Frantic parkour
Madness ensues.
And so, the perfect Mario Kart track or Super Smash Bros track was born in neither of those games but in the wacky, idiosyncratic world of the Super Mario series, now in 3D for the first time thanks to the N64, whose code name was Project Reality for this very reason: bringing video game characters to the same dimension inhabited by humans. This theme is all about what Mario represents: pure unadulterated fun; the definitive ‘athletic theme’ for the definitive athletic series (as platformer games were formerly known), a cue trend that started back in Super Mario Bros 3 to differentiate the more pastoral, laidback levels from the high intensity ones, then carried over to Super Mario World and Super Mario World 2; Yet, this one might be the only one with truly athletic origins as we will see. It is a theme that encapsulates the ultimate run and jump series.
For the introduction to the world of Mario check:
We digress. Ok, now onto the real track. But Mario’s influences had to be discussed at some point and it might as well be with the most insane track.
Musical Analysis
Going back to the track that captures the frenetic action and wackiness of this series, the brand new athletic theme for the Super Mario 64 iteration, titled Slider and used in the action packed levels, was most likely born as a race theme; so it might be the only true athletic theme in Mario. More specifically, trying to capture the ambient of a horse race. We can infer this by the hi-hat pattern in the drums that mimics the galloping of horse races, from there we get the connection to that tradition, stables until we reach the genre known as bluegrass music, which, not surprisingly, is the favorite music genre of Shgeru Miyamoto, who also plays these string instruments like the banjo and guitar since, as said, he is kind of an Americanophile and hence many Western tropes end up in his Japanese games; he basically wants to be the Walt Disney equivalent. The music is also the ideal sound for a frenetic obstacle courses in the series, sounding like a fistfight in a bar with the musicians playing while bottles are thrown at them.
Just like Super Mario World began the trend of rearranging a main track for different worlds, Koji Kondo continues this idea here by making various arrangements of the Super Mario 64 main theme, otherwise known as Bob-omb Battlefield, sound fresh by reconstructing them in different genres, adding new parts and modifying slightly—or not that slightly— the melody to generate a piece that stands on its own, as if the melody was always meant ho be this way even though notes are removed and rhythms have changed. This is technically the second rearrangement the player will hear of the main theme, which is a funky jazz tune, since the first rearrangement is at the very beginning in the opening of the game when Lakitu, now working as a cameraman to ease the transition for players into the third dimension, moves around the castle to find Mario getting out of one of his green pipes. You will probably hear this one, appropriately, as the race against Koopa, the Quick, a giant Koopa Troopa that has traveled from his far away homeland known as Tiny-Huge Island which Mario will encounter later. So this is, ironically, a race against a turtle with the most out of control music possible born out of horse racing and the ranches of the Appalachian region in the United States.
The track is meant to sound both erratic and fast paced, with the laidback, heavily syncopated, not quite accurate, almost sloppy piano playing contrasting with the ultra precise and fast banjo plying and the walking bass characteristic of the style. Since this was originally a jazz tune, most of its elements, like a sophisticated harmony based on extended chords are still present. Instrumentally, we have also a realistic whistling sound that makes things sound more easy going, goofy and organic. The piano sound is a special case; it is actually a single sample of a grand piano taken from a low key that when it is played at this range sounds like a bright, honky tonk piano in an old saloon or even closer to a harpsichord or other plucked string instruments rather than an actual piano. You can hear this specific instrument more clearly in the cue named Cave dungeon for Hazy Mazy Cave where it plays a countermelody that answers that the slap bass melody. It sounds like an otherworldly plucked string instrument. The drums here also propel the track to further hectic heights.
Since it is originally a jazz track rearranged we can contrast it with the main theme and see the sophisticated implied harmony and how it serves as an elucidation of when jazz uses some extra notes to extend the harmony even though if you go from the banjo or the piano alone, you can get simpler chords; but with the chromatic bass line, piano and banjo combined their interactions form all kinds of sophisticated chords more complex and dissonant than a typical bluegrass tune, even though the genre is known for his virtuous players. This is bluegrass jazz in the purest sense.
Like on the main theme there are three sections plus an intro. The intro is original, just based around the dominant chord of the brand new key D Ionian/Major, which is a whole step up from the original Bob-Omb theme; the idea is that this higher key ramps up the tension when contrasted with the original, making it appropriate for when the race starts in Bob-Omb Battlefield—right after a short horse race fanfare that plays with trumpets. Section 1 and Section 2 are based around the equivalent sections in the main theme, with the melody modified to be simpler and brand new countermelodies added. Section 3 with the fiddle playing ultra fast licks is brand new, the only constant is the vamp in the harmony; in fact this section’s melody is based around the motif invented for its own intro.
So there are multiple ways to interpret the harmony but here is one if we go for the most complex one implied by the bass line, piano and banjo, mostly by interpreting the acoustic bass as the root:
Intro:
A
Section 1:
D – D7 – G – Abdim7 – F#m7 – F7/13 – Em7/11 – A7
D – Ebdim7maj7 – Em7 – Fdim7 – F#m7 – F7/13 – Em7/13 – Eb7/#11 – Dmaj7/9 – Bm7/9 – Bbmaj7/9 – Bbmaj7/11
D – D7 – G – Abdim7 – F#m7 – F7/13 – Em7/11 – A7
D – Ebdim7maj7 – Em7 – Fdim7 – F#m7 – F7/13 – Em7/13 – Eb7/#11 – Dmaj7/9
From the moment you have 4 note chords you end up with chords that internally are made of two simpler chords. For example a Cmaj7 internally contains both a C major and an E minor chord. So you could technically reharmonize those simple chords as the Cmaj7 or interpret the sophisticated one as one of the simpler depending on the overall profile. The possibilities get exponentially higher the more notes a chord has and we enter the terrain where the same chord can be referred with multiple names, usually owing to ease in discussing their functionality. Here we could convert the F#m7 to an A chord or refer to the strange Ebdim7maj7 as a D7/b9 or just do what guitarist and other folk musicians do and put the simpler chord with slash chords to indicate what is the bass note. like A / F# and call it a day. Naturally, composer Koji Kondo does not probably think that much of the harmonization, he just intuitively makes a bass line with melodic intuition that sounds good, paying no mind to the different chords that get formed between the interaction of the piano, the banjo and the bass; besides, the piano is low in volume so the dissonances that give the jazz flavour are not as noticeable.
Section 1 is reprised with a second fiddle harmonizing the melody. Unlike in the main theme, the melody here always has a call and response relationship with the whistle countermelody; in the original, the countermelodies appear only in the reprise.
For Section 2 the melodies of both themes start with the same contour and motif but then divert their paths as the bluegrass arrangement only sounds the question motif once and ends with a different, hillbilly answer that goes faster and enters into the insane fiddle playing. the harmony would be something like:
Section 2:
G – Gdim – F#m7/b13 – Fdim7/#9 – Em7 – Eb7maj7 – Dmaj7/9
G – Gdim – F#m/b13 – Fdim7/#9 – Em7 – Eb7maj7 – Dma7/9
As is typical, the contrasting Section 2 goes to the IV. The drum pattern rests with a more subdued beat also to contrast with the other sections. As you can see, the high tempo of the bluegrass arrangements requires more chords than the original to fill space; it has more passing chords, double the amount actually. Every second chord is not necessarily a fundamental part of the structure. You could do the phrase with G – F#m – Em – D.
Section 3 is the brand new material based around the intro motif, playing a common fiddle figure and then going into the call back to the Intro based melody with another frantic coda to loop back to Section 1. The vamp is the same from Section 3 of the main theme though, the I to IV:
Section 3:
D7 – G7 – D7 – G7 D7 – G – A7/11
It contrasts with the other sections by changing the chords at a slower pace of two bars. The bass now truly is walking.
Mario music might be originally based around Latin jazz styles but few pieces capture the frantic parkour action of the plumber like this one. It is the definitive Athletic theme and race theme of the series and it likely pleased Miyamoto since he is a big fan of Western. And it comes from the same person that wrote that ominous piece of music for the prologue of A Link to the Past. The duality of man.
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