[WiiU] Mario Kart 8 - "Cloudtop Cruise" by holland_oates89

[mikey]

Not helping at all

sorry if I'm stepping on your toes, but it's true for a lot of people here

[holland_oates89]

Version 2 Notes:

• Emboldened Title and Composer text
• Italicized Subtitle and Arranger text
• Changed Subtitle font to 12pt
• Added a tempo marking (WHUPS)
• Added slurs to grace notes in m. 1 - 6
• Switched to outer note-side ties, then readjusted for clarity
• Changed Pedal Markings in m. 35 - 38 for cleaner performance
• Changed Pedal Markings in m. 44 -45
• Added a note that I forgot in m. 46 - I also used a double-dotted half rest 
• Somehow, I introduced a bug in my file where Finale's Human Playback sends pitch wheel information, causing the first few measures of the piece to sound up an octave the second time through. I didn't upload a new MIDI file for this reason. The current MIDI file still accurately reflects the correct performance

I'm going to see if I can work out that playback bug and if I do I'll have another new version to post...

[ThatGamer]

WOW. I have never seen a composer as great as you. Would love to be even half as good as you...

[holland_oates89]

@ThatGamer: Thank you! I'm glad you like it - I think I remember you saying it was one of your favorite tracks from this game. Mine was actually Dolphin Shoals which will probably be my next project.

Also, I mean... most of this arrangement is a transcription, honestly. I spent a lot of time in college getting really good at transcribing music, and it's just a skill that you master with practice. Atsuko Asahi is the great composer! Basically, my process is: I sit down at the piano with my computer and use a program ("The Amazing Slow-Downer," but there's tons of software that can do this) to figure out all the notes. You have to listen really hard to get every single voice. Then, I try to play it. Being a mediocre piano player at best, anything I can't play I try to rework. I'm not even thinking about the notation at this point, but I sketch a few notes on manuscript paper (what chords did I play? etc). After that's done, I start in on the engraving in Finale.

As for engraving skills... well, I believe that is an art form and I spend a lot of time perfecting it. I have a number of books that I use as a reference point. In case you're curious, they are:

• (Classical) Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation by Elaine Gould
• (Classical) Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice by Gardner Read
• (Jazz) The Art of Music Copying by Clinton Roemer
• (Jazz/Contemporary)Pretty much any Music Notation book from BerkleePress
• (Jazz) The Complete Arranger by Sammy Nestico

The problem with these books is many of them are out of print and/or expensive, but you can often find them cheaply on eBay. If you were going to get one book out of that list, it's Clinton Roemer's book. Very well-written and not as "academic" as the other ones.

And as far as Finale goes, honestly it's just research and time. Granted, I started using Finale when I was in middle school so I've had a lot of experience with it. But as long as you know how the music is supposed to look, I am very confident you can do it in Finale. One of our other engravers (that guy is a real expert) specializes in nonstandard notation. He can use Finale to make scores that play in a circle, look like christmas trees - you name it! All it takes is a little education and a lot of hours with the User Manual. *cough* Assuming you own a legal copy of Finale, you can always write in to our customer support team with how-to questions as well if you get stuck. And I try to pay attention in the "Help" forum too.

Even though I'm proud of this arrangement, trust me on this one - LOTS of bad compositions look good when they are well-engraved, and a lot of engraving is just experience rather than any special talent.

I guess my big giant point here is - I am confident in what I do, but I don't believe I have any special, amazing talent. All I did was spend a little time learning and a LOT of time failing. Eventually, the failing goes away. It only takes a little curiosity, the right resources, and a long time, and I'm sure you'll be as good as you want to be. A place like NinSheetMusic is exactly the right step towards becoming a really good musician. By sitting down and learning music (videogame or otherwise) by ear, you are making yourself - frankly - into a better musician than a ton of people. Transcribing is probably the one golden practicing skill that any composer, jazz musician, or even audio engineer would recommend universally. AND as we all strive to be productive on this site and put out as many sheets as we can, we get better with each sheet.

I joined NinSheetMusic because a) I wasn't doing anything musical at home and b) I wanted to learn these awesome MarioKart songs. In fact, I only heard about NSM because I was trying to find MK8 sheet music/midi files! When I saw that there was only the menu theme (great as it was!), I decided to try doing some of these myself.

Wow. This is a wall of text... sorry! But I hope you see what I mean! Just don't stop trying and you'll be really good eventually.

[Altissimo]

By sitting down and learning music (videogame or otherwise) by ear, you are making yourself - frankly - into a better musician than a ton of people. Transcribing is probably the one golden practicing skill that any composer, jazz musician, or even audio engineer would recommend universally.

there's a reason 4 semesters of sightsinging/ear training were required at university and why both are part of the AP music theory final lol

[holland_oates89]

Haha, we had to do four semesters as well! I never want to do those again (we had awful examples to transcribe) but it was probably the single best teaching I got in college. I actually studied Music Production/Engineering, believe it or not, and even in that program we were expected to do an additional 4 semesters of audio-specific ear training ("Here, listen to this white noise -now, did we boost 2 kHz or 4 kHz? Wrong, you get an F minus."). These were even worse but I also think they made me a better musician by far.

[holland_oates89]

Version 3 Notes:

• Changed System Margins to 1/2"
• Resized Page to 85%
• Changed Staff Scaling to 75%
• Corrected slurs in measures 1, 3/4, 7, 22, and 38
• Corrected tie positioning in measures 12, 16, 19, 31 - 33, 40 and 41
• Repositioned sforzando markings in measure 4
• Added an "m.g." marking to indicate left-hand involvement in measure 15
• Added slurs in measures 43 - 45
• Changed slur at the end of measure 46 from a SmartShape to a Shape Expression, to fix a playback bug
• Changed repeat bar at measure 46 to prevent a playback bug

I really like how this looks feels, and sounds now, so I likely won't make any more changes unless someone has further feedback for me. I'm going to bed.

[Bespinben]

Sorry for the wait! I was actually quite nervous to post on this until I had something to contribute.
(I would hate to seem like the guy that's all "oh dats gewd musikz" without actually taking the time to look it over)

Most of what I'm about to say is just from personal habits formed over the years, so please feel free to point me in the right direction if there's actually a written standard about these things:

• There seems to be an inordinate amount of extra whitespace at the bottom of page 1, at least as compared to the top. I did notice that the space distance between the top of system 1's treble staff to the top of the page was equal to that of bottom of system 5's bass staff to the bottom of the page, so perhaps this was intentional on your part.
• Is there a specific reason you use m.g. in m.15, but then LH in m. 18? OCD beckons me for consistency. In my personal lexicon of markings, I sometimes like to use LH vs l.h. to designate the degree of "optionality" -- that is, lower-case implying it's just a suggestion, whereas capitalized indicating it is mandatory -- but that's just me. Maybe there's a similar principle underscoring what you've done here?
• In measure 22, I think that dyadic D minor arpeggio would be easier to play if the top notes were thrown the RH.

[holland_oates89]

@Bespinben: The whitespace wasn't really intentional, but the division between pages was. I wanted to make page turns happen at the least difficult points - I don't really expect anyone to play this and turn pages at the same time, but when practicing or playing with a page turner it's important to have a relatively simple passage so you can play through it without being distracted by the momentary lapse of music in front of you. Between the first and second page, the right hand plays the easily memorable melody and the left hand takes a brief break form the large interval leaps, so it seemed like the most logical place. Between the second and third pages, there's a repeated pattern that only changes chords - that way, the performer can just memorize the sequence and 'wing it' until the page is turned, and by the time is done they're ready to play the sweet Galaxy reference that Asahi slipped in There isn't really much precedent or layout advice for extra whitespace beyond "make it easy to turn the page" in most of the popular notation texts that I use. Still, if it looks weird it looks weird.

Good catch on the LH/MG confusion! Ha, I keep both in my library and occasionally use the wrong one. You probably already know this but the m.g. marking is actually an abbreviation for "Main Gauche," which means left hand in French. While they both mean the same thing I think consistency is definitely important.

For measure 22, I'll go ahead and assume you meant D Major. I agree that splitting that figure out to both hands would be a lot easier, but at the same time it isn't particularly difficult for one hand to do, and it is a common accompaniment technique for people like Liszt and possibly Beethoven. I like the way it flows with only the left hand as it sets the performer up for the ultra loud Bb chord in the next measure, but on the other hand (literally) the melody in the following measure would be set up well by splitting the arpeggio between both hands. I actually like it the way it is, only because it doesn't expressly dictate one way or the other. For these sheets, I'm intentionally keeping things a little ambiguous so that the performer can work out what is best for their hands. There are only particular parts (measures 15 and 18) where I feel it's necessary to cross hands, so those are the only places I'm requiring it in the sheet.

Hope that helps to explain things a little! I'll update this sheet soon if I can ever put down Super Mario Maker...

[Bespinben]

I'll update this sheet soon if I can ever put down Super Mario Maker...

holland_oates:
"On my business card, I am a professional engraver. In my mind, I am a musician. But in my heart, I am a gamer."

I await your final draft!

[DonValentino]

Don't think I've ever said how good your sheets are, well now I do, great work! Beautiful formatting and engraving too, ditto on Bespinben. :J

[holland_oates89]

@Don: Thanks! The arranging aspect involved with these sheets is really the exciting part for me, but of course I take the engraving process pretty seriously too. Much appreciated!

@Bespinben: heh I think right now it might be: "on my business card someone crossed out engraver and wrote Mario Maker, in my mind I am THE GREATEST LEVEL DESIGNER OF ALL TIME, but in my heart I know that I'm just trolling people online with hidden question blocks."

I really like this game... Haha!

I'm uploading what I think will be a final version later today. Of course, that's assuming the Broncos don't lose to the Chiefs tonight and angry Coloraoans won't burn down the city.

[Olimar12345]

Looking forward to the final version! Here are some suggestions for that edition:

-The arranger name needs to be right-aligned.
-Double bar-line at the key change in 35 would be normal to see in a spot like that. (I don't think it's really necessary the second time though.)
-The rhythm you have in the LH of measures 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, & 28 would, in my opinion, be easier to read if you combined the third and fourth eighth notes into one quarter rest. This would make it into a visual anchor-point, able to identify the down-beat of 3 more easily.

This one is almost ready for approval!

[holland_oates89]

Final Draft Notes:
I'll still make changes if anything really seems necessary.

• Corrected "m.g." to LH in measure 15. I also added an RH for clarity.
• Added a double-barline between measures 34 and 35. Thanks Olimar!
• Arranger and composer text blocks are aligned at 0 to the margin of page 1.
• Updated System Layout to account for whitespace at the bottom of each page [Thanks Bepsinben!

I decided not to change the rests in measures 19 - 21, 25 - 26 or 28. The reason for this is that the rhythm being played ("hemiola") hits one eighth-note before beat 3. Technically, it would be 'acceptable' to combine the many eighth-note rests in these measures into quarter-note rests, because they don't interfere with the 'invisible barline' concept between beats 2 and 3, but when syncopated rhythms like a hemiola or clave are played as staccato notes on piano, it is best to split them out into individual notes. While it may not necessarily identify the beat as clearly, it helps to vertically align the beats so the player can more easily tell which notes occur at the same time. Obviously, that is very difficult when using triplets and hemiolas at the same time as this arrangement does, but this seemed to be the best balance between making the music look as clear as possible without sacrificing the accuracy of the accompaniment in the left hand.

I'm still open for any more feedback as always, but I'm putting the lid on this one! Thank you everyone for all of your helpful suggestions!

[mikey]

This has been..
the League of Holland Patch notes.