Gruber

Pico-8 Music Tutorial #29 - From 4-Channels to 2-Channels

Added 2018-03-09 19:00:59 +0000 UTC

Using the Mario Overworld theme as an example, watch me reduce it from 4-channels, to 3 and 2-channels.

When I'm doing this kind of work, my goal is generally to preserve the essence of the tune as much as possible. Eventually though, it will start to take on a character of its own and sound Pico-8-ish (which is a good thing - embrace it!)

There’s a great quote by Clint Bajakian in Karen Collin’s book Game Sound. Clint Bajakian worked for LucasArts in the 90s, and was in involved in developing Monkey Island 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and more. When describing the reduction of John Williams’ orchestral scores to nine voices, he said:

“You would have to distill down an entire orchestra’s worth of content to whatever the most prominent gesture was, and if you listen to John Williams you will probably see that there’s always some prominent foreground gesture at any one time.”

It’s a great interview (also with Michael Land) - (https://vimeo.com/144238112). The above quote is at 13:20.

The music from Super Mario Bros is no John Williams score but reducing the parts in this manner has a similar methodology. When moving parts around, I’m always making decisions about what to keep, what to erase and what to move. Parts that are kept should be part of the most “prominent foreground gesture.” So parts that are erased won’t be missed.

Shifting parts up/down a row to fit them in is a compromise between the two. This is where most of the creative work is.

I've also attached a cart with a few 4 and 3-channel tunes from Super Mario Bros. Try it! And please share… I want to hear what you come up with!