Easy Versions Idea

[mikey]

He can be doctor doom
Olimar is the Human Torch
Latios is Mr. Fantastic
Don is Invisible Woman (sorry man, leftover)
Bespinben is the Thing

[DonValentino]

I already expressed my thoughts on this matter, but I'll gladly reintroduce them.

The main problem I see is how can you mark this as "easy" and that "difficult". It all depends on the ability of the performer, a Rachmaninoff concerto would be a stroll for Lang Lang but hell for a beginner. Who's to say this sheet is too difficult so as to need an easy version? it can be also though the other way, who's to say this sheet is too easy so as to need a hard one?

On top of that, a sheet could be simplified almost to infinity, for example, from a very complex bass to only the root notes, and everything in between, resulting in endless easy versions of one song. Do you really want a competition on who can make the easiest sheet out of a single song? And which one of those should we consider right to be on site? All of them, a random one?

Olimar gets it. Everything is so inconsistent I can't even understand why someone could want this to be implemented.

That said, it seems a lot of people want to give it a try. I'd say we give it a trial period to see if it works well.

Don is Invisible Woman (sorry man, leftover)

Well I deserve that for not being here in time I guess, didn't notice this was a thing again until recently. d:

[Sebastian]

Olimar gets it. Everything is so inconsistent I can't even understand why someone could want this to be implemented.

^^^^^

[braix]

Any way we could do a trial with a new page on the main site, then on the side of the page it would have some kind of survey to see if the site users think they like it. Excluding forum members of course. If the majority of the users don't like it, then that's that. GG. They don't want it. But if they do want it, we should try to figure out a way to make it work

[Olimar12345]

 We're working on something, but nothing to that magnitude just yet.

[Brawler4Ever]

I think that the main point of miscommunication here is that we're not talking about "easy" arrangements, but "easier" (or simplified) arrangements. Any sheet, to every person on earth, will either be incredibly easy (professional pianists) or impossibly difficult (somebody who's never touched a piano before).

The current simplified sheet (Dr. Wily from Mega Man 2) does this very well. Instead of strings of 16th and 8th notes, it's simplified to only include 8th notes for the majority of the piece. It might still be too difficult for some pianists, sure. But we would also be reaching out to those who aren't quite adept at playing 16th notes in tempo, yet.

Can a sheet be simplified to almost nothing? Of course. But that's not what the NSM community wants. We want good quality sheets. We want sheets that are awesome, that remain true to the spirit of the original piece. That doesn't happen if we gut the song and make it boring to play.

Athletic - Super Mario World is an incredibly difficult and popular song. It's one of the main songs that brought me to NSM, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the same story for many others.

This is the sheet currently on the site. I fixed the copyright and url, but other than that, I made no changes to the song itself.
This is the same sheet, simplified.

I'm going to be honest, I am not able to play even my own simplified version of this. But that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Yet, there are others who have always wanted to play this, who may be better pianists than me, who would greatly appreciate the reduction in difficulty. It won't reach every pianist out there; we're not here to baby the NSM community. But we can give some of them the chance to play this piece, while still giving others the chance to master it.

[EDIT] This is another, even more simple, version. I removed every dotted note and tied note (with the exception of measure ends). The left hand has been changed to only be between C3 and D4. I deleted several extra notes in the right hand that didn't directly affect the melody. And only a single note is played during each beat. This is what a song looks like when it's gutted, and somebody could probably remove even more if they wanted to.
In my opinion, this is too simple. Besides the quick tempo, there's not much challenge to it. It feels very empty, when compared to the original. So I don't believe that "make this sheet as simple as possible" is the correct approach. Finding a middle ground would best, imo.

[JDMEK5]

My battle plan as far as finding a good difficulty goes, would be to just track down some official books of 'whatever' songs "Easy Piano" and follow their lead. Obviously these people have had much more discussion and experience on these things and know where the golden middle is. I know that not all songs will be able to be arranged to this difficulty, but that's part of the individuality of each piece. This caliber of difficulty that I mentioned is just the guideline/goal.

[Tobbeh99]

I think you make up a good point Brawler with that it is about making easier arrangements, but not necessarily easy arrangements. But I do think that we need to have some sort of guidelines of how to simplify a song. What to keep and what to leave out. I'm thinking of some examples arrangements and other tips to keep people on the right track, not making to little simplification and not too much.     

As mentioned earlier by other people I also want to highlight that it sometimes can be tricky to simplify, and that there in some scenarios might be many different alternatives all which have different pros and cons.
For example the Mega Man song "Dr. Wily's Stages 1" could have been simplified by removing the lower harmony notes in the melody (thirds, fourths), making the melody play only single notes but with the same rhythm. This would make it way easier since you'd now be able to use common tremolo technique to play it, rather than the original, which forces you to have fast fingers/wrist to be able to play it. 

[Tobbeh99]

My battle plan as far as finding a good difficulty goes, would be to just track down some official books of 'whatever' songs "Easy Piano" and follow their lead. Obviously these people have had much more discussion and experience on these things and know where the golden middle is. I know that not all songs will be able to be arranged to this difficulty, but that's part of the individuality of each piece. This caliber of difficulty that I mentioned is just the guideline/goal.

I think the goal should be to make it simple, maybe not as simple as possible, but also keeping the important content of the song. When phrasing this it becomes clear that we need to define what content usually are important.
Some examples:
One important content of a song is the melody, very obvious.
And One less important aspect could be homophonic harmonies, such as thirds. These can in many cases increase the difficulty of song but without adding necessary content to the song. Compare playing a scale with playing a scale in thirds. 

One thing to note is also the tempo. In a faster tempo playing a scale with thirds becomes challenging, but in a slower tempo it can be quite feasible.

I think this could be a good starting point to discuss. It's a topic of musical value vs difficulty I think. And the questioning should be how important certain content are for the arrangement when making a simplification, what to keep and what to leave out. 

[Brawler4Ever]

Original
Simplified
Super Simplified

So of the three Athletic themes above, which would you suggest? Or, maybe choose a difficulty in between two of them?

I know that Athletic is an extreme case because of its tempo, but it would be helpful to set a clear standard, like you said.

Spoiler

I believe that the second one is fine. Athletic is going to be a difficult song for any beginner, and removing most of it really won't help, imo.

[close]

[InsigTurtle]

In a "easy" arrangement, wouldn't it be OK to cut down on the tempo?

[Tobbeh99]

The simplified is enough. It makes the song way easier with the bass notes in an octave higher. This means that you don't need to jump with the left hand an thereby makes it way easier, but still preserving the core material: the melody and the accompaniment. The Super Simplified is too much simplified, I feel that you can only hear the contours of the song, which is too much simplified IMO.   

[Tobbeh99]

In a "easy" arrangement, wouldn't it be OK to cut down on the tempo?

I'd say rather not. It affects the song too much I think. Maybe you could put a span like Q=120-140.

[Brawler4Ever]

Good! Then we're on the same page!

In a "easy" arrangement, wouldn't it be OK to cut down on the tempo?

That would definitely make it easier, but I think that in most cases, the tempo won't be the problem.

[InsigTurtle]

But in this case, the tempo is what contributes to most of the difficulty. The original is pretty much trivial when played at maybe 1/2-1/4 the tempo, but at the given tempo it requires quite a lot of dexterity.

Looking at your arrangement, I agree that the simplified one would be better, since the super simplified one sacrifices quite a lot...