More on sound in Nintendo

After we discussed Nintendo soundscapes, a correspondent writes:

         So the simplest reason is that Nintendo a whole are like that, gentle, pleasing in aesthetic with musical rhythms to fit. When making the old games like Donkey Kong in the arcades, where they had wanted to a) get kids hooked to Keep spending quarters b) not sound dark or dangerous to scare off any young kids or parents worried about the new technology and c) being forced to create an earworm that, because of the chip being limited yet the amount of time they want you playing, be a sound loop that keeps it bouncy, happy, and remain in players head so you would think of it after leaving the arcade.

      When they moved home consoles, to the NES there wasn’t anything they could do as music really, the Commodore 64 had only the beeps that the computer chip itself could make, (kind of like what a modem would do). But Nintendo improvised. Say they only had a chip that could make 8 bit tunes, memory space of a few kb which were utilising system itself. No synth or midi or anything like that, 4 channels, because all the memory had to go towards the sprites basically. So you had just a small number or door bell tones basically making the sound effects nd the music at the same time. (Mario bopping a block, grabbing a coin playing along with a tune could go up or down a tiny bit then have to loop back again almost imperceptibly. Staying in c and returning back to the same notes as often as possible in different ways like the song that Never ends til you haven’t even noticed it hasn’t.

They also, seeing as budgets and schedules were tight and with almost no memory for music music conposers werent hired, so the programmers had to do this, a little known tidbit is the origin of the Zelda song came from an all nighter. The developers planned on using a tiny orchestration of Ravel’s Bolero as the title crawl, seeing as the arrangement was so old.  So that was the idea for the mario kinda games. With something like Zelda, still operating under the same rules but wanting a more grand brave adventurous sound they chose an old arrangement, Rachel’s bolero to go with it, they found out like the night before it had to go to print that it was one month before it would go to public domain so the composer made a whole new score in one night to make one of the most memorable and recognisable tunes ever. 49 years and 11 months and if Zelda was delayed by one month it would have rewritten video game history. But I’m getting off track.

The biggest thing to happen after the Nes with the Super Nintendo music was Donkey Kong Country and a fella called David Wise. Nintendo had figured out a way to create a 3D look to a dimensional  platforms, by shading the characters differently and moving them along deceptively deep but static backgrounds (kinda like tv animation) so he worked out a way to do the same thing with the same musical limitations. Rare and Nintendo hired him to make one jungle themed tune, link here,  and he wrote the music along one string, moved the entire string down a few octaves and then just wrote over that with the melody going over it to basically make it one track sounding like multiple instruments rather than a tiny synth out tracking from less than 10 bits. It seems like it might be simple now but it was revolutionary, it sounded live instrument quality but it was tiny in size in reality. so they hired him to do the whole score. So with Koji Kondo creating Zelda and Mario’s basic looping almost gambling sound effects into what couldn’t really be considered a tune to something you can hum thirty years on to DavidWwise creating 2d soundtracks that sounded 3d by keeping music simple they tapped into repetition and psychological depth that you are still nostalgic for these days

Tldr a cartridge has only so many chips back then and so you had to twist the chip to make it repeat the same noise only mildly different to look back to the same chip doorbell which makes it almost 4chord Beatles ish in its genetic simplicity.

They’d also loop say four notes a few times then one loop then go back to those same 4 notes and repeat so it wouldn’t sound the same but it would be … familiar maybe why you have such nostalgic memories of them