Game Music

Before I had a clue how awesome Joe was, I knew him as the guy who had a MIDI keyboard at his desk in the NotHarvard office. I think one day we got to talking about music, and were geeking out about all sorts of stuff, and I told him I thought it would be fun to learn how to play some old NES video game theme songs on my guitar.

Jackpot!

Joe's like: "Really? Which ones, because I used to know a bunch" He fires up the keyboard.

"Well, I guess I could start with Super Mario Brothers..."

"Oh yeah, that ones great. Which level were you going to learn?"

I am not certain I remember the actual name of the music..."Uh, you know...the...theme. I guess it's the main theme...?"

All of a sudden, the air is filled with the bopping sounds of the Super Mario Brothers theme. It takes me a second to realize Joe is playing it perfectly before my very eyes, but he's looking at me, not at the keyboard. "This one?"

"Whoa! Holy sh*t! Yeah, that's the one. That's amazing!"

"Because I always liked the underwater theme, too..."

I hadn't actually played Super Mario Brothers in forever at this point, and I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah, there WAS that underwater level... DAMN that was hard to swim and - " and then I realize Joe is playing the underwater score, even better than the original. He's still looking at me, to see if I remember the music.

"Oh yeah! That was cool... man, I had forgotten all about that one! Wow, it's really nice."

We stop talking for a moment and enjoy the tune. Joe finishes the piece.

"Cool. Could you play the first one again? I'd like to hear that one part again." I say.

"Sure - Oh! Wait, there's also the underground theme! That's also good." Joe launches into the darker underground theme, and at this point I am having some sort of realer-than-real-life-acid-flashback, where I'm 9 years old and on a coin-collecting-rampage. BA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA... BA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA...

Over the next few minutes (hours?) I ask Joe to play some of the themes a few more times, because I wasn't even close to figuring them out, and he explains some stuff to me. After a bit we remember that we were at work, and had to get back to, you know - WORK.

"Man, that was awesome! Thanks for showing me that stuff, I can't believe you know all that from memory."

"Anytime! Besides, I've forgotten a lot of it. I used to know a lot more." He thinks for a moment. Then he launches into a medley of all sorts of game themes, playing bits and pieces he can remember.

I think he played the various themes for every game I could recall owning, and then a bunch I never knew existed. And the whole time was so cool about it all. He obviously knew this music in great detail, but he shared it with me in the most friendly, natural way you can imagine.

It was like Yoda lifting the X-wing out of the muck...I learned I was standing before a fountain of wisdom, a master of musical mayhem. I might have drooled on myself a little bit, standing there hypnotized by the music.