Analyzing Musical Mario-media: Variations in the Music of Super Mario Video Games Guillaume Laroche Department of Music Research McGill University, Montréal January 2012 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Music Theory © Guillaume Laroche, 2012 - ii - Table of Contents Abstract (English) iv Résumé (Français) v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Section I. Sweet Participation: Mario’s Gameplay and Creators 8 The basics of Super Mario 8 Game audio development 11 A snapshot of Koji Kondo 13 Section II. A Topical Guide to Game Audio Literature: A Review 18 Section III. Not Very Classical Form: A Primer on Analyzing the Music of Mario 28 The role of music in Super Mario games 28 On technology 32 On transcription 34 Section IV. Styles and Ideas: Analyzing Mario’s Many Melodies 36 A closer look at the methodology 38 Analysis 41 Super Mario Bros. Theme 41 Underground Theme 54 Super Mario World Theme 70 Super Mario 64 Theme 87 Super Mario Sunshine Theme 97 Section V. GMIT: Trends in Mario’s Music 104 Defining series themes 105 Defining game themes 114 Synthesizing Kondo’s aesthetic 120 Conclusion 124 Bibliography 127 Appendix of Scores 131 Editorial Note 131 Table of Contents of Scores 132 Scores 134 - iii - Abstract Responding to a severe lack of score-based music-theoretical analyses in the academic discourse surrounding video game music, this study proposes such an analysis of several tunes from the Super Mario video game series written by series lead composer Koji Kondo. Specifically, this study offers a variational analysis of those musical tunes featuring common motives and/or themes. The study divides tunes into two categories: series themes, in which a melody recurs in multiple tunes excerpted from several Super Mario games; and game themes, in which a melody recurs in multiple tunes within a single Super Mario game. Following reviews of the design of Super Mario video games, the life and music of Koji Kondo, and the existing principal literature on video game music, the study analyzes 26 works composed by Kondo between 1985 and 2002. Series and game themes are analyzed in terms of variational technique, designating the most plausibly earliest- written tune as the ‘original’ theme and deeming other tunes that came afterwards variations upon this original. In reviewing the results of these analyses, the study concludes that the musical features of series themes, and by extension the variational approaches used in developing them, are unlike those of game themes. Series themes feature an unchanging musical parameter (often the melody), the essential element, that Kondo refuses to modify in any variation; rather, variation is applied to musical events surrounding the essential element. Game themes are much more flexible, and constructed from smaller motives which develop themselves into larger chunks of music through a process which is generally analogous to Schoenberg’s concept of the developing variation. In all, the study shows that Koji Kondo purposefully differentiates his compositional approach to both themes and variations depending upon whether the theme in question is a series theme or a game theme. - iv - Résumé Répondant à un manque d’analyses à base de partitions dans le discours académique portant sur la musique de jeu vidéo, cette étude propose une telle analyse de plusieurs oeuvres musicales de la série Super Mario du compositeur principal de la série, Koji Kondo. Spécifiquement, ce mémoire étudie la variation dans les pièces présentant des motifs et/ou thèmes musicaux communs. Il divise ces pièces en deux catégories: les thèmes de la série, c’est-à-dire les thèmes qui se présentent dans plusieurs jeux de la série Super Mario ; et les thèmes de jeu, c’est-à-dire les thèmes que l’on retrouve seulement dans un seul jeu de la série Super Mario. Suite à des survols de la conception des jeux vidéo Super Mario, de la vie et musique de Koji Kondo et de la littérature actuelle portant sur la musique de jeu vidéo, cette étude présente une analyse de 26 pièces composées par Kondo entre 1985 et 2002. Les thèmes sont analysés en fonction des techniques de variation, où l’oeuvre la plus probablement composée en premier est désignée «l’originale» et toutes les autres sont comprises en tant que variations développées à partir de cette originale. En révisant les résultats, le mémoire conclue que les caractéristiques musicales principales des thèmes de la série, et par extension leurs développements variationnels, sont dissemblables à celles des thèmes de jeu. Les thèmes de la série sont marqués par un paramètre musical inflexible (souvent la mélodie), nommé ici l’élément essentiel, que Kondo refuse de modifier dans ses variations ; ce sont plutôt les événements musicaux qui enveloppent cet élément essentiel qui sont variés. Les thèmes de jeu se montrent davantage flexibles, et sont construits à partir de petits motifs qui se développent en plus grands fragments par un processus généralement semblable à la variation développée telle que conçue par Schoenberg. En fin de compte, l’étude démontre que Koji Kondo différencie son approche à la composition d’un thème et de ses variations dépendant de si le thème en question est de la série ou de jeu. - v - Acknowledgements This project would never have come to fruition without the help of many people. First and foremost, I wish to thank Prof. Jonathan Wild, who provided many helpful comments and perspectives on the thesis. His extensive knowledge of harmony and rhythm in a wide variety of musical styles (and especially in jazz and latin music) was especially helpful in uncovering some of the subtler details of the music of Super Mario, and his sharp ear proved exceptionally useful in reviewing transcriptions. His willingness to take over the principal supervision of the project halfway through was much appreciated. My thanks also go to my co-supervisor, Prof. Don McLean (now at the University of Toronto), who supervised the preliminary stages of the thesis and provided substantive and editorial suggestions near the end of the project as well. His enthusiasm for this project at times seemingly exceeded even my own, and his great many ideas about directions in which the project could go never failed to impress. Finally, I wish to thank my external reviewer, Prof. Nicole Biamonte, for her useful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank Prof. Laurier Fagnan of the University of Alberta, whose mentorship in the world of music academia and continued involvement in my development as an artist and researcher has always been deeply appreciated. Prof. Henry Klumpenhouwer, also of the University of Alberta, deserves many thanks for first taking on the risk of mixing music theory with video game tunes with me, and then later for his encouragement in further pursuing the ideas emerging from this strange cocktail. This thesis is in no small part the result of the time and energy he dedicated in 2007 to an undergraduate summer research project. The Marvin Duchow Music Library staff members also deserve high praise for their help. Cynthia Leive and her team stocked video game music books at my request, kept an eye out for new publications related to my research that I was unaware of, and resolved an uncountable number of minor crises. I am grateful to all library team members for their assistance. I also wish to acknowledge the funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for this project, as well as the financial support offered by - vi - the Department of Music Research, the Schulich School of Music and McGill University. The opportunities offered by the various scholarships and teaching assistantships I received during my time at McGill allowed for a rich engagement with its intellectual culture in both teaching and research. I also wish to thank my friends who repeatedly ascertained for me that I indeed had the coolest thesis ever, and then said over and over again that they wanted to read the completed project. Regardless of whether you sit down with this thesis or not, your enthusiasm towards my academic interests was a powerful motivational factor in getting the work done. Many thanks also go out to my fellow students in the music graduate program at McGill, who made grad school all the more enjoyable by their camaraderie and inquisitive nature. Special thanks go out to Dana Gorzelany-Mostak for her assistance in proofreading and formatting the footnotes and bibliography. Certainement que mes parents n’auraient jamais cru en 1991 qu’en achetant une console de jeux vidéo pour moi et mes frères, il y avait là la toute première étape d’un cheminement qui se clorait 20 ans plus tard par le dépôt de mon mémoire de maîtrise ; on aurait bien plus raisonnablement cru exactement le contraire, qu’il s’agissait là d’une menace envers les études plutôt qu’un moteur! Certainement, je n’avais aucune idée moi non plus à ce moment-là que la musique offerte par Super Mario World et d’autres jeux deviendrait un jour une composante de projets de recherche subventionnés par deux universités de calibre international et un conseil de recherche national. L’insistance de mes parents sur l’importance de la musique comme activité, dans les succès comme les échecs, m’a profondément marqué, et c’est une valeur de laquelle je continuerai de chérir à vie à cause de leur efforts. L’appui sous toutes ses formes qu’ils m’ont offert tout au long de mes études musicales, d’abord parascolaires et plus tard universitaires, a toujours été grandement apprécié. Merci beaucoup! - vii - Introduction Over the past decade, academia has witnessed a steady rise in the attention given to video games.1 In this context, video games have been studied from a range of perspectives: their narrative devices, their consequences for human identity and representation in virtual spaces, the technical aspects of their design, debates about their merit as works of art.