times in the symphony orchestra i work in. The main theme is written “quasi latino” which is kind of charming. The music is really written for midi though, and though it serves its purpose amazingly, it’s not quite interesting enough to justify being played in concert.
What I like about this music is that it's musically very interesting even though it's directed at kids, and didn't "talk down" (musically speaking) to the kids playing the game. It's not your basic super simple kids "I-V-I" music. Same thing that makes the Sesame Street Pinball Count Song iconic even though it's also directed at kids. Kids can handle more than we realize.
Now I want Charles to check out Galactic Funk from Casiopea! Jazz Fusion in general is a big inspiration for Koji Kondo and other game composers in Japan, but that live version on TH-cam is legendary!
The Second part @9:04 Since the first time I hear the theme, in my mind, it represents a 'balancing act' as in like you have to balance the Character, and this is a very slippery game. I don't know why but that's the feeling it gives me like a balancing act in a slippery situation.
Two things I wanna say here. 1) Koji Kondo is pronounce Kōji Kōndō (last name K-oh-ndoh. Basically all the 'O's are the same sound, as opposed to sounding like a high-rise condo) 2) T-Square's song "Sister Marian" is definitely the direct influence of the original overworked Super Mario theme. They're a Japanese fusion band from the 80'.
The way 8 bit songs were created for the NES was basically always going to be evenly timed notes.... but. Due to the timing of the chip, it could cause small delays or sync issues which can be heard as swing. Mostly though I think it is a psychological phenomenon, we hear a bit of swing because the melody lends itself to swing so hard. Fun fact, the NES actually did not initially allow for a full drum set! Programmers found that if you asked it to play sounds way out of spec, they could make more percussive noises (using the triangle wave and noise channels). They put together a bunch of these and created a sort of script for drum sounds that got used all over. Iirc, the SNES actually used samples from the NES in its more powerful system (the NES used only basic sound waves on 5 channels). Because of the way drum sounds were created on the NES, they could only be at one volume (all drum sounds on all NES games are the same volume). This limitation is also partly why the drums are played so straight. Since I'm here: The 5 channels: - 2 pulse wave (for melody mostly, allowing 2 note 'chords') - triangle (can be glitched for drums) - noise a/b - a 7 bit 'sampler' (can be used to make another timbre instrument but is costly on space)) Once SNES came around though, you can see mario really bust out the swing.
Good! Now do more! And more! And MORE! This is the content this generation of musicians and music lovers need. Thanks to Hollywood and the Music Industry, most listeners don't know what they are listening to, nor why they like it. Seriously, good work-- now make more.
The chord progression you're talking about around 9:45 makes a reappearance in the Super Mario World End Credits theme! Oh man no wonder I liked it so much, could never skip those credits
I love that you can kinda see the beginning of an NES musical fashion: arpeggiate EVERYTHING. When you can only make so many sounds at once, and one or two of those needs to be interacting with the game, you want a soundtrack that can sound good being interrupted and that was a popular way to do it.
Hey, Charles, you probably didn't know, I guess, but just as Kito's comment here made clear, these are just primitively digitized 1983 japanese jazz-pop pieces: "Sister Marian" by T-Square, and "Summer Breeze" by Piper. Digitized well, love it too. But still... just digitized. Blew me away to know.
I use the super Mario cadence in my jazz arrangement of o holy night. Nobody even notices. (I made a video on it on my channel too). Loved this Charles!
Pitfall 2 had some neat music changes depending on if you were just playing normally, found some treasure, or had just died. All the same theme, but a little faster and brighter when you did well, and slower and moodier when you died. Still remember that on my Commodore 64 after all these years.
Beautiful set up of events: just subbed to you some days ago, realized you had a video about Transformers (favourite show) and now Mario (favourite videogame) Hope one day you analyze Ninjago's theme
You should do a follow-up to this video where you go over different versions of this song, it would be awesome to hear an analysis of Mushroomy Kingdom from Smash Bros.
So, in the vein of Mario, I wanted to recommend the Mario Kart Double Dash credits music. It's a jazzy piece with the Mario flare. I think you'd enjoy it :)
It’s nowhere near as iconic but the main overworld theme for Super Mario 2 is my favourite. Please do a follow up video on that. Lots of nice performances of it in different styles can be found on TH-cam.
You discussed how a lot of the chord progressions in Super Mario is a jazz track. I think you would enjoy this: th-cam.com/video/YsUB6Jia4v4/w-d-xo.html
It’s pretty hard to make 8-bit swing. What’s even more crazy is that they only had 4 instruments (if I’m right). So the bass is gone as you jump, because it uses an instrument.
Although it might not be up to this par, the Atari 2600's Pitfall 2 also has an interesting theme that isn't really swinging, but is still interesting I guess
Describing swing as 'accenting the upbeats' is an odd interpretation. Swing to me is delaying the upbeats, or the 'ands', and accenting them is just some extra icing on the cake. The more delayed the upbeats are, the more 'swung' it feels.
Game sales figures for SMB don't really count because you got the game with your NES (in most cases). So, by default most people who bought an NES, also bought SMB. Which kind of skews the figures a bit.
Can you please review the rockstars bully soundtrack preferably the preps vendetta theme, tagging, the set up, and the search. I think there’s some really great stuff in there and no one else reviews music and makes it as interesting as you do.
I love mario music so much :) I think it's the reason i love techno swing music so much lmao. Also, I love watching you get so excited when you're talking about music. That is entertaining in itself :-) we need more people like you in the world.
1 more thing: i have a suggestion :) Please listen to the soundtrack for Age of Empires II. I think it sounds so good and i would love to hear what you think about it :D
I love Zelda Main Theme for 2 reasons, 1 nostalgia and The Consouls' cover is brilliant. (Edit: They've covered quite a few from Zelda if you're interested)
It's amazing what they managed with the limited memory space, very interesting video, I would have liked a wee section on the underwater theme as well, good video overall and very interesting GG
Very good video 😊 but! I have to say that when you say that the music of Mario is iconic because it was the first to be as good, you're wrong ! Because you can find a lot of music from the precedent era with a lot of great stuff, like the last ninja 2. You could find a lot of list of it on the internet, the subject is huge:) You could also speak of a very good album, called 'kind of bloop', if you're interested in the way old 8 bit sounds can swing, of be jazzy:)
Dude I forgot so many great snippets from this soundtrack. The game over theme??? Beautiful! Even the way it freezes for a second when you die and then just chucks you into the abyss with that stupid happy little theme that made me want to throw my controller through the tv. In other news, how did your anger problems develop as a child?
I do know how intricate it was 8-bit theory already told me!
Facts, game over screen used to scare me tbh
do a video on why bohemian rhapsody is so good!
Sounds like a sequel might be a good idea ;D?
Also the underground music! I was really thinking you would be talking about it some time. But yeah so much to talk about, limited time...
Don’t forget about Super Mario Advance 2 where they just changed the main theme from major to minor for the castles :D
8-bit music is the perfect encapsulation of the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention"
7:33 Charles basically plays the arrangement of the Ground Theme from Super Smash Bros. Brawl
9:32 Charles basically plays the begining melody of the Ending theme from Super mario World
Just goes to show how interconnected these things are, no matter what mario game we're talking about
I just noticed when he's "jazzing" the theme, he's in the same key as Jump Up Superstar. Or at least, the chords are right around there.
i think it was CJ or someone a mario oddesy speedrunner was watching other mario game speedruns and he said the more mario games he sees the more he realizes all the music in odyssey is just remixed versions of old games.
the music in the series evolves for sure but they always keep it in theme so nicely
Because it was taken from original Super Mario brothers. Smash didn't have original music, just remixes.
@@emulatorretro i mean we were talking about mario odyssey but yes smash did the same thing
@@concretebuilding I noticed that one!
8:51 the bVI - bVII - I progression is also sometimes called the Super Mario cadence, which I think is a super cool funfact
It was invented by the Beatles btw
@@GameyRaccoon yeah, no.
@@Septimius no, yeah (i flipped it)
@@GameyRaccoon No, it wasn't. They did like to use it as a resolution to their songs though. The fact that the final chord is major instead of minor makes it a Picardy Third. There are some good videos about the use of the Picardy Third throughout music history.
I actually discovered this in the Guitar Theory for Dummies book the other day, interestingly enough.
My mind is blown! I NEVER realized the "Stage Clear" theme is also the mushroom power-up sound! That's amazing.
It's actually not the same, it's just similar
@@kumada84 Ohhh. Even then, I still find it neat! 😊
@@kumada84 nope it's the same
Spent too much of my childhood years trying to finish this game without dying XD. I wish you would have talked about the underground theme a little, I always loved that.
Just going from what I hear in my head, I think it's a minor diminished variation of the start screen theme
Its very inspired by "lets not talk about it" by the band friendship. apparently koji kondo was a big fan of western music, especially fusion jazz:
Theres a good video about this: th-cam.com/video/dBNJ5cAxcQ8/w-d-xo.html
@@burgerbeatz6293 that's crazy. I always thought he was influenced by River People by Weather Report
@@xbb88fx afaik the Mario main theme is inspired by river people. The underground theme is inspired by let's not talk about it, I'd recommend to check it out because it's very awesome
Denim denim denim.
I work at a warehouse where we drive forklifts and we have to honk the horn at every corner. Sometimes someone would honk the rhythm pattern for the first 6 notes of the super mario theme, and someone else would honk back the seventh note. Now that's an iconic theme that even with just the rhythm pattern of the melody, you can already recognize it.
At one point a coworker was drumming two triplets repeatedly and I went "You have Duke Nukem stuck in your head" and he "HOW THE F***!?"
I can do that with just four notes.
.. . .
@@Kumquat_Lord MEGALOVANIA-
@@JRENZO10 ayyyyyyy
We do the same thing with Oye Como Va
As a kid I noticed the harmonies and bass and drums and stuff as a kid who was a huge fan of Mario. Once I got into music though, I looked into the Mario theme and actually noticed how complex it is.
Oh man, there's a lot of fun to be had when exploring video game music from the 8-bit era. One of the great textural tricks was to use really fast arpeggios to give the impression of block chords--saved limited polyphony on early game systems.
just like great saxophone players!
It's been argued that Nintendos focus on making good music for the games was a huge reason they became so dominant in the 80's. Other game developers didn't really hire composers to write soundtracks before Nintendo did. Personal favourites from that time are Metroid, Zelda and Castlevania, both for the gameplay and the music.
Hiring professional instead of doing it in house is always a better idea.
Me and my friend would always play the mario theme on piano in High School, much to the non-delight of our teacher. That secondary dominant voicing is so recognizable, all we had to do was play that chord for him to go "NO!" from his office lol.
😂 Your teacher would have had a field day with The Consouls th-cam.com/play/PLSWV0usaPRr4wMEjmdDXGfNeLu_l0vmnQ.html
Your teacher’s “NO!” Is also instantly recognizable as a crying wojak
What I love most about early video game music is how much composers did with such limited sound tech. The NES and Game Boy had 4 channels for sound: 2 square waves, a saw wave, and a noise channel (IIRC). So at most you could have 3 notes + percussion at any given time. And composers found ways to imply complex harmonies and different styles/genres, creating beautiful and iconic music.
what's interesting is there's a 5th channel on the NES, which can only play samples. Some composers used samples (like sunsoft's bass sample) to add an extra note.
Also, the NES has a triangle wave, not a saw.
0:02 "There will never be another video game soundtrack as iconic as the original SMB"
Megalovania. Four notes and you already know what's coming.
I was always amazed by this theme and the (syncopation?) between the main notes and the background bass notes.
Whenever I see piano tutorials on it they rarely cover that
9:49 that last note always gets me
You really break down the music really well, and in such a way that makes it interesting! On most channels music theory is very boring. This helps me get better at piano too!
One of my favorite tunes.
When I started listening to samba music, I was surprised how much the rhythms and chord progressions and melodies reminded me of a lot of familiar video game music, especially throughout the Mario franchise. There's a great deal of influence. I'm sure it's not just specifically samba, but that's a great jumping off point.
It seems to me that Japanese musicians really took to the Latin rhythms and there is a ton of bossanova in video games music - eg. Final Fantasy and for the faster beats, eg.Sonic has a fair bit of samba. Australian jazz ensemble The Consouls really bring it out in many of their brilliant jazz covers.
A great example of how you can read into the harmony is the video of Tom Brier playing it. He hadn't seen or heard the piece before being handed the sheet music and being advised that it was something of a fast tango, and his first attempt through as written gave him a few snags (he even commented "I think you got me on this one"), but then he slowed it down to "tango speed" and really dug in and found beautiful harmonizations. I also highly recommend his take on the end theme for Zelda.
It’s also important to note that this was made on a base NES cart. No chips to push what the hardware could do, they had to fit 32 stages onto a cart on a system originally designed to play Donkey Kong. This really puts the limitations into perspective. Hence, why the damage sound is the same as going down pipes.
8:30 Soyo Oka did something like that on the Super Mario All-Stars menu theme in the SNES.
Ohhh Charles!! You should TOTALLY listen Excitebike VS by Soyo Oka, specifically the VS version of the game, not the regular Excitebike. That soundtrack is craaaaazy specially for a 8-bits soundtrack.
I remember a couple decades ago doing a midi extraction of the music and sound effects from an emulator just to see what was going on. I was a bit surprised how it was actually voiced among the three pitched parts; the way the square waves and triangle waves line up often create the implied appearance of other notes. For instance, in the phrase where you discovered the melody had a G# rather than a G, the upper two voices are initially in thirds up to and including the G#-A-C in the melody, and then subtly switches to sixths under the A-C-D. The ear expects the thirds to continue. This is one of the many creative tricks in the 8-bit sound that keeps me up at night.
Super Mario on NES… The first console game I ever played.
You should also do a review of the Persona 5 OST - would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for your videos!
9:42 flashbacks to another great mario song
The magic they got out of such primitive technology is simply amazing.
This is a really awesome video. Have you ever heard the 8-Bit Big Band's version of this? It's absolutely amazing!
Plus, Postmodern Jukebox does a really swinging version of this during concerts as a backdrop to some really awesome tapdancing.
There’s another thing that you would probably get a kick out of analyzing:
The Jeeves and Wooster theme, which is also in Swing style.
The composer Anne Dudley was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for her work.
I mean, just listen to the main theme and it’s variations. They absolutely slap.
Intro Theme:
th-cam.com/video/QzvG4cABuno/w-d-xo.html
Variations “Meanwhile in Berkeley Square”.
th-cam.com/video/Nji-C8JvTMA/w-d-xo.html
12:34
That's amazing
Never really thought of that music as Latin. That also explains a lot about the sharp contrast to the waltz of the water stages!
Glad you took the time to define swing. I always hear it mentioned but never really understood it.
Glad to hear your description of swing. I tired to figure it out mathematically once and it’s truly tricky. I would argue it phases depending. It’s certain too small of a difference to notate
this version of the chord progression played at about 7:29 is also very reminiscent of the results music in mariokart wii when getting first place
The way you described the 251's part or at 9:30, reminded me of the end credits for Mario World on SNES
You need to start doing Final Fantasy 6 songs man. That soundtrack is ALL TIME. I haven't played it in 20+ years and the soundtrack is still burned into my brain.... the whole thing straight up SLAPS.
Agreed. That and Chrono Trigger had soundtracks that were the best 16 bit.
This is the most famous video game theme.
*Tetris*: Am I a joke to you?
*mega man 2 dr. Wily 1 has entered the chat*
"Tetris" theme is a Russian song called Korobeiniki
I like how the theme kind of informs a lot of other themes in mario games over the years. Just noodling around you almost ended up just passively playing bits from songs in later mario games.
Part of why a lot of the old 8-bit songs were so insanely memorable, is because of their limitations.
Instead of the generic sounding orchestral stuff you'll get in a lot of newer games (like Skyrim or Halo) which sound nice, but don't have that "ear worm" feel to them, you had tunes that were super simple yet memorable. Instead of 20+ instruments, you had 4 sound channels to work with, it HAD to be simple yet catchy, because of the hardware limitations. And because of that, you can instantly recognize them, and get them stuck in your head.
Was today years old when i realized the connection between the growing sound and level end
20 plus years ago I sat there one night at my friend's apartment and I learned this riff on my bass.
Swing your arms from side to side, come on its time to go do the Mario
take one step and then again, let's do the Mario, all together now
In 9:32 when Charles explained the 2-5-1 without the secondary dominant, it reminded me of the game over sound in Super Mario World
It gets very Vince Guaraldi at one point. That’s my favorite sound. It works so well.
Just a head's up Shigeru Miyamoto's biggest influence was Jazz. The entire Mario soundtrack that he wrote borrows heavily from songs released in Japan years prior that were either Jazz or City Pop. You can hear the influence heavily in the theme song from the track from T-Square "Sister Marian" at about a minute into the song.
uhh it wasn't Shigeru Miyamoto writing the music, it was Koji Kondo
Koji Kondo is a musical genius
Played that a few times in the symphony orchestra i work in. The main theme is written “quasi latino” which is kind of charming.
The music is really written for midi though, and though it serves its purpose amazingly, it’s not quite interesting enough to justify being played in concert.
What I like about this music is that it's musically very interesting even though it's directed at kids, and didn't "talk down" (musically speaking) to the kids playing the game. It's not your basic super simple kids "I-V-I" music.
Same thing that makes the Sesame Street Pinball Count Song iconic even though it's also directed at kids.
Kids can handle more than we realize.
Now I want Charles to check out Galactic Funk from Casiopea! Jazz Fusion in general is a big inspiration for Koji Kondo and other game composers in Japan, but that live version on TH-cam is legendary!
The Second part @9:04 Since the first time I hear the theme, in my mind, it represents a 'balancing act' as in like you have to balance the Character, and this is a very slippery game. I don't know why but that's the feeling it gives me like a balancing act in a slippery situation.
Watched several videos this guy is a genius talent.
One thing you can never overlook with a great theme song is the ability to hum the song and have other people recognize it.
Two things I wanna say here.
1) Koji Kondo is pronounce Kōji Kōndō (last name K-oh-ndoh. Basically all the 'O's are the same sound, as opposed to sounding like a high-rise condo)
2) T-Square's song "Sister Marian" is definitely the direct influence of the original overworked Super Mario theme. They're a Japanese fusion band from the 80'.
If you're not providing IPA for the pronunciations, you're wasting my time.
The way 8 bit songs were created for the NES was basically always going to be evenly timed notes.... but. Due to the timing of the chip, it could cause small delays or sync issues which can be heard as swing. Mostly though I think it is a psychological phenomenon, we hear a bit of swing because the melody lends itself to swing so hard.
Fun fact, the NES actually did not initially allow for a full drum set! Programmers found that if you asked it to play sounds way out of spec, they could make more percussive noises (using the triangle wave and noise channels). They put together a bunch of these and created a sort of script for drum sounds that got used all over. Iirc, the SNES actually used samples from the NES in its more powerful system (the NES used only basic sound waves on 5 channels).
Because of the way drum sounds were created on the NES, they could only be at one volume (all drum sounds on all NES games are the same volume). This limitation is also partly why the drums are played so straight.
Since I'm here: The 5 channels:
- 2 pulse wave (for melody mostly, allowing 2 note 'chords')
- triangle (can be glitched for drums)
- noise a/b
- a 7 bit 'sampler' (can be used to make another timbre instrument but is costly on space))
Once SNES came around though, you can see mario really bust out the swing.
you could definitely program the music to swing
Good! Now do more! And more! And MORE! This is the content this generation of musicians and music lovers need. Thanks to Hollywood and the Music Industry, most listeners don't know what they are listening to, nor why they like it.
Seriously, good work-- now make more.
The chord progression you're talking about around 9:45 makes a reappearance in the Super Mario World End Credits theme! Oh man no wonder I liked it so much, could never skip those credits
I love that you can kinda see the beginning of an NES musical fashion: arpeggiate EVERYTHING. When you can only make so many sounds at once, and one or two of those needs to be interacting with the game, you want a soundtrack that can sound good being interrupted and that was a popular way to do it.
Look up east berlin alarm played backward!! "I was blown away! that is where the theme track came from!
I prefer looking at swing as uneven
2 quick pulses and a stressed stretch note is usually how I end up playing it.
7:23 I know all of us wanted to go DORAAAAA
12:39 the mushroom sound just blew my mind when I first heard it. But a TH-cam guitarist DavidLap did the same thing first.
Hey, Charles, you probably didn't know, I guess, but just as
Kito's comment here made clear, these are just primitively digitized 1983 japanese jazz-pop pieces:
"Sister Marian" by T-Square, and "Summer Breeze" by Piper.
Digitized well, love it too. But still... just digitized.
Blew me away to know.
I remember being 5 years old and calling my friend on the phone just so we could hum this song together.
There is only one more iconic video game theme - Tetris
Swing your arms from side to side,
Come on it's time to go, do the Mario!
I use the super Mario cadence in my jazz arrangement of o holy night. Nobody even notices. (I made a video on it on my channel too). Loved this Charles!
Pitfall 2 had some neat music changes depending on if you were just playing normally, found some treasure, or had just died. All the same theme, but a little faster and brighter when you did well, and slower and moodier when you died. Still remember that on my Commodore 64 after all these years.
7:29 Charles is strait playing the theme to Dora The Explorer 😂
Beautiful set up of events: just subbed to you some days ago, realized you had a video about Transformers (favourite show) and now Mario (favourite videogame)
Hope one day you analyze Ninjago's theme
I don't know why, but everytime this theme comes up I always hum the bass of the song.
Perhaps because I've heard it so much? Idk, but I like it :)
in mario kart, you can hear Bach's first prelude sped up when taking a power-up
You should do a follow-up to this video where you go over different versions of this song, it would be awesome to hear an analysis of Mushroomy Kingdom from Smash Bros.
I am here once more to request your review the Prince of Egypt soundtrack. I love the work you do! Keep it up.
Right around the 10 minute mark, you play some chords that come right from the ending of Super Mario World (credits). Music is amazing.
So, in the vein of Mario, I wanted to recommend the Mario Kart Double Dash credits music. It's a jazzy piece with the Mario flare. I think you'd enjoy it :)
11:20 Somehow I was convinced you couldn't possibly make a mistake while playing this theme.
He was missing all of the d3 notes
Thank God they have koji kondo creative freedom, he made nothing but bangers
Turning super mario jazz. Im here for it
It’s nowhere near as iconic but the main overworld theme for Super Mario 2 is my favourite. Please do a follow up video on that. Lots of nice performances of it in different styles can be found on TH-cam.
You discussed how a lot of the chord progressions in Super Mario is a jazz track.
I think you would enjoy this:
th-cam.com/video/YsUB6Jia4v4/w-d-xo.html
Or this by The Consouls th-cam.com/video/IzZECc8-0gQ/w-d-xo.html
It’s pretty hard to make 8-bit swing. What’s even more crazy is that they only had 4 instruments (if I’m right). So the bass is gone as you jump, because it uses an instrument.
I've played and hear that music so many times that I even heard the wrong note before he noticed
Although it might not be up to this par, the Atari 2600's Pitfall 2 also has an interesting theme that isn't really swinging, but is still interesting I guess
"I didn't have an NES growing up, but my Grandmother had one at her house." So, it's official, gaming is a part of humanity now.
Thank you so much! You made the music/gamer leap for joy! ❤️❤️❤️
something I noticed when riding yoshi is his bongos being added into the background music
Describing swing as 'accenting the upbeats' is an odd interpretation. Swing to me is delaying the upbeats, or the 'ands', and accenting them is just some extra icing on the cake. The more delayed the upbeats are, the more 'swung' it feels.
I would love to see you break down the 8-bit Legend of Zelda theme and its dungeon theme
Completely agreed!
Game sales figures for SMB don't really count because you got the game with your NES (in most cases). So, by default most people who bought an NES, also bought SMB. Which kind of skews the figures a bit.
the stuff you play at 8:04 I could listen to over and over
Would love to see you break down the Bluey theme.
Check out level 1-2 that heavy jazz flow was my favorite
Can you please review the rockstars bully soundtrack preferably the preps vendetta theme, tagging, the set up, and the search. I think there’s some really great stuff in there and no one else reviews music and makes it as interesting as you do.
Simply put, Koji Kondo is a music genius
Mario was made to hypnotize u and run u through the according paces or bases of each stage
Even more so
Check points vs time vs point in the game
I love mario music so much :)
I think it's the reason i love techno swing music so much lmao.
Also, I love watching you get so excited when you're talking about music. That is entertaining in itself :-) we need more people like you in the world.
1 more thing: i have a suggestion :)
Please listen to the soundtrack for Age of Empires II. I think it sounds so good and i would love to hear what you think about it :D
Great video! I would love to hear you talk about the main Zelda theme from the NES game or potentially even more from the series.
I love Zelda Main Theme for 2 reasons, 1 nostalgia and The Consouls' cover is brilliant. (Edit: They've covered quite a few from Zelda if you're interested)
It's amazing what they managed with the limited memory space, very interesting video, I would have liked a wee section on the underwater theme as well, good video overall and very interesting GG
I’m sure the melody not having as much swing was working around the limitations because it could only play like 3 sounds at a time I’m sure
There is a another great jazz song of Mario called " Super Mario Odyssey - Jump Up, Super Star ! ", Could you analyze this?
Very good video 😊 but! I have to say that when you say that the music of Mario is iconic because it was the first to be as good, you're wrong ! Because you can find a lot of music from the precedent era with a lot of great stuff, like the last ninja 2. You could find a lot of list of it on the internet, the subject is huge:)
You could also speak of a very good album, called 'kind of bloop', if you're interested in the way old 8 bit sounds can swing, of be jazzy:)
Damn how much knowledge about music you have. I'm jealous