I'm a little surprised Mario Maker didn't get mentioned in the examples of games that play around with their background music. When you're building a level, every piece you place says its name in tune with the background melody, which you'll often not even notice until you're dragging a line of blocks across the ground.
Actually Mario Maker is one of the best games to show this. Because the note blocks also exist in that game, and they play different instruments based on the enemies that stand on them. Which basically allows you to make the most awesome custom soundtracks in the levels. (many created levels use this)
@@Gnidel I’m confused on what part of SMB1 does this. Are you talking about how the limited channels on the NES will interlace sound effects from the game with the music, so for example when you hit a block it’ll cut out one channel of the music to play the sound? Or are you referring to how some sound effects like the mushroom sound are sped up versions of actual tracks?
You were right about a couple things you were unsure about: Nintendo has their own middleware called "NintendoWare" that handles not just audio, but also UI, 3D graphics, and particle effects - each of which is a separate system that can be used independently of one another. They provide NintendoWare for free to all first and third party developers, but in many of their more recent games, like SMBWonder, Nintendo seems to be using some sort of first-party-only successor for audio in particular (still using NW for UI and graphics). Also, that rolling ball Mario Galaxy track is indeed basically just MIDI data (not literally MIDI, but Nintendo's own comparable format from the middleware Galaxy uses - one of NintendoWare's predecessors, called JSystem). Incidentally, Mario Galaxy also has sound effects that harmonize to the music, like launch stars which play an arpeggio as you jump into them. Lastly, I looked into SMBWonder's level data, and the "xylophone blocks", as they're called, don't have any sort of setting attached to them that indicates that they should play a specific note in the scale. I imagine it's probably checking how many xylophone blocks are adjacent to the one you're stepping on in each direction, or something similar, and determines the note that way (and to make it follow the melody, they'd just only define one note for the whole scale for the particular song in question). But it's hard to know for sure without digging deeper.
Okay I was about to say I didn't expect to see you here, but thinking again about it, yes, I totally expected that and it actually makes lots of sense.
it's even better! they made the rumble motors in the pro controller buzz at the frequency of each block note. You can literally feel the music in your hands (or listen to it if you mute the game and listen carefully to the controller)
Two other examples of interactive music in Mario Wonder include brass being added to themes if you have the elephant power-up or the drums stopping when you stop running.
percussion being added when you start walking is the simplest form of it in the whole game and yet i never noticed it in my whole playthrough, and only one person i watched play it (Dashiegames) noticed it. i was so surprised and ashamed i hadn't noticed honestly 😂
Thanks! Tbh I mainly did the subtitles as an excuse to see how long it would take to do really complicated stuff lmao (the answer is about half an hour per minute of video).
6:52 the piranha plants also follow the logic of being unable to come out of pipes while you're standing on them, so you can prevent some of them from spawning entirely if you stand on their pipes.
I just love that pannenkoek has forced all game-design/game-code analysis channels to use the Mario 64 file select music when explaining advanced topics. It really makes you feel right at home. Great video!
17:24 I can confirm that every marimba block note has its own audio file associated in it. In the Nintendo formated archive for ObjectKeyboardBlock.bars.zs, there are around 146 total .BWAV (Nintendo's binary WAV) files, split up for both the Xylophone and Metallophone. Each note is represented by a number, just as you predicted, such as ObjectKeyboardBlock_Xylophone_*026*.BWAV. This setup almost reminds me of how instrument banks are set up with sequenced, midi style music. The marimba blocks are actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to pry into the game so I could try and learn how it worked, and it struck me just how dynamic they were when playing.
I have hundreds of hours on Celeste and i can't believe i havent noticed the sound effects of the little light things on Mirror Temple harmonizing with the chord, im a dummy
I love how musical portal 2 is, like the individual puzzle elements sing. I forget specific examples, but I think the laser beams in particular have their own little tune
As someone who is a big fan of Celeste and it's music, I am so pleased to learn that the Mirror Temple's lights also correspond with it's chords. I love the detail you went into and it would be cool if you made a whole video on Celeste's music!
I've almost always heard "standard" chords described as the 1 3 and 5, with the 7 usually just being the first "extra" note that gets mentioned. This is the first time I've heard it as being a part of the chord that just happens to be typically left off. Interesting stuff how different people look at music.
the 7th is often a defining characteristic of some chords (i.e. dominant 7) and they would completely lose a core part of their functionality/voice leading if the 7th wasn't there. the same can not be said about the higher tensions like the 9/13/etc. which usually just add color and slightly smoother voice leading.
I would say, it depends on the context. To put it simply: A - if you're studying "classical" ("tonal") harmony, as in counterpoint etc, then yes: the 7th is considered a dissonance, and has to be treated a certain way (prepared, resolved). B - if you're studying jazz, certain pop, etc, then pretty much every chord is always played with the 7th, for the reason Cadence Hira just explained. Mostly, I would say that: - a long form "classical" work is focused on structure and development (think Beethoven/Brahms, hours of music developed using only one melody, or even just 3 notes), so it has different sections and a clear big climax, so all of that requires also harmonic planning and "holding" complexity at first. - Differently, a "hit song" (and certain game music) is more focused on giving you a relatively stable "mood", so functional harmony is used differently (maybe we could say: in "faster/quicker" interesting phrases, with 7th used already from the start - while a big orchestral work will omit certain complexity in order to introduce it only at the climax of development. This is simplyfied, but hopefully it makes sense). [Of course, with time things changes even the classical domain: "we" got culturally used to more and more "dissonance" over time, and very early counterpoint manuals from centuries ago have different "rules" than modern ones, also baroque is different from classicism, then instruments started to be tuned with "equal temperament" and therefore people could start to modulate to more distant keys (playing in every key and adding more secondary dominants, that before would sound pretty weird or outright bad, "out of tune"), and then with late-romantic the tonality was chromatically expanded almost to the limit, and then with "post-romantic" like "impressionism" (Ravel, Debussy, etc) they went back to using modes, and non-functional harmony was (re)introduced, so that colorful sounds (aka 7th chords and more) started to be used for their color and therefore outside of the "rules" named above (look how much Debussy plays around with dom7th constrant structures, there are entire sections where every chord is a dom7th chord), and then even more with non-tonal systems (even attempting the "democratization" of pitches with the 12-tones "serialism" etc etc)]. [An interesting thing, that I heard said only by one person, is that this "loosing hierarchic structure" in music (aka from tonality, to its chromatic expansion, to non-tonality) followed the historic timeline of societies and political structures, with clear hierarchies (king, princes, etc) becoming democracies, and then even the first postulations of anarchism in time for Shoenberg 12-tone system, which is pretty interesting]. One funny thing, to me, was when my old composition teacher (who started from very early "simple" counterpoint to then go forward) told me: "You see, you have been introduced to the use of the 7th on the dominant chord, and now, of course, you always use it. Why? Sometimes you could have a dominant without 7th, you know..". Another funny bit is about Stravinskij telling his teacher (Rimsky-Korsakov) that they were playing Debussy in a nearby city, and they all should go (at that time there was no youtube, nor records, so it was still pretty rare to hear music that wasn't written around you), and Rimskij-Korsakov told him: "Oh no, I won't go. I already hear his [Debussy's] music once, and I listen to it again, then I will like it. But you should go.". Sort of meaning: 'It's new and different, if I listen or study it more than once, I will then like it and I'll have to learn and write in that style too: I'm old enough for all that. But you are learning now: you should go". - Similarly to an Art teacher of mine who looking at students work said: "Ok, I don't like this one, but (asking the rest of the class) do you guys like it?" Everyone said yes (we were all estatic for it). "Then, this is the art of the future. I'm old, my opinion doesn't matter, yours matter."
In Zelda Skyward Sword, the Bazaar has music that changes depending on which shop you are at, and if you play the harp, it is always in harmony with the music playing around you
(Excuse my music terms I'm not aware of what to call many things) Yesterday I just noticed while playing SMBWonder that the music has this slight percussion backing in the level on top of a basic layer of percussion. When you stop moving, this goes away, and it feels really hard to spot but it makes the music really chill. It is the smallest change but it works so well and really makes it nice when you want to just stop and enjoy the scenery.
I remember the star ball you run on in Super Mario Galaxy. I was shocked the game could do that kind of sound manipulation, and that they went to all that trouble for something that only seemed to be used in that one level.
there were a couple of those star ball levels in the game but yeah, a lot of trouble to go through for something that didn't even make up like 5% of all levels in the game.
Sadness and sorrow (bossa version) mashed with the piranha plant song on the end actually took me out. Loved the references, loved the storytelling, loved the accurate music theory, loved the editing, loved the specific examples you thought of, I just loved all of it. This was extremely high quality, and I hope to see more. You've deservedly earned yourself a new subscriber :)
i was waiting SO LONG for someone to talk about the music in this game! Loved the video! There’s so many pleasant little quirks and details that follow the player so well and really add to the atmosphere. Makes the levels feel truly alive. I hope you enjoy your playthrough, I won’t spoil anything but I will say the music in the final few levels goes above and beyond what I ever expected to get from a 2d Mario game.
I just realized something while playing today, when you stand still there's an instrument in the music that fades out and stops playing! Its such a small detail but it blows my mind.
One thing I love is in Scram Skedaddlers when you’re playing the wonder effect and running on the music blocks, it sounds so good!!! I wanna mod the game just to edit the level to hear what it sounds like through the whole song
Adaptive music is one of the reasons why I play Nintendo games - their devs use it all the time nowadays and it's so satisfying every time I hear it. My favourite has to be Skydiving music from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Also Music Park from Mario Kart 8 is another good example of "random" notes playing with the background music (in game it happens when you ride on a piano)
Funny little fact: the music in Mario wonder can change in a couple different ways, if your elephant or not, if your moving or not, if you elephant and moving or not. If your elephant, most of the instruments and voices are replaced with trumpets, If your moving, it’s a more upbeat track, and the opposite if you not moving
I was surprised this wasn't mentioned. It's the most obvious change and the one that astounds me the most. So many things alter the base soundtrack to the game, yet it's never jarring.
I don’t understand why so many reviews of this game said it had a “bland unoriginal soundtrack” even I think the ign review did. I was so confused like did we play the same game
No. You did not play the same game. They hated it cuz to them it wasnt super mario wonder , to them it was "the thing that made me not play spiderman2 wahoo man"
Sound effects designed to harmonize with the bgm goes further back - IIRC the earliest example in a Nintendo game I can think of for it are the sound effects for hitting enemies with your sword in Windwaker (Which IIRC a video on the game I can no longer find, delays the sound effect just enough to be in time with the music and plays a sound effect corresponding to the current OST, but I might easily be misremembering the details there)
@@titanic_monarch796 ...Really should have thought to check Scruffy when trying to double check that alongside 8 bit music theory and game score fanfare.
Personally, I love that the music adds extra percussion when you’re moving. The elephant powerup also does this, adding an some kind of extra brass instrument. Sadly, I prefer when adaptive music is more subtle, so I prefer the original versions.
The moment I heard the SM64 Menu Music and the light blue gradient background I was REALLY wondering which channel I was on, LMAO! Joke aside, great video!
I've looked into how the dynamic music you mentioned in ACNH was coded, and it was pretty ridiculous. Definitely some proprietary format, but we were able to somewhat reverse engineer it by listening. There's chords programmed in for all songs, as well as specific intervals at which villagers or gyroids play notes or drums, some of which are randomized. There's also a "Silent" song playing at all times for when a K.K. song isn't, it's what the villagers sing by default. Speaking of villager vocals, also used sequences for them, with specific pitches, syllables ("instruments"), pitch-bending and velocity, plus the sound depends on the personality of the villager. (Most of these seem to have been taken from Happy Home Designer, but that game used a totally different format, leading me to believe both were converted from what were originally MIDI files. And unlike in HHD, they bothered to actually make the kana syllables of Marine Song 2001 line up!) I was actually able to very tediously convert the hexadecimal data for each song into MIDI and then actual audio.
I love the use of subtitles in this vid. Most people just do the bare minimum or not even bother when it comes to subtitles, but the use of color here really improves the whole and makes your points stand out (like with the drill example) great job!
THIS VIDEO WAS AWESOMEE, really great production quality that oozes love and perfectly visualises the topic making it easier to understand! This video + your other most recent on adventure time were so amazing you have 100% earned my sub. Can't wait for more content from you! :D
Thanks so much for sharing! I love video game music, and it brings a smile to my face to see others post about it. Incredible video editing too. I can't imagine timing all that stuff like you do
i've been playing a lot of mario wonder with my brother and delighting in all the care and whimsy and interactivity they out into the soundtrack, sometimes just running back and forth between the different sections of the map to hear the bass get bassier the lower you go in the fungi mines, bouncing on around on the note blocks trying (badly) to make something that sounds good other than the scale that plays as you run across. love this analysis!
Game maker has some sound parameters that makes this very easy, you can easily change audio pitch and other stuff together with game actions. I mostly used it to control car engine sounds when you accelerate or create some more variety in sound effects by applying random pitch changes
Stumbled on your video randomly and I'm so glad! Mario Bros. Wonder is truly beautifully done and the music in it plays its part! Thank u for the music theory as well c':
Just discovered this channel, you seem like the perfect person to ask for a video on Team Fight Tactic's upcoming set. It blows my mind that they somehow found a way to have the game dynamically mix a dozen or more different genre tracks in 3 layers and it somehow always works. I really want someone to dive into the music theory behind it because I sure as hell don't get what wizardry they pulled.
i play an INSANE amount of teamfight tactics. the new set came out while i was working on this script and I realized they pretty much did the exact same thing lol. I would make a video on it but it would pretty much be the same video it works like this though if you're interested: 1. all of the composers for every "band" were given the same tempo, key (I'll go into more depth in a second), general chord progression (they had freedom to mess around with this to keep things genre appropriate), and amount of measures/specific sections that had to play, i.e. at x point they have to have the teamfight tactics theme play. this makes it so everything could theoretically be played at the same time and it more or less sound good; every track is a just variation of every other track. 2. then specific "branches" were composed in the same manner; i.e. every composer wrote something for the carousel and one of those compositions plays randomly during carousel round. also, after one player dies, all of the music layers branch to a new track in a different key (the beginning of the game is in A minor and the 2nd half is in F minor. also the tft theme changes to a different theme at this point) 3. EVERYTHING is chopped up into vertical layers and exists as one gigantic vertical stack. the bigger vertical traits like heartsteel and k/da most likely have layers for drums, bass, lead, texture, etc. while smaller traits like jazz or hyperpop have like maybe 2 layers. 4. the game determines which vertical layers to unmute and the volume of said layers by checking which traits you have in and which breakpoints you hit. i think it also "fills in" the track that is playing if it's missing any musical layer that would have to be there (like drums maybe) but you don't have the breakpoint to hear the drums for your main traits, so it steals a layer from something that isn't active but you have a unit in (happens often with jazz i've noticed). this is all conjecture though please screenshot this and tag Mortdog on twitter asking if it's correct new set is so fun tho fr
My favorite instance of the sound layering technique has got to be the super bell subway track in mario kart 8. The French instrumentation mixed with the clean Japanese train station architecture was a very nice feeling for me after I left my visit to Tokyo. Music would go from classy cafe style to blue collar funk the moment you went underground. very nice
Super Mario Galaxy already had sound effects that played in tune to the background music: the twinkle sound when you move the cursor over a save file on the title screen! I thought the same thing happened when P2 stunned enemies but apparently not. Maybe in Galaxy 2?
A bit of an aside from the comment about how the pitch shift is insane: it's actually just as easily programmed as the rest of it. In MIDI there's often a pitch shift controller.
I did a double take when I read your sub count, this is golden and you're extremely underrated. I've been wondering how Nintendo managed to harmonize everything so that it literally never sounds even a tad bit wrong ever, this is the perfect explanation. Thanks! You gained a sub.
what you describe is what I did when I tried to play the guitar to songs I didn’t know how to play. I just tried out which notes sounded „right“, tried a few and ALWAYS found a pattern that would work throughout the whole song
So glad you made this video to share the coolness of interactive music. When I played with my sisters an talked about how the music changes or stops/starts playing once something happens, they just stared at me 😂
Ah, this is perfect! It explains a lot that I was curious about! I’ve been having an idea for a game, but as it’s just an idea and I have absolutely no game making experience I couldn’t even begin to put it together in my head. With this I now have a mild understanding of how this feature works (and what it even is gamewise, I didn’t know this either lol) Maybe someday I could create something using this interactive music software. Regardless, great video!
9:24 Oh! Mario Odyssey did this too! If you possess any of thr many power strips in the game, the four-note pattern you play while traveling through changes with the music in the background too. It's sort of jarring when the pattern chsnges, it draws your attention to the work nintendo put into making it otherwise invisible
I've literally just learned how chord scales work and how they support u to make melodies bc this video, I'm actually impressed. You really explained well!! I've tried to learn it few times but I couldn't really get it, ty so much 😭
A similar effect of the note blocks in Mario Wonder happens when you use a launch star on Mario Galaxy, it syncs and arpeggiates to the current level soundtrack, it sounds sooo cool!!
This is insane! Really nice video!! The amount of work to make it work in a subtle but fantastic way is jaw dropping. Thanks for sharing it, amazing knowledge!
I love to engaging this is. With details about game dev, music theory, and memes. Reached this video via Scott Fine's Game Newsletter, never leaving. Cheers!
Couldn´t get everything (I don´t know that much music theory) but it's cool to see how lot's of things works. Also, the editing was so cool!! even the captions syncs with the music
Given that this audio system is able to operate seamlessly with these two entirely different modes of operation, there’s likely an insane number of other things and modes that it supports. Huge props to the Nintendo devs for creating such a beautiful and flexible system and to the composers who made absolutely genius use of it.
Nice video! One thing worth mentioning, note sure about wwise or fmod, but it is normal nowadays to change speed without changing pitch, most modern daws use something like flexi-time or similar, witch enables speed/pich change without affecting the other axis.
3:24 I once tried something like this, but not to make music and the environment interact... but solely to emulate old videogame audio limitations by silencing part of the audio track when a sound effect plays... It turned out awful cause I didn't know what I was doing.
The audio middleware algorithms aren't very complex. They're just simple ideas that people keep reinventing without knowing other people have already solved it. I know because, uh, I'm guilty of making my own, twice, before I knew there were actual products to do it. :D
Amazing video! I didn't know about you before and Im pleasantly surprised. There isnt a lot video game music theory channels beside 8bit music theory... If you love doing it please continue making videos :)
I saw the note blocks in the thumbnail and got excited because I was thinking you were going to mention that the note blocks change pitch along with the song. I discovered it because I was playing my switch quietly on my lunch break and the joycons play the audio file of the note blocks through their haptic motors, and you can actually hear the sound from the controller. I was happy that I could still listen to the song as long as I was running on the blocks even though the sound of the switch was turned off
I think the newest Killer Instinct is a great example of dynamic music, switching segments and (seemingly) modifying playback parameters depending on what's going on in the battle. It's a surprisingly convoluted system for a genre so heavy on sound effects that many probably find it easy to discount the importance of music at all! But they chose to go all in on making it more immersive!
My favourite example of adaptive music in video games is in the Pikmin series. Pikmin 2 is entirely in midi, so phases in and out layers of music depending on if you’re fighting, carrying, etc. Pikmin 3 uses audio files instead and does similar layering for the actions in the game, but in the boss fights all of the music is timed and changed with the actions performed by you and the boss. And in Pikmin 4, almost every single enemy has a unique layer of music with two variants, a softer one for when they’re near you and a much more noticeable one when you’re fighting them. That’s just some of the details that make Pikmin one of my favourite series.
I'm a little surprised Mario Maker didn't get mentioned in the examples of games that play around with their background music. When you're building a level, every piece you place says its name in tune with the background melody, which you'll often not even notice until you're dragging a line of blocks across the ground.
true! crazy how many mario games do this
Actually Mario Maker is one of the best games to show this. Because the note blocks also exist in that game, and they play different instruments based on the enemies that stand on them. Which basically allows you to make the most awesome custom soundtracks in the levels. (many created levels use this)
sEmI soLId PlaTfORM
@@CadenceHiraEven the first Super Mario Bros. on NES synchronized sound effects with music! It's a tradition as old as the series itself.
@@Gnidel
I’m confused on what part of SMB1 does this. Are you talking about how the limited channels on the NES will interlace sound effects from the game with the music, so for example when you hit a block it’ll cut out one channel of the music to play the sound?
Or are you referring to how some sound effects like the mushroom sound are sped up versions of actual tracks?
You were right about a couple things you were unsure about: Nintendo has their own middleware called "NintendoWare" that handles not just audio, but also UI, 3D graphics, and particle effects - each of which is a separate system that can be used independently of one another. They provide NintendoWare for free to all first and third party developers, but in many of their more recent games, like SMBWonder, Nintendo seems to be using some sort of first-party-only successor for audio in particular (still using NW for UI and graphics).
Also, that rolling ball Mario Galaxy track is indeed basically just MIDI data (not literally MIDI, but Nintendo's own comparable format from the middleware Galaxy uses - one of NintendoWare's predecessors, called JSystem). Incidentally, Mario Galaxy also has sound effects that harmonize to the music, like launch stars which play an arpeggio as you jump into them.
Lastly, I looked into SMBWonder's level data, and the "xylophone blocks", as they're called, don't have any sort of setting attached to them that indicates that they should play a specific note in the scale. I imagine it's probably checking how many xylophone blocks are adjacent to the one you're stepping on in each direction, or something similar, and determines the note that way (and to make it follow the melody, they'd just only define one note for the whole scale for the particular song in question). But it's hard to know for sure without digging deeper.
missed opportunity to call it warioware
@@xaigamer3129 the MarioMare™
hi newer super mario bros wii music producer person how you doing
Okay I was about to say I didn't expect to see you here, but thinking again about it, yes, I totally expected that and it actually makes lots of sense.
@@xaigamer3129 iirc, the prececessor to the nintendo dev portal was named somethign similar to warioware. There are traces of that in the Wii SDK
underrated channel alert
glad you said something
true
Yasss
Girl! Alert!
Thumb farmer alert
it's even better! they made the rumble motors in the pro controller buzz at the frequency of each block note. You can literally feel the music in your hands (or listen to it if you mute the game and listen carefully to the controller)
how did i never notice this that's actually insane
@@CadenceHira the rumble also play a tune when you go on those yellow speed platform things too.
Golf Story does something similar, with entire sound effects coming from the rumbles
you can also feel a little three note looping tune through the joycons whenever you get on one of the dash block things
It also happens through the joycons
Two other examples of interactive music in Mario Wonder include brass being added to themes if you have the elephant power-up or the drums stopping when you stop running.
percussion being added when you start walking is the simplest form of it in the whole game and yet i never noticed it in my whole playthrough, and only one person i watched play it (Dashiegames) noticed it. i was so surprised and ashamed i hadn't noticed honestly 😂
The UA-cam CC on this are a work of art... colors, movement, fade outs, truly wonderful lol
Thanks! Tbh I mainly did the subtitles as an excuse to see how long it would take to do really complicated stuff lmao (the answer is about half an hour per minute of video).
6:52 the piranha plants also follow the logic of being unable to come out of pipes while you're standing on them, so you can prevent some of them from spawning entirely if you stand on their pipes.
That was always the case in practically every Mario game since the NES.
Yes, I was pointing out the fact that the singing piranha plants follow that rule.
I just love that pannenkoek has forced all game-design/game-code analysis channels to use the Mario 64 file select music when explaining advanced topics. It really makes you feel right at home. Great video!
17:24 I can confirm that every marimba block note has its own audio file associated in it. In the Nintendo formated archive for ObjectKeyboardBlock.bars.zs, there are around 146 total .BWAV (Nintendo's binary WAV) files, split up for both the Xylophone and Metallophone. Each note is represented by a number, just as you predicted, such as ObjectKeyboardBlock_Xylophone_*026*.BWAV. This setup almost reminds me of how instrument banks are set up with sequenced, midi style music. The marimba blocks are actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to pry into the game so I could try and learn how it worked, and it struck me just how dynamic they were when playing.
Woah, are you one of the sound designers?
@@sylvanhrowberry Hahaha, I wish!
I’m a massive audio nerd, and the new super Mario games were a massive part of my childhood. I just gotta say this video is absolutely fantastic
*adam Neely but it’s even more highly targeted at my demographic*
I have hundreds of hours on Celeste and i can't believe i havent noticed the sound effects of the little light things on Mirror Temple harmonizing with the chord, im a dummy
Great video! Portal 2 is a great example of a game that plays with music as you complete the puzzles
I love how musical portal 2 is, like the individual puzzle elements sing. I forget specific examples, but I think the laser beams in particular have their own little tune
interacting with any of the gels as well as the launchers will add little flourishes
As someone who is a big fan of Celeste and it's music, I am so pleased to learn that the Mirror Temple's lights also correspond with it's chords. I love the detail you went into and it would be cool if you made a whole video on Celeste's music!
I've almost always heard "standard" chords described as the 1 3 and 5, with the 7 usually just being the first "extra" note that gets mentioned. This is the first time I've heard it as being a part of the chord that just happens to be typically left off. Interesting stuff how different people look at music.
the 7th is often a defining characteristic of some chords (i.e. dominant 7) and they would completely lose a core part of their functionality/voice leading if the 7th wasn't there. the same can not be said about the higher tensions like the 9/13/etc. which usually just add color and slightly smoother voice leading.
I would say, it depends on the context.
To put it simply:
A - if you're studying "classical" ("tonal") harmony, as in counterpoint etc, then yes: the 7th is considered a dissonance, and has to be treated a certain way (prepared, resolved).
B - if you're studying jazz, certain pop, etc, then pretty much every chord is always played with the 7th, for the reason Cadence Hira just explained.
Mostly, I would say that:
- a long form "classical" work is focused on structure and development (think Beethoven/Brahms, hours of music developed using only one melody, or even just 3 notes), so it has different sections and a clear big climax, so all of that requires also harmonic planning and "holding" complexity at first.
- Differently, a "hit song" (and certain game music) is more focused on giving you a relatively stable "mood", so functional harmony is used differently (maybe we could say: in "faster/quicker" interesting phrases, with 7th used already from the start - while a big orchestral work will omit certain complexity in order to introduce it only at the climax of development. This is simplyfied, but hopefully it makes sense).
[Of course, with time things changes even the classical domain: "we" got culturally used to more and more "dissonance" over time, and very early counterpoint manuals from centuries ago have different "rules" than modern ones, also baroque is different from classicism, then instruments started to be tuned with "equal temperament" and therefore people could start to modulate to more distant keys (playing in every key and adding more secondary dominants, that before would sound pretty weird or outright bad, "out of tune"), and then with late-romantic the tonality was chromatically expanded almost to the limit, and then with "post-romantic" like "impressionism" (Ravel, Debussy, etc) they went back to using modes, and non-functional harmony was (re)introduced, so that colorful sounds (aka 7th chords and more) started to be used for their color and therefore outside of the "rules" named above (look how much Debussy plays around with dom7th constrant structures, there are entire sections where every chord is a dom7th chord), and then even more with non-tonal systems (even attempting the "democratization" of pitches with the 12-tones "serialism" etc etc)].
[An interesting thing, that I heard said only by one person, is that this "loosing hierarchic structure" in music (aka from tonality, to its chromatic expansion, to non-tonality) followed the historic timeline of societies and political structures, with clear hierarchies (king, princes, etc) becoming democracies, and then even the first postulations of anarchism in time for Shoenberg 12-tone system, which is pretty interesting].
One funny thing, to me, was when my old composition teacher (who started from very early "simple" counterpoint to then go forward) told me:
"You see, you have been introduced to the use of the 7th on the dominant chord, and now, of course, you always use it. Why? Sometimes you could have a dominant without 7th, you know..".
Another funny bit is about Stravinskij telling his teacher (Rimsky-Korsakov) that they were playing Debussy in a nearby city, and they all should go (at that time there was no youtube, nor records, so it was still pretty rare to hear music that wasn't written around you), and Rimskij-Korsakov told him: "Oh no, I won't go. I already hear his [Debussy's] music once, and I listen to it again, then I will like it. But you should go.".
Sort of meaning: 'It's new and different, if I listen or study it more than once, I will then like it and I'll have to learn and write in that style too: I'm old enough for all that. But you are learning now: you should go".
- Similarly to an Art teacher of mine who looking at students work said: "Ok, I don't like this one, but (asking the rest of the class) do you guys like it?" Everyone said yes (we were all estatic for it). "Then, this is the art of the future. I'm old, my opinion doesn't matter, yours matter."
@@tommasoannoni481 Respect to that art teacher at the end tbh. Humbling.
In Zelda Skyward Sword, the Bazaar has music that changes depending on which shop you are at, and if you play the harp, it is always in harmony with the music playing around you
(Excuse my music terms I'm not aware of what to call many things) Yesterday I just noticed while playing SMBWonder that the music has this slight percussion backing in the level on top of a basic layer of percussion. When you stop moving, this goes away, and it feels really hard to spot but it makes the music really chill. It is the smallest change but it works so well and really makes it nice when you want to just stop and enjoy the scenery.
I remember the star ball you run on in Super Mario Galaxy. I was shocked the game could do that kind of sound manipulation, and that they went to all that trouble for something that only seemed to be used in that one level.
there were a couple of those star ball levels in the game but yeah, a lot of trouble to go through for something that didn't even make up like 5% of all levels in the game.
mario odyssey's power lines are still utterly insane to me, halfway through and praying it gets mentioned :33
edit: YESSSSSS
Sadness and sorrow (bossa version) mashed with the piranha plant song on the end actually took me out. Loved the references, loved the storytelling, loved the accurate music theory, loved the editing, loved the specific examples you thought of, I just loved all of it. This was extremely high quality, and I hope to see more.
You've deservedly earned yourself a new subscriber :)
i was waiting SO LONG for someone to talk about the music in this game! Loved the video! There’s so many pleasant little quirks and details that follow the player so well and really add to the atmosphere. Makes the levels feel truly alive. I hope you enjoy your playthrough, I won’t spoil anything but I will say the music in the final few levels goes above and beyond what I ever expected to get from a 2d Mario game.
I just realized something while playing today, when you stand still there's an instrument in the music that fades out and stops playing! Its such a small detail but it blows my mind.
One thing I love is in Scram Skedaddlers when you’re playing the wonder effect and running on the music blocks, it sounds so good!!! I wanna mod the game just to edit the level to hear what it sounds like through the whole song
Adaptive music is one of the reasons why I play Nintendo games - their devs use it all the time nowadays and it's so satisfying every time I hear it. My favourite has to be Skydiving music from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Also Music Park from Mario Kart 8 is another good example of "random" notes playing with the background music (in game it happens when you ride on a piano)
The second I saw the 2 toads kissing I subscribed in a heartbeat.
It's just such a funny drawing man.
Funny little fact: the music in Mario wonder can change in a couple different ways, if your elephant or not, if your moving or not, if you elephant and moving or not.
If your elephant, most of the instruments and voices are replaced with trumpets,
If your moving, it’s a more upbeat track, and the opposite if you not moving
I was surprised this wasn't mentioned. It's the most obvious change and the one that astounds me the most. So many things alter the base soundtrack to the game, yet it's never jarring.
i was really enjoying this and then the pannenkoek section took it to 11/10. subbed
3:12 when you ride Yoshi in Mario World the game just unmutes the channel 6 with has (most of the time) the yoshi drums.
3:13 i think in SMW, the channel that plays the bongo is muted when you're not riding Yoshi, and when you get on Yoshi it just toggles the channel on
The music and sound effects have almost always been interactive and creative in implementation. This game just adds a little bit.
This vid was so fire. The tempo and structure were chefs kiss. If you enjoyed putting this together, please keep making content like this 🙏
I don’t understand why so many reviews of this game said it had a “bland unoriginal soundtrack” even I think the ign review did. I was so confused like did we play the same game
Same. It sounds so lively.
No.
You did not play the same game.
They hated it cuz to them it wasnt super mario wonder , to them it was "the thing that made me not play spiderman2 wahoo man"
Wasn’t expecting this kind of video from you, but you nailed it ^w^
Also love the ukelele rendition of the piranha plants song
Sound effects designed to harmonize with the bgm goes further back - IIRC the earliest example in a Nintendo game I can think of for it are the sound effects for hitting enemies with your sword in Windwaker (Which IIRC a video on the game I can no longer find, delays the sound effect just enough to be in time with the music and plays a sound effect corresponding to the current OST, but I might easily be misremembering the details there)
You're probably thinking of Scruffy's video on sound design in breath of the wild, which mentions this as BOTW does the same
@@titanic_monarch796 ...Really should have thought to check Scruffy when trying to double check that alongside 8 bit music theory and game score fanfare.
@@Stephen-Fox I'm glad you found it and I'm not familiar with fanfare, so I'll check it out!
Don't think i didn't notice the Pannenkoek reference. Very based.
Personally, I love that the music adds extra percussion when you’re moving. The elephant powerup also does this, adding an some kind of extra brass instrument. Sadly, I prefer when adaptive music is more subtle, so I prefer the original versions.
The moment I heard the SM64 Menu Music and the light blue gradient background I was REALLY wondering which channel I was on, LMAO!
Joke aside, great video!
I've looked into how the dynamic music you mentioned in ACNH was coded, and it was pretty ridiculous. Definitely some proprietary format, but we were able to somewhat reverse engineer it by listening. There's chords programmed in for all songs, as well as specific intervals at which villagers or gyroids play notes or drums, some of which are randomized. There's also a "Silent" song playing at all times for when a K.K. song isn't, it's what the villagers sing by default.
Speaking of villager vocals, also used sequences for them, with specific pitches, syllables ("instruments"), pitch-bending and velocity, plus the sound depends on the personality of the villager. (Most of these seem to have been taken from Happy Home Designer, but that game used a totally different format, leading me to believe both were converted from what were originally MIDI files. And unlike in HHD, they bothered to actually make the kana syllables of Marine Song 2001 line up!) I was actually able to very tediously convert the hexadecimal data for each song into MIDI and then actual audio.
I don’t think I’ve ever been fascinated by a music explanation. This was amazing
I love the use of subtitles in this vid. Most people just do the bare minimum or not even bother when it comes to subtitles, but the use of color here really improves the whole and makes your points stand out (like with the drill example) great job!
THIS VIDEO WAS AWESOMEE, really great production quality that oozes love and perfectly visualises the topic making it easier to understand! This video + your other most recent on adventure time were so amazing you have 100% earned my sub. Can't wait for more content from you! :D
this feels like a speedrunning documentary but for music (amazing)
Thanks so much for sharing! I love video game music, and it brings a smile to my face to see others post about it. Incredible video editing too. I can't imagine timing all that stuff like you do
11:23 : Berklee logo for jazz theory... so that's why people don't even wanna try getting into music
it's ironic dw
i've been playing a lot of mario wonder with my brother and delighting in all the care and whimsy and interactivity they out into the soundtrack, sometimes just running back and forth between the different sections of the map to hear the bass get bassier the lower you go in the fungi mines, bouncing on around on the note blocks trying (badly) to make something that sounds good other than the scale that plays as you run across. love this analysis!
The way mario games interact with music is so amazing. Mario kart is a perfect example of it, changing based on the items you use
I was waiting for someone to explain to me why those blocks always sound so "right" together with the BGM. Thank you!
You should also look into Paper Mario Origami King and it’s interactive music
Game maker has some sound parameters that makes this very easy, you can easily change audio pitch and other stuff together with game actions. I mostly used it to control car engine sounds when you accelerate or create some more variety in sound effects by applying random pitch changes
This video is amazing, it's very rare to find good videos from small creators on yt recommendations, keep it up! (sorry for my bad english lol
Stumbled on your video randomly and I'm so glad!
Mario Bros. Wonder is truly beautifully done and the music in it plays its part!
Thank u for the music theory as well c':
Just discovered this channel, you seem like the perfect person to ask for a video on Team Fight Tactic's upcoming set. It blows my mind that they somehow found a way to have the game dynamically mix a dozen or more different genre tracks in 3 layers and it somehow always works. I really want someone to dive into the music theory behind it because I sure as hell don't get what wizardry they pulled.
i play an INSANE amount of teamfight tactics. the new set came out while i was working on this script and I realized they pretty much did the exact same thing lol. I would make a video on it but it would pretty much be the same video
it works like this though if you're interested:
1. all of the composers for every "band" were given the same tempo, key (I'll go into more depth in a second), general chord progression (they had freedom to mess around with this to keep things genre appropriate), and amount of measures/specific sections that had to play, i.e. at x point they have to have the teamfight tactics theme play. this makes it so everything could theoretically be played at the same time and it more or less sound good; every track is a just variation of every other track.
2. then specific "branches" were composed in the same manner; i.e. every composer wrote something for the carousel and one of those compositions plays randomly during carousel round. also, after one player dies, all of the music layers branch to a new track in a different key (the beginning of the game is in A minor and the 2nd half is in F minor. also the tft theme changes to a different theme at this point)
3. EVERYTHING is chopped up into vertical layers and exists as one gigantic vertical stack. the bigger vertical traits like heartsteel and k/da most likely have layers for drums, bass, lead, texture, etc. while smaller traits like jazz or hyperpop have like maybe 2 layers.
4. the game determines which vertical layers to unmute and the volume of said layers by checking which traits you have in and which breakpoints you hit. i think it also "fills in" the track that is playing if it's missing any musical layer that would have to be there (like drums maybe) but you don't have the breakpoint to hear the drums for your main traits, so it steals a layer from something that isn't active but you have a unit in (happens often with jazz i've noticed).
this is all conjecture though please screenshot this and tag Mortdog on twitter asking if it's correct
new set is so fun tho fr
omg i had no idea tft actually had this kind of music design
i thought kiame was joking@@CadenceHira
Incredible work! I love watching these videos, as well as showing some of them to my students!
This was amazing work. I got here by searching for Mario wonder music and fell down an 8-bit Music Theory hole. Happy I’m here. Love your stuff!
My favorite instance of the sound layering technique has got to be the super bell subway track in mario kart 8. The French instrumentation mixed with the clean Japanese train station architecture was a very nice feeling for me after I left my visit to Tokyo.
Music would go from classy cafe style to blue collar funk the moment you went underground. very nice
Adaptive music needs more love, thanks for making this!!
Super Mario Galaxy already had sound effects that played in tune to the background music: the twinkle sound when you move the cursor over a save file on the title screen! I thought the same thing happened when P2 stunned enemies but apparently not. Maybe in Galaxy 2?
I didn't expect you to go full pannekoek2012 in this diagrams and all
pro tip: watch this vid with subtitles, they are just epic
A bit of an aside from the comment about how the pitch shift is insane: it's actually just as easily programmed as the rest of it. In MIDI there's often a pitch shift controller.
I did a double take when I read your sub count, this is golden and you're extremely underrated. I've been wondering how Nintendo managed to harmonize everything so that it literally never sounds even a tad bit wrong ever, this is the perfect explanation. Thanks! You gained a sub.
Great video, I need more people talking about dynamic music!
I literally just finished spending about an hour obsessing over these exact details in the note blocks before being recommended this vid.
what you describe is what I did when I tried to play the guitar to songs I didn’t know how to play. I just tried out which notes sounded „right“, tried a few and ALWAYS found a pattern that would work throughout the whole song
So glad you made this video to share the coolness of interactive music. When I played with my sisters an talked about how the music changes or stops/starts playing once something happens, they just stared at me 😂
7:26 Every run through of Piranha Plant Parade is personalized
how have i not heard this channel before?!
this channel is reallly cool
Ah, this is perfect! It explains a lot that I was curious about! I’ve been having an idea for a game, but as it’s just an idea and I have absolutely no game making experience I couldn’t even begin to put it together in my head. With this I now have a mild understanding of how this feature works (and what it even is gamewise, I didn’t know this either lol) Maybe someday I could create something using this interactive music software.
Regardless, great video!
9:24 Oh! Mario Odyssey did this too! If you possess any of thr many power strips in the game, the four-note pattern you play while traveling through changes with the music in the background too. It's sort of jarring when the pattern chsnges, it draws your attention to the work nintendo put into making it otherwise invisible
10:31 theeeeeeere it is
I've literally just learned how chord scales work and how they support u to make melodies bc this video, I'm actually impressed. You really explained well!! I've tried to learn it few times but I couldn't really get it, ty so much 😭
A similar effect of the note blocks in Mario Wonder happens when you use a launch star on Mario Galaxy, it syncs and arpeggiates to the current level soundtrack, it sounds sooo cool!!
Was not ready for that parallel universes reference
This is insane! Really nice video!! The amount of work to make it work in a subtle but fantastic way is jaw dropping. Thanks for sharing it, amazing knowledge!
I love to engaging this is. With details about game dev, music theory, and memes. Reached this video via Scott Fine's Game Newsletter, never leaving. Cheers!
Couldn´t get everything (I don´t know that much music theory) but it's cool to see how lot's of things works. Also, the editing was so cool!! even the captions syncs with the music
Ive seen the thing with the note blocks most often in game menus actually ! I always absolutely love hearing it
Fellow adaptive music person here, this is excellent!
Edit: NOT THE WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS MUSIC 😂😂
Given that this audio system is able to operate seamlessly with these two entirely different modes of operation, there’s likely an insane number of other things and modes that it supports. Huge props to the Nintendo devs for creating such a beautiful and flexible system and to the composers who made absolutely genius use of it.
This video is incredible, love the theory behind Mario Wonder's music !
OH MY EFFING GAWD! I've been playing this game for a bunch lately but I missed all these tiny details! Thanks for this breakdown!
I really enjoy the way you explain music. Would love some music theory videos in your style!
Nice video! One thing worth mentioning, note sure about wwise or fmod, but it is normal nowadays to change speed without changing pitch, most modern daws use something like flexi-time or similar, witch enables speed/pich change without affecting the other axis.
I love videos that are a mix of programming nerd and music nerd topics! Thank you!
3:24 I once tried something like this, but not to make music and the environment interact... but solely to emulate old videogame audio limitations by silencing part of the audio track when a sound effect plays... It turned out awful cause I didn't know what I was doing.
this is radical asf i'm only 5 minutes in and already amazing. love the in depth look at the Super Mario Galaxy rolling ball level music.
The audio middleware algorithms aren't very complex. They're just simple ideas that people keep reinventing without knowing other people have already solved it. I know because, uh, I'm guilty of making my own, twice, before I knew there were actual products to do it. :D
Great video! Love the style! I’ve been loving this game and it’s great to see the depth that this game goes with its sound
The music when the piranha plants are singing along is cool as..
I’ve finally decided to get a switch,and I love it.
Mario instantly bought first!
3:47 no way, is that fortnite battle pass I shit out my ass? 💀
This video deserves to blow up. i love concepts like these 🥹❤️
Amazing video! I didn't know about you before and Im pleasantly surprised. There isnt a lot video game music theory channels beside 8bit music theory... If you love doing it please continue making videos :)
I saw the note blocks in the thumbnail and got excited because I was thinking you were going to mention that the note blocks change pitch along with the song. I discovered it because I was playing my switch quietly on my lunch break and the joycons play the audio file of the note blocks through their haptic motors, and you can actually hear the sound from the controller. I was happy that I could still listen to the song as long as I was running on the blocks even though the sound of the switch was turned off
I LOVE that level in super mario galaxy
Love this! Thank you UA-cam algorithm 😊 editing and pacing was great
I think the newest Killer Instinct is a great example of dynamic music, switching segments and (seemingly) modifying playback parameters depending on what's going on in the battle. It's a surprisingly convoluted system for a genre so heavy on sound effects that many probably find it easy to discount the importance of music at all! But they chose to go all in on making it more immersive!
7:47
Idk why but this is now living rent free in my head.
I WAS WAITING THE WHOLE TIME FOR YOU TO MENTION SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD'S PUFFPROD PEAKS
I don’t know where you came from but I’m subbed. Great video
My favourite example of adaptive music in video games is in the Pikmin series. Pikmin 2 is entirely in midi, so phases in and out layers of music depending on if you’re fighting, carrying, etc. Pikmin 3 uses audio files instead and does similar layering for the actions in the game, but in the boss fights all of the music is timed and changed with the actions performed by you and the boss. And in Pikmin 4, almost every single enemy has a unique layer of music with two variants, a softer one for when they’re near you and a much more noticeable one when you’re fighting them. That’s just some of the details that make Pikmin one of my favourite series.
13:02 THAT'S THE FUCKING SUPER MARIO WORLD GAME OVER THEME