Tom has not seen or heard the music before playing this. He's a terrific sight-reader, and loves to be given new bits of ragtime, or oddball ragtime like these tunes from video games that I created...
Tom has not seen or heard the music before playing this. He's a terrific sight-reader, and loves to be given new bits of ragtime, or oddball ragtime like these tunes from video games that I created scores for.
This is the Overworld Theme from a game that started life in Japan as 夢工場ドキドキパニック (literally "Dream Factory Heartbeat Panic"). Its real story, however, begins when the sequel to Super Mario Bros. was a flop in Japan.
Given that there also was demand in the U.S. for a sequel to Super Mario Bros., and that the one they made was a flop in Japan, Nintendo decided instead to take this other game, which wasn't released in the U.S., and replace the character sprites with the Mario Bros. characters. That odd combination was released in the U.S. as Super Mario Bros. 2, and was a huge success. Many elements from the game have become staples of the Mario franchise.
The game was such a hit that Nintendo actually released it in Japan as Super Mario Bros. USA, even though the game was exactly the same as 夢工場ドキドキパニック apart from the character graphics.
Anyway, it was YouTuber "yukimatsuri" who showed me a transcription he had edited from one that was available online. I downloaded both, and found each to have some obvious errors (mainly that the chords were not changing on the syncopations like they should), and in need of clean-up, so I made my own score, but I still credit the arrangement to yukimatsuri. The tune was composed by Koji Kondo. You can download the score that Tom is sight-reading here: http://users.california.com/~keeper/m...
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The songs from Kirby games certainly aren't ragtime, but they all have a very bouncy feel to them that does require the jumping of the left hand (and in this case impossibly fast).
Just listened to a couple. They're one-steps. Certainly not impossibly fast on the left hand (not for someone of Tom's caliber), but yeah, I'd prefer to stick to ragtime. The idea is to entice fans of ragtime tunes from games to check out ragtime tunes that aren't from games -- and to show ragtime fans that the music does have a younger audience through the tunes used in games. But maybe someday I'll have a go at making a score for one of those Kirby tunes...
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