WiiNoob

Pianist Wonderfully Creates Super Mario Sheet Music

Admiration for a certain thing or object can sometimes make people go great lengths in order to express that very same love outwardly. Case in point, one pianist’s love for the memorable sounds from Super Mario Bros., forced him to recreate it into piano sheet music form.

Joseph Karam, like every gamer on the face of the planet (me too!,) is huge fan of the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack, created by legendary video game composer Koji Kondo. Better yet, he’s also a pianist. So when it finally came time to try his trusty fingers at playing those catchy 8-bit melodies, his Google search came up with less than desirable results.

Apparently, Nintendo has never officially released a definitive collection of sheet music for the classic 1985 2D platformer. This slight omission became pretty obvious to Joseph as he was instantly hit with a landslide of fan attempts at nailing down a piano score to the game.

While a few scores where almost near clones of the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack, a frustrating number of them were poorly made knock offs; a piano music sheet cavalcade of iffy approximations, misplaced notes, poor rhythms, and badly looking presentation.

Plus one thing that none of the piano scores had, and stood out like a sore thumb to Joseph, was that there weren’t any finger placements, making it possible for only advanced piano players to learn the classic 2D platform game’s charismatic music.

Oh, what’s a musician to do. Either learn an unsatisfied version of a beloved video game score, or take it upon yourself to spend months to make the most finely crafted piano music score of your own. And well… I wouldn’t be here writing this post if Mr. Karam did the former.

Joseph took out his handy professional engraving software (cause everyone has one of those ,am I right?,) and listened diligently on loop to every sound bite from Super Mario Bros. He even cross checked with other high quality interpretations, so that the finishing outcome was overwhelmingly comprehensive and wonderfully accessible.

Awesomely, every sound is listed on Joseph Karam’s website, from the starman theme, to block-breaking, Bowser’s castle, and of course everyone’s favorite game over theme. It’s a fantastic work of passion, that I hope everyone checks out before Nintendo might pull it down for copyright violation (Boo! I know!)

Looking for more things Mario? Why not take a look at this Super Mario Bros. remake, or this colossal Super Mario Soda Display!