LONG BLOG
Phils Game/Pop Music Similarities #278 - Ragged Plumbing
Featuring Super Mario Bros. 3, Reggae and Bluegrass.
Greetings fellow game music lovers,
since the page is back online, I can finally put out the blog entry. For closing off the spring series, I decided to go back to plumberland once more with Super Mario Bros. 3 from 1989. Since summer is comming and the weather is warm and relaxed, we shall have a look at the smoothes song in the game: The Pipe Land world map theme:
I will separate this song into two components: Style and melody.
The slow, chill rhythm reminds me a lot of reggae music although I don't have a sample with a close melodic progression:
Dillinger - "Set Jah Jah Children Free" (1975):
African Brothers - "Party Night" (1978):
The melodic progression on the other hand is a little more difficult. I assumed it to be from the blues genre but despite hearing a very large amount of music from this direction I couldn't find anything close enough. However, I know one song from the bluegrass genre (which Kondo is famously fond of) that has a recurring sequence with a pretty similar curvature although it is faster than pipe land:
David Grisman Mondo Mando - "Dawg Funk" (1981):
I cannot rule out that there are other songs that have this sequence.
And this ends our spring series. Starting with June, I'll go into summer mode. That means most of the output will focus on less known games and some off-the-rails theories. There will still be blog entries but I may take an occasional breakk for vacation. I will still tweet although maybe with less frequency especially if the weather is hot.
Phil out.