I'm curious to see what was the first video game song people learned to play in the piano?
Or at least the first memorable one.
For me, it was "Fight theme" from Punch Out.
It was the song I chose from this site to play once I started taking piano lessons.
Edit:
Note that Fight Theme was the first video game song that I learn to play with both hands. I learned to play the treble part of SMB Overworld as well as Megalovania before that.
My very first one was when I was 12-13. It was the Super Mario Bros. Theme. The original classic theme. That sparked my love for VGM.
I believe that my first VGM piece was Gerudo Valley from the official Legend of Zelda sheet music book when I was around ten years old. That was really more of a one-off, though. The VGM piece that really got me playing was Lonely Lillie.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 World 3
I don't have a very good memory of the first video game theme I tried to play on the piano.
I know the first one I tried to arrange (note: not transcribe) for the piano was a partial version of the Everfrost Peak theme from Diddy Kong Racing. I must have been 12-14 at the time. ...Yeah, my set of variations on that theme was incomplete and sucked.
I remember hearing solo piano renditions of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme from others quite a lot as a teenager. I was never interested in playing it myself, though.
I also remember choosing one of my piano lesson pieces as a teenager because it resembled the Crystal Palace Crawl theme from Paper Mario. (At the time, I definitely didn't remember the Crystal Palace Crawl theme by name.)
I'm having a tough time recalling which video game theme was the first I tried playing from someone else's sheet music. Was it Together We Ride from the Fire Emblem series? Or perhaps it was from a kart racing game? I think the sheet music was from NinSheetMusic, though.
I'm pretty certain my first video game theme transcription was from a Kirby game, though. I'm trying to remember whether it was one of my earliest ones that I partially cribbed from others' piano transcriptions (the Kirby's Return to Dream Land boss theme, C-R-O-W-N-E-D from the same game) or it was Galacta Knight's theme.
(Ironically, my first transcription was not from a video game, though. It was of the Benny Goodman version of "Sing Sing Sing", I was in Grade 8, it was for band class, and I tried transcribing it for wind instruments by ear. Yeah, that transcription was awfully thin and pretty incomplete.)
Hmmm, I can't remember which was my actual first one. I do remember photocopying the SMB Overworld music from a friend at school and attempting to play it but that didn't go very well. Other than that my earliest ones were File Select from SM64, Ocean from LoZ: WW and at one stage I could play the whole of Hyrule Field from LoZ: OoT from memory (out of the Legend of Zelda Best Collections book).
My kick into VGM came actually from just downloading midis and watching the computer play wicked-hard stuff, rather than myself actually playing anything. But for the first while of playing this stuff I mostly just fumbled my way around parts of tunes from SMB that I got not-here. But nothing was complete or anything; I wasn't good enough at the time to actually play those things fully.
Quote from: JDMEK5 on February 27, 2019, 08:16:57 AMMy kick into VGM came actually from just downloading midis and watching the computer play wicked-hard stuff, rather than myself actually playing anything. But for the first while of playing this stuff I mostly just fumbled my way around parts of tunes from SMB that I got not-here. But nothing was complete or anything; I wasn't good enough at the time to actually play those things fully.
All of that sounds exactly like me RN except for the part about not getting the sheets from here. I taught myself to play the piano before my parents had the idea to give me lessons. My piano teacher just sits there aghast at my odd piano fingering, which is a hard habit to break.
The first one I seriously got around learning was the Super Mario Galaxy rendition of Super Mario Bros. 3's "Athletic" theme. I heard it playing through the Sweet Sweet Galaxy mission, and actually made a very simplistic arrangement of it at the time using Finale Notepad 2012, but that file's long gone now on our old computer. Today, that sheet would be about 7 years old.
Ah, nice question!
I tried playing the Super Mario Bros. theme on piano as a kid. Not even by ear: just from memory. I actually kept going for quite a while, until one day my father decided he'd try it, and at his first try did a much better job than I could do. ::)
My first sheet played was the Angry Birds theme, but I didn't get too far with it.
Then I found NinSheetMusic, and learnt to play Day Map Theme from Wario Land 3. That's the first full theme I learnt to play on piano.
The Super Mario Bros theme was actually the one of the first songs I ever tried to play on the piano. I think I was about 8 or so when I started picking out the notes off of an arrangement my dad had printed out for himself. I only ever learned the right hand part but I know it to this day. I never took piano lessons so it was primarily through doing stuff like that that I taught myself to play in the first place.
Ben's arrangement of rescue team base from pmd1 <3
couldn't actually play it well though innit
That's because Ben's arrangements don't really concern themselves with being playable to amateurs. (I don't feel bad saying that publicly, because he knows I feel that way)
Quote from: SlowPokemon on March 10, 2019, 07:57:21 AMThat's because Ben's arrangements don't really concern themselves with being playable to amateurs. (I don't feel bad saying that publicly, because he knows I feel that way)
Yeah, I have to admit that I generally go for accuracy and covering as much of the theme as is (at least technically) playable over making the transcription playable for less skilled amateurs. Heck, I've added notes that correspond to drum beats (which makes transcriptions harder to play) to preserve the feel of the theme.
I suspect my easiest transcriptions are the ones where I purposefully picked the theme because I thought I could get 100% of the notes by ear (e.g. Team Fortress 2 Square Dance Taunt) instead of only 80% or so and needing to guess the accompaniment to a certain extent. I think only two of my transcriptions where I consulted the full sheet music of the original actually ended up on the easier side, and one of those was pretty darn easy to play to begin with.
The first theme I played was (like many others) the Original SMB Overworld theme. I read it from that beginner Super Mario sheet music book they have. The first one I learned to play that I still have memorized to this day is Sebastian's arrangement of Egg Planet from Super Mario Galaxy. (Unless they made a replacement for it since then. That's what's on the site now, I don;t know if I still have the sheets around) What really got me into VGM was that Super Mario Galaxy CD they bundled with the wiis back around 2010-ish. I listened to that a lot and I don't think I would have been as good a musician as I am now if it wasn't for VGM.
Song of Storms from OoT
the thing with ben's arrangements is he also took a lot of artistic liberties to make them flashy, so they weren't necessarily faithful either :p
my first was playing the legendary hero by ear
For me I would try a bunch of really difficult ones, and it was to difficult at the time so I would give up on that, and try another. Then I thought world 3 map from Mario Galaxy 2 would be good because it didn't look horribly difficult so I went ahead, and did that one.
imagine your age such that SMG2 could be in the running for "first video game song you learned to play"
the fact that people younger than me exist is baffling and I understand how geezers feel
Quote from: mikey on March 12, 2019, 04:28:35 PMI understand how geezers feel
r u saying ur not a geeza bub
It was probably mary had a little lamb or something stupid like that
When it comes to VGM though, the first song I learned all the way through was N's Farewell
Quote from: AmpharosAndy on March 12, 2019, 05:18:24 PMr u saying ur not a geeza bub
well I am
but what's your point
My keyboard had a floppy disk drive and I remember playing with a lot of video game music midis with it. That's my earliest memory of doing something with vgm but pretty sure I didn't learn anything so that probably doesn't count. One of the first ones I actually played was the Credits theme from Sonic 1.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 - Metropolis Zone :)
Quote from: GaryOak on March 18, 2019, 10:05:03 AMMy keyboard had a floppy disk drive and I remember playing with a lot of video game music midis with it. That's my earliest memory of doing something with vgm but pretty sure I didn't learn anything so that probably doesn't count. One of the first ones I actually played was the Credits theme from Sonic 1.
Hey there! It's been so long!
Quote from: SlowPokemon on April 03, 2019, 09:35:26 PMHey there! It's been so long!
Hi! Started playing Pokémon Sapphire and it reminded me of the forums. I never played 3rd or 4th gen and finally decided to fix that lol. It's interesting to see how those games feel now, so far really liking gen 3.
I think it was either the theme from Super Mario Bros, or the title theme from Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow.
I used to go on a website called herbalcell.com to get all my sheet music. The first piece from there that I learned was "Medli's Prayer" from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
Quote from: Maelstrom on March 12, 2019, 03:10:01 PMSong of Storms from OoT
Same!
In High School I saw a guy playing Song of Storms on the piano and it immediately occurred to me that I must learn how to do that. So I learned to play piano shortly after XD
Ngl it took me a solid minute to think about this. I think my first piece was "Weird Woods" from Kirby's Epic Yarn. But I might be forgetting something much much earlier.
EDIT: I remember what I forgot: "Green Hill Zone" - Sonic the Hedgehog
these are the first two i can recall (i didn't play pokemon until i was like 12 since i thought it was a kids game)
Quote from: InsigTurtle on June 30, 2019, 10:29:25 PMthese are the first two i can recall (i didn't play pokemon until i was like 12 since i thought it was a kids game)
Wait, this doesn't make sense. xD If you thought it was a kids' game, you shouldn't have played it
after you were 12 (or 15 rather), not until. :P