ReMix:Super Mario Galaxy "Gusty Piano in a Garden" 3:05

By Squint

Arranging the music of 2 songs from 2 games ( view all )...

"Gusty Garden Galaxy", "Overworld BGM"

Primary Game: Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo , 2007, WII), music by Koji Kondo, Mahito Yokota

Posted 2011-02-10, evaluated by the judges panel


Response to Heroes vs. Villains has been great - thanks to all of you, and of course thanks to Mustin, Kunal, and Chris for putting together an album worthy of the Bad Dudes and OC ReMix, and to all the artists who contributed. An additional shout out to everyone who's helped us spread the word and/or pimped it, including most recently a nice bit on Dtoid. I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing a couple more cuts off HvV show up 'round these parts later on, but for now we return to the queue, who hath grown jealous in our absence...

I'm really thrilled to finally be posting this ReMix, because it almost didn't make it. It's an awesome solo piano arrangement from Super Mario Galaxy, but the recording as originally submitted was so muddy and quiet that it didn't even begin to do newcomer Squint's arrangement & performance justice - not by a longshot. Judges still passed it, because it truly is a wonderful piece, but I more or less put my foot down that something had to be done about the audio quality. It's not fair to apply different production standards to solo piano pieces, and I don't think we would have passed an electronica or metal track that had levels that low, and similar EQ issues, so we instead tried to contact the artist about fixing it up. Well, he didn't have a DAW, and months went by... eventually, Vinnie found the time to take a shot at remastering the recording provided to us - brightening it up a bit, raising the levels, etc. Long story short (too late), he did a great job, things sound much cleaner, and the artist's vision now shines through. It wasn't rocket science and I don't think Vinnie broke his back doing it, but it still made a huge difference in making this mix presentable and allowing us to spotlight a wonderful arrangement, so my personal thanks go to Palpable; great example of one artist, in this case also a judge/staff, helping another to get a mix posted.

No qualms whatsoever with the arrangement; the source should be familiar to most, it's a great melody, and Squint takes it interesting places. The first couple minutes are elegant, pleasant, more classical expansion, and then the third minute gets a little jazz/honkytonk swagger to its stride and even works in the familiar SMB 'Overworld' theme. Hai writes:

"This is my first submission to the site. I've been a long time fan, have downloaded many a remix over the past several years, and have admired many remixers for their skills and creative works on some awesome game music. I've always been a fan of game music and arranging, but have only just now come into the ability to make something and send it to you guys electronically.

This is a piano piece that I did shortly into my run with jazz piano lessons, so I tried incorporating some chords that I had never, ever used before in all my life as a classical musician. It's nothing crazy, by any means, but with the strict classical background that I've got, it was pretty different for me. It still probably has more of its roots in the classical realm, but it's a start. I pretty much followed the original piece one time through, using different chords here and there and adding melodic decorations in certain places. At about the 2:15 mark, I decided to switch it over to triple meter, a sort of jazz waltz style. Somewhere around the end, I also tried to sneak in a small nod to the original Mario theme.

Anyway, I hope you guys like it, and if you have any suggestions at all, I'm very welcome to criticism. It should be noted that amongst other remixers, I think the person who has inspired me most is Klutz, who has done a variety of piano arrangements of some of my favorite videogame pieces. If you hear anything else from me, it will most likely be in a semi-jazzy piano style, as I'd like to try to build a collection of such pieces, sort of the way Klutz had done with his "in Piano" series."

I'm all for that; hopefully he can get some mastering software and remedy levels & EQ before submitting, but even if someone needs to step in and remaster, it'll be worth it. This is a great debut mix that, with a little help from some friends, thankfully got by, and I think a lot of folks are going to enjoy it as much as I do. At least one of them was Shariq, so I'll close out with his decision post:

"I really applaud you going for that jazzier sound. The harmonic choices you made really make this piece stand out for me. Gusty Garden is my favorite song in Super Mario Galaxy and it's nice to hear those unexpected harmonies. The performance is excellent; great timing, great dynamics. I love the interchange between the left and right hand parts; nice to hear something that isn't just arpeggios in the left. That heavy swing section is just what this piece needed to stay fresh.

Simply fantastic. Hope to hear more from you."

djpretzel

Discussion

Latest 15 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
avatar
aidancap2
on 2023-01-10 11:30:06
On 12/24/2017 at 7:20 PM, Nini63093 said:

Hi, I scanned my copy of the sheet music and re-uploaded it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugd3o8iq4ue6q34/Gusty-Piano-in-a-Garden_Hai-Nguyen.pdf?dl=0

Hi, the link is broken again :(( I downloaded this sheet a long time ago and forgot about it. I'd love to have this under my fingers again :)

avatar
Nini63093
on 2017-12-24 19:20:49

Hi, I scanned my copy of the sheet music and re-uploaded it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugd3o8iq4ue6q34/Gusty-Piano-in-a-Garden_Hai-Nguyen.pdf?dl=0

avatar
linkzelda2012
on 2017-10-13 13:19:37
On 2011. 5. 25. at 12:41 PM, Squint said:

Thanks for the tip Spikey! This is the first time I've used dropbox, so hopefully it works. Enjoy! :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30312375/Gusty%20Piano%20in%20a%20Garden.pdf

And oh yeah, the tempo marking at the beginning isn't necessarily accurate through the whole piece. I've never been great with annotating tempo in compositions.

Dropbox link is not working anymore. ;_; Can anyone give me another DL link please?

I really want to play this with my hands.

avatar
Vaizar
on 2015-12-28 13:22:29

Gusty Garden is one of my favorite sources of all time, smg music is just so good :O. Converting it to solo piano was a good choice, giving the mix a more delicate, beautiful feel. I liked the jazz variation at 2:15, gives a bit more variety.

I need to learn to play piano better to play this piece

avatar
MrKyle
on 2015-02-12 10:08:27

Awesome. Clean, engaging, and an enjoyable listen all of the way through. *repeat on*

avatar
Half-Fast
on 2014-09-19 11:32:59

I'm not familiar with the original piece, but this is absolutely brilliant.

avatar
Squint
on 2011-05-24 23:41:11

Thanks for the tip Spikey! This is the first time I've used dropbox, so hopefully it works. Enjoy! :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30312375/Gusty%20Piano%20in%20a%20Garden.pdf

And oh yeah, the tempo marking at the beginning isn't necessarily accurate through the whole piece. I've never been great with annotating tempo in compositions.

avatar
SpikeyNewt
on 2011-05-15 03:11:35
I would love to make it available to those who are interested in it, but I don't really know how to go about doing that if I don't have a scanner. I wrote it out in my version of Finale 2010. If there is an easy way to get it on the 'net, just let me know and I could put it up.

I would recommend getting something like PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/) and just creating a PDF file from Finale. You do that by "printing" the sheet music, but select PDF Creator from the list of printers instead of your normal one.

avatar
Squint
on 2011-04-30 22:59:50

I would love to make it available to those who are interested in it, but I don't really know how to go about doing that if I don't have a scanner. I wrote it out in my version of Finale 2010. If there is an easy way to get it on the 'net, just let me know and I could put it up.

avatar
moosegg3
on 2011-04-23 12:03:03

I would love to get the sheet music for this one! Love the remix.

avatar
Martin Penwald
on 2011-04-06 16:20:22

Probably one of my favourite solo-piano pieces on OCR. The jazzy part from 2:!5 onwards in particular is really nice.

avatar
BlackPanther
on 2011-02-24 12:17:10

Awesome, straight awesome playing man, love this =D.

avatar
Crulex
on 2011-02-17 13:12:27

Beautiful and enjoyable, every bit of it. The way it starts off small and modest and builds up to a nice, small energetic jazz stint was wonderful. A tad short, but not in length in my opinion. Short in the sense that if you sit back and enjoy it, it goes by fast. That’s when the repeat mood is a good tool. It really is a gorgeous piano/jazz piece, so well done.

avatar
Sole Signal
on 2011-02-17 12:31:52

Really loving this piece, wonderful job!

avatar
Dhsu
on 2011-02-12 11:41:09

Wish I could do this after one jazz class...

Sources Arranged (2 Songs, 2 Games)


Primary Game:
Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo , 2007, WII)
Music by Koji Kondo,Mahito Yokota
Songs:
"Gusty Garden Galaxy"
Additional Game:
Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo , 1985, NES)
Music by Koji Kondo
Songs:
"Overworld BGM"

Tags (4)


Genre:
Classical,Jazz
Mood:
Instrumentation:
Piano
Additional:
Arrangement > Solo

File Information


Name:
Super_Mario_Galaxy_Gusty_Piano_in_a_Garden_OC_ReMix.mp3
Size:
4,522,808 bytes
MD5:
fd52018a62d4a591bad918fd2a035fb9
Bitrate:
192Kbps
Duration:
3:05

Promotion

8-bit Jazz Heroes - Press Start
View All

Latest Albums

View All

Latest ReMixes