Game Music Piano

Game music piano is less a single style than a body of melody: themes written for video games, then carried over to the keyboard. Its roots lie in a technical constraint. The consoles of the 1980s, the Nintendo Entertainment System among them, ran on small sound chips that could sound only a handful of voices at once, so composers learned to imply harmony and motion with a few clean lines. That discipline produced tunes built to lodge in the memory, and it translates unusually well to two hands at a piano.

Two figures shaped the form. Koji Kondo (born 1961), working at Nintendo, wrote the Super Mario Bros. theme in 1985 and the music of The Legend of Zelda; his melodies are compact, bright and rhythmically springy. Nobuo Uematsu (born 1959) scored the Final Fantasy series, and leaned toward longer, more Romantic writing: ballads, marches and set pieces a pianist can shape like art song. Between the two runs the whole range of the genre, from spare chiptune to full orchestral score.

Publishers took the hint. Square's Piano Collections albums, begun in 1992, set these themes as proper solo arrangements, and many others have followed. The character on the page is direct: strong tunes, clear textures, and harmony that rewards a slow read. Open one in practice mode, drop the tempo, and the two hands come apart cleanly enough to learn a phrase at a time.