The SECRET of Super Mario Wonder's Sound
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Let's talk about the history of the Mario series' interactive audio, and how it let to the creation of the Mario Wonder note block (or marimba block). MUSIC THEORY
Special thanks to my sister for the Mario Odyssey footage, and Red Slendy for the fun subtitles!!
Also I just realized I left 2 min of empty space at the end of the video lol oops pls ignore
Tunes used:
docs.google.co...
Bandcamp: cadencehira.ba...
Soundcloud: / cadence-hira
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?
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
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
*adam Neely but it’s even more highly targeted at my demographic*
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)
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"
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
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 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.
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.
The music and sound effects have almost always been interactive and creative in implementation. This game just adds a little bit.
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!
(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.
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
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!
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 dunno if anyone else has pointed this out yet, but when you did the chord scales for the Overworld Theme of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it sounded super similar to the game over jingle for Super Mario World :O Also loved your vid, liked and subbed
11:23 : Berklee logo for jazz theory... so that's why people don't even wanna try getting into music
it's ironic dw
Great video, I need more people talking about dynamic music!
Don't think i didn't notice the Pannenkoek reference. Very based.
how have i not heard this channel before?!
this channel is reallly cool
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!
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 WAS WAITING THE WHOLE TIME FOR YOU TO MENTION SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD'S PUFFPROD PEAKS
Wow your videos are fantastic. Really underrated channel!
I don't know why but hearing middlewear in a music video about a Mario game feels like such a technical term to hear lol.
Ive seen the thing with the note blocks most often in game menus actually ! I always absolutely love hearing it
pro tip: watch this vid with subtitles, they are just epic
Some Nintendo games use Wwise. Some use Nintendo's proprietary one. Wwise is how the piano music when walking, but intense layers when riding Koraidon/Miraidon in Pokémon SV works.
Nintendo rules when it comes to incorporating music into games. Bowsers theme in Super Mario 3D land was so catchy and I really think defined him as a villain especially how he is in the boss battle in Wonder. Wonder feels like a music passion project from Nintendo and really enjoyed the game, just like this video very well done😁
Thank you for this video, I had overlooked the note blocks. Granted I have only played a bit with my kids. I was thinking about the Yoshi effect in SMW the other day, I'm working on a lightly rhythm based game and was thinking of using drums to indicate combat. As with most of my projects you never know if they will make the light of day lol. I might try a music layer instead, but that most def takes more work. Midi is great for tempo but limited when you play with pitch. Unless your instruments are well designed to have all the base scales recorded. Still better than messing with Raw audio formats already mastered. Audacity does have plugins for HQ Pitch changes but it is extremally slow. It has been a long time from the last time I worked with FMod, I think they have some Pitch effects, for game sound effects.
1:54 i just got Vietnam flashback style ptsd remembering that Mario Galaxy exists fuck...
20:09 i used to sit on the swing back in the day, just thuggin it out
I think NSMB2's note blocks followed the soundtrack's chord progression as well
At 16:16 I don't agree in bringing gregorian modes for the duration of just one chord each time, as those modes are meant to be an alternate basis to the ionian one, which is used pretty much everywhere in music (it is the well-know C based mode). However, here you can just explain the whole progression with a simple circle of fifths with alterations to make it more jazzy (chords being, in G major, I, then VI# that then acts as the dominant of A major, then A major I becomes the dominant of D major, then D major I becomes the dominant of G major, where we fall back into to conclude the cycle, but all that still in G major). Basically, I'd write it as I VI#(V) II(V) V I, everything in G major.
While what you say is technically correct, I really think bringing modes into this is overanalyzing, since you could also say the note blocks use the notes of the tonality (G major) for the scale starting on the first note of the chord, while still altering the one G that got highened at the begining to start the cycle.
Other than that, good job !
I know what you mean, but I really do think the chord scales being modal when appropriate is important. The modal analysis provides the most direct and comprehensive connection between the melody, chords, and resolution chords (when appropriate, such as for secondary dominants like the E7), and this model can be extrapolated to the entire soundtrack. The overworld theme is kind and mostly diatonic, but there are other tracks that are more nondiatonic, and some tracks that use chord scales not derived from major/minor or an alteration thereof (i.e. the half-whole diminished chord scale in the spike level in world 1).
I didn't go into much detail during the chord scale part for the sake of ease of comprehension, but I do want to clarify that the modes are not tonicized, only just the technical analysis for the scale used.
Aah, I haven't played the game (since I don't have a switch) and have not listened to the other tracks, if modes regularly come back in them it certainly makes more sense. Thanks for the answer !
Whoever kills the piranha plants while they’re singing are heartless freaks
7:06 iunno why TF that made me laugh SO HARD 😂 you killed them! Noooo!
I’ve learned more about music theory by watching a video of Mario note blocks than I have learned in school 😭😭😭
Scruffy vibes, I love this video! Thank you for making it.
7:45 IM SCREAMING LMFAOOOOO THATS SO TWISTED
I JUST realized that as an elephant, the music suddenly has tubas 😂😂 I love you Nintendo
Very informative, but I cant forgive the piranha plant slaughter
loved the subject and your explanation
I don't think Nintendo gets enough credit for their audio design in games.
I didn't understand very much but damn this is incredible
Wow, what an incredibly made video! Subbed
14:49 I love this ty
You should try Nekomew's Potty Trouble, i'm sure you're gonna LOVE the soundtrack! :DD
13:00 mario world reference
8:30 *fnaf theme song starts playing*
stop killing the piranha plants!
#SaveTheGoombas
Amazing video
2:34 0.5x A Press vibes
Banjo kazooie will break your mind, limitations then we're a btch =3
I think you forgot to remove a black screen at the end of the video
Fun fact: if you play this game with joycons, they actually play the note blocks notes *through the joycons*
and the pro controller
Through rumble?
It also eats through your battery way faster. Especially with the short battery life of the joy cons. Motors and audio amplifiers require a lot more electricity than just checking if a button was pressed every 10ms or whatever is suitable.
You can have rumble without the music enabled in the ingame settings. I found that was a nice compromise. Or you can just turn rumble right off in the Switch settings.
Don't get me wrong, I loved this little feature. But, I'd rather play an extra hour without charging the gamepad.
i need to try that out
@@ep5659 audio amplifier? But isn't it just... rumble? Its just vibrating, in a HD way or smth idk, "hd rumble"
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
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 😂
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 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!
underrated channel alert
glad you said something
true
Yasss
Girl! Alert!
Thumb farmer alert
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’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
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.
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
The RUclips 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).
mario odyssey's power lines are still utterly insane to me, halfway through and praying it gets mentioned :33
edit: YESSSSSS
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
3:47 no way, is that fortnite battle pass I shit out my ass? 💀
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.
You should also look into Paper Mario Origami King and it’s interactive music
Wasn’t expecting this kind of video from you, but you nailed it ^w^
Also love the ukelele rendition of the piranha plants song
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.
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 :)
The second I saw the 2 toads kissing I subscribed in a heartbeat.
It's just such a funny drawing man.
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.
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.
This vid was so fire. The tempo and structure were chefs kiss. If you enjoyed putting this together, please keep making content like this 🙏
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
I don’t think I’ve ever been fascinated by a music explanation. This was amazing
0:51 toad????
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
i was really enjoying this and then the pannenkoek section took it to 11/10. subbed
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
I come to realize that Nintendo loves to programs games on harm mode just to low-key flex on the industry. Go look into how insane the graphic engine in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are just to get an further idea (there's a separate rendering system just to give the mountains their own look compared to the rest of the objects in the game).
{Nintendo}: Simply exists.
("Triple A" Game Studios}: Please stop bullying us and making us look bad on outdated hardware....
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.
hi! aren’t you the person who made the music for 7-x in ADOFAI?
yep that's me
I didn't expect you to go full pannekoek2012 in this diagrams and all
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
This video is actually quite high quality for only 600 views
Strongest E melodic minor fan vs weakest E mixolydian b13 enjoyer
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 don’t know where you came from but I’m subbed. Great video
I really enjoy your content and would like to absorb it all. But I'm old and the sped-up narration is just too hard to take. If I slow down the video the music is wrong. I wish you had a second channel or something where I could watch/listen without my brain breaking :(
sorry about that, a few people have commented this already and I'm working on it. the narration isn't sped up, i naturally talk really fast and it's hard for me to talk slower without messing up, but i'll try harder for the next vid. thanks for the feedback!
@@CadenceHira Oh I see! Thanks for the response and the efforts :)
Fellow adaptive music person here, this is excellent!
Edit: NOT THE WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS MUSIC 😂😂
13:02 THAT'S THE FUCKING SUPER MARIO WORLD GAME OVER THEME
Wait oh my god this video is so good what is going on what who is this whaaaaaa
this feels like a speedrunning documentary but for music (amazing)