8-Bit Music Theory

Since winter is upon us, I thought it'd be fun to analyze one of my favourite tunes from the Earthbound soundtrack: the Snowman theme.

In dissecting Mario Kart World's main theme we see an interesting combo approach: the upbeat jazz fusion live band music of Mario Kart 8 returns, but with a new gritty American blues-rock influence. Join me in breaking down how the theme works and what it says about the game!

In one of my most ramble-y videos ever I look at what makes Mario music sound so distinctly like Mario music.

Mario games have had some great haunted house levels over the past 26 years, with some great haunted house music. But what makes it sound so spoOoOoky? I took a look and found out!

In this video I took a look at a few of the ways you can make chromaticism sound goofy using the soundtrack from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door as an example. There's a lot of different types of sounds or effects you can get out of chromatic notes, and this game's music was the perfect showcase for some of the more silly ones.

In this video I take a look at the overall tone that gets set throughout (most of) the Super Smash Bros. series' music. There are a LOT of similarities between the music of Melee, SSB4, and the new Super Smash Bros. Ultimate theme, and some interesting differences between these games and the music of the original Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. So, I thought I'd explore that a little bit.

Mario Kart 8's Mount Wario is one of the more ambitious and impressive racetracks in the series, eschewing the typical 3 lap structure in favor of one long track. The music is equally ambitious, designed to develop musically in time with how the player progresses through the track. The tune's a definite highlight for me on one of my favourite game soundtracks ever, so you can imagine I had a ton of fun making this video!

Yoshi's Crafted World is one of the cutest games to come out in recent memory, and playing through the huge variety of environments and level gimmicks constantly put a smile on my face. Likewise, I was continuously delighted hearing all of the different ways the game handled the main theme, too, and I thought I'd share some of my favourite variations from the game's soundtrack in this video.

For this video I chose to analyze just one piece of music to keep it short and simple. Well, the piece of music I chose was Gusty Garden Galaxy's theme from Super Mario Galaxy, and so after analyzing just the first half of the tune the video is pushing 20 minutes. Short and simple it is not, but the subject of the video is so graceful in the way that it approaches its melody that I just couldn't help myself. Enjoy!

I absolutely loved playing through Origami King, even as one of those annoying 'nothing will ever be as good as Thousand Year Door, how dare you even try' types. The longest and hardest part of making this video was narrowing down what about the soundtrack to include and what to leave out - there is so much cool stuff in this soundtrack that it was really hard to choose! Anyway, hope you enjoy the video!

Drums are a weird instrument to try and write for if you don't know how to play them. As a drummer myself, I know first hand how difficult most arrangers find writing drum parts because I've had to play some truly brutal drum charts in my day. Just some real stinkers. Thankfully, this video is here to give a little overview about what a good drum part should have and some of the basic notation principles that you'll need to know.

I'm very excited to have released my debut video game cover album last week, a tribute to the music of the GameCube called "Let's Play" by 8-bit & The Single Players. In this video I breakdown the process of creating one of my favourite arrangements from the album, a high energy take on Rainbow Road from Mario Kart: Double Dash!! with spicy chord changes, wailing solos, and gratuitous drum fills. Hope you enjoy!

DEHNEH DEHNEH DEHNEH

The battle themes from Super Mario RPG are great, and all take an interesting approach to rhythm which manages to evoke a perfect middle ground between bouncy Mario fun and epic RPG battles.

In this video I tackle Super Mario Bros.' iconic underwater theme, breaking down how the music fits the rhythm of the game's underwater levels and how it develops just a couple musical ideas in to a full, satisfying piece.

I always love in Mario games when there's a level themed around feudal Japan, and in this video I wanted to take a look and see what techniques these games use to make their music feel Japanese.

I loved the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and I just had to break down one of the best moments from the game: The Piranha Plants on Parade music.

Wario Land 3 has one of the coolest 'musical moments' that almost nobody would notice on a normal playthrough of the game: the 5 music boxes you collect throughout your adventure each have their own separate jingle, and these little jingles combine together to create the game's credits music. It's a great melody from a great game and finding out how these jingles fit into it made me appreciate it even more!

What is it about beach level music that puts us right there on the shore, our backs on the sand and our feet in the air? How does a piece of music fill our nostrils with the scent of salty seas? The answer turns out to be rhythm, harmony, attitude, and a guitar.

YOU THOUGHT I WAS DONE WITH WARIO LAND 3, YOU WERE WRONG

Let's do a Deep Dive into the one that started it all.

ThERE I SAID IT. Tears of the Kingdom's ending sequence is unforgettable, and the music plays a huge role in making it the enormous, emotional climax that it is. Let's dive into why:

Orchestration is one of my weaker points in musical analysis, so I brought on fellow music YouTuber Christopher Siu to help analyze the orchestration of the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's Sky Theme. It's a bit of a more casual format, but I think there's a lot here to enjoy!

The title really says it all, I think. The Hyrule Castle theme, originally from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, is one of the greatest pieces of video game music ever written. It kind of gets overshadowed, being on a soundtrack full mostly of the greatest video game music ever written, but taking a deeper look at it I was surprised at how much there was to chew on. Enjoy!

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time must have the most beloved soundtrack in video game music history. This time around I break down some of the limitations composer Koji Kondo faced writing melodies for the game's titular instrument and how those limitations spawned some of the greatest themes of the medium.

I wanted to collect some thoughts I had about rhythm into a basic framework for rhythmic analysis. The material's pretty basic, but it provides a jumping off point from which to explore the rhythms of melodies, bass lines, and other types of musical figures that I've found pretty helpful to understand better how these things work.

After being blown away by the Link's Awakening remake and its approach to rearranging the original Gameboy soundtrack, I decided to see if I could analyze the new soundtrack to glean some insight into arranging for a group that you don't often hear in video game soundtracks: wind sextet.

In this video I take a brief look at the very very deep subject of motivic transformation and development, using a few tunes from Link's Awakening for examples. Big thanks to Ethan D'Ver for letting me use his transcriptions of the soundtrack!

In the first of a 4-part series on Breath of the Wild, I talk about the Hyrule Theme and why it's not just someone plunking out random notes on a piano.

In this video I take a look at the structure of Breath of the Wild's Main Theme.

In this video I take a look at Breath of the Wild's Kakariko Village theme.

In the grand finale of my Breath of the Wild series, I take a look at how the Hyrule Castle theme breathes new life into old music.

In this video I analyze all of the Zelda Overworld Themes to try and dissect exactly what makes them all feel Zelda-y. Hope you enjoy!

LOCRIAN - It really doesn't! I dug up some examples of the Locrian mode used in video game soundtracks with surprisingly-non-spooky sounds!

This video uses entirely examples of the Lydian mode used in video game music, but it's really about general principles of using modes when writing music that could apply to any scale.

Of all the major modes, Mixolydian carries a uniquely lighthearted spirit. In this video I go through some examples of this in games, talk a little bit about what the mode isn't, and then take a look at one of the less lighthearted aspects of the scale.

The Phrygian Mode is the most threatening of the 7 major modes, even more so than the Locrian Mode! That's not a take I would've thought before doing this mode series, but looking at where you actually see these two modes used in the real world I think it's clear that the Phrygian mode feels more threatening even though the Locrian scale is technically "darker". Anyways enjoy the vid!

The Dorian Mode is the most versatile of the 7 major modes, but 'versatile' doesn't seem like a very click-bait-y word to put in the title. From mysterious to heroic to funky the Dorian mode sees a lot of play in a wide variety of musical contexts, and in this video I explore how the different ways of handling the characteristic raised 6th note contribute to each of these various effects.

You might've thought I wasn't gonna touch on the more vanilla modes, but I am! Come check out what makes the Aeolian mode, or Natural Minor Scale, sound so depressing.

Is there a point to the "Ionian mode"? It's just another name for the major scale, and surely the major scale couldn't have any unique colours or qualities that set it apart? Well, in the process of making this video I discovered that, if you treat the major scale like I've been treating every other major mode, it does have a uniquely relaxing quality. Check out the examples in the video and you'll see what I mean!

After finishing my series on the major modes, I thought I'd put together a video walking through the 7 modes of the melodic minor scale as a sort of epilogue. There were a few scales that I couldn't find video game examples of, so I had to make my own.

Music Theory Minute #1.1 - What's a Chord Extension?

This video is meant to introduce the how the voicing of a chord can affect the sound of that chord.

This video is meant to introduce the concept of altered chord extensions, and give some of the most common examples.

This video explores the concept of upper structure triads.

This video introduces the idea that certain notes in a scale or key have a tendency to resolve to other notes in that scale or key.

This video introduces the idea of "antecedent consequent period", or a question-answer type of melodic structure using the melody from Super Mario Bros. 3's Overworld Theme as an example.

This video introduces the idea of tonic and dominant form melodic phrases.

This video breaks apart the iconic Zelda Theme to show how Koji Kondo takes one simple interval and masterfully crafts it into the full melody that we all know and love.

This video introduces a simple way to capture the flavour of any mode or scale using a repeated 2 chord vamp.

This video explores some of the ways to capture the sound of the Dorian ♭2 scale, the second mode of the melodic minor scale.

This video explores creating two chord vamp progressions that deliberately don't fit into one underlying scale.

This video explores "Triad Pairs", using the same concepts we've been looking at this month to create melodic lines.

The Wii Shop Theme is, surprisingly, a perfect example of the fundamentals of jazz harmony. It's also just a total banger.

The Animal Crossing New Horizons has been taking over the internet for the past few months, and as much as I like the whole soundtrack I couldn't resist focusing in on my favourite tune in the game: The Nook's Cranny "shop closing theme" that plays for the last 10 minutes that the store is open each day. It's a pretty short and relatively simple piece of music, but its construction is just perfect!