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I think it's been two years. Perhaps it will surprise everyone to know I didn't die... lol

Long story short: I got a promotion at my job while our company became affiliated with some other companies that are loosely affiliated with Nintendo's publishing arm, so I had to be WAY more careful about making my own arrangements/transcriptions of their music. I also got ridiculously busy and couldn't stick around to keep adding content to this excellent website.

I still love doing this, and I've found a lot of value out of making transcriptions - They help you as an engraver, as a composer, and a pianist immensely. I'm afraid the holland_oates89 account will no longer be used, but you may start seeing new sheets coming from a different account from now on. My job is on the verge of changing again, and I think it'll require me to do a lot more composing so I want to work on these sheets to get my chops back. I still want to help with Finale as well, but don't expect me to identify myself as a MakeMusic employee anymore 

That is all. I look forward to coming back!

[Final Revision Notes:]

Final Revision Notes:

• Added "Piano" to the beginning

[then]

"We decided to make this champion's play style more interesting..."

Always a nerf. Didn't really bother me until they made Ryze's playstyle 'more interesting' by taking an already unpopular champ, forcing him into a lame skillshot for most of his damage, changing his passive to take away the one upside he had (sustained dps with ultra-low cool downs) and then they nerf all of his abilities across the board. Admittedly I haven't played in a while but I avoid Ryze like the plague now.

Final Draft Notes - Part 2:

• Nerfed Irelia

I will likely end up making a simplified arrangement of this. If I do, I'll start a personal arrangements thread and post it there. Until then, I'm going to see if I can cobble this together but I'll keep my expectations low, heh...

Also bump. This piece is in its final form (ha), unless anyone has further feedback for me!

[Final Draft Notes:]

Final Draft Notes:
I'll still make changes if anything really seems necessary.

• Corrected "m.g." to LH in measure 15. I also added an RH for clarity.
• Added a double-barline between measures 34 and 35. Thanks Olimar!
• Arranger and composer text blocks are aligned at 0 to the margin of page 1.
• Updated System Layout to account for whitespace at the bottom of each page [Thanks Bepsinben!

I decided not to change the rests in measures 19 - 21, 25 - 26 or 28. The reason for this is that the rhythm being played ("hemiola") hits one eighth-note before beat 3. Technically, it would be 'acceptable' to combine the many eighth-note rests in these measures into quarter-note rests, because they don't interfere with the 'invisible barline' concept between beats 2 and 3, but when syncopated rhythms like a hemiola or clave are played as staccato notes on piano, it is best to split them out into individual notes. While it may not necessarily identify the beat as clearly, it helps to vertically align the beats so the player can more easily tell which notes occur at the same time. Obviously, that is very difficult when using triplets and hemiolas at the same time as this arrangement does, but this seemed to be the best balance between making the music look as clear as possible without sacrificing the accuracy of the accompaniment in the left hand.

I'm still open for any more feedback as always, but I'm putting the lid on this one! Thank you everyone for all of your helpful suggestions!

[superjr1600]

superjr1600 - No caps. Apparently hollandoates was taken...

@Don: Thanks! The arranging aspect involved with these sheets is really the exciting part for me, but of course I take the engraving process pretty seriously too. Much appreciated!

@Bespinben: heh I think right now it might be: "on my business card someone crossed out engraver and wrote Mario Maker, in my mind I am THE GREATEST LEVEL DESIGNER OF ALL TIME, but in my heart I know that I'm just trolling people online with hidden question blocks."

I really like this game... Haha!

I'm uploading what I think will be a final version later today. Of course, that's assuming the Broncos don't lose to the Chiefs tonight and angry Coloraoans won't burn down the city.

@Bespinben: The whitespace wasn't really intentional, but the division between pages was. I wanted to make page turns happen at the least difficult points - I don't really expect anyone to play this and turn pages at the same time, but when practicing or playing with a page turner it's important to have a relatively simple passage so you can play through it without being distracted by the momentary lapse of music in front of you. Between the first and second page, the right hand plays the easily memorable melody and the left hand takes a brief break form the large interval leaps, so it seemed like the most logical place. Between the second and third pages, there's a repeated pattern that only changes chords - that way, the performer can just memorize the sequence and 'wing it' until the page is turned, and by the time is done they're ready to play the sweet Galaxy reference that Asahi slipped in There isn't really much precedent or layout advice for extra whitespace beyond "make it easy to turn the page" in most of the popular notation texts that I use. Still, if it looks weird it looks weird.

Good catch on the LH/MG confusion! Ha, I keep both in my library and occasionally use the wrong one. You probably already know this but the m.g. marking is actually an abbreviation for "Main Gauche," which means left hand in French. While they both mean the same thing I think consistency is definitely important.

For measure 22, I'll go ahead and assume you meant D Major. I agree that splitting that figure out to both hands would be a lot easier, but at the same time it isn't particularly difficult for one hand to do, and it is a common accompaniment technique for people like Liszt and possibly Beethoven. I like the way it flows with only the left hand as it sets the performer up for the ultra loud Bb chord in the next measure, but on the other hand (literally) the melody in the following measure would be set up well by splitting the arpeggio between both hands. I actually like it the way it is, only because it doesn't expressly dictate one way or the other. For these sheets, I'm intentionally keeping things a little ambiguous so that the performer can work out what is best for their hands. There are only particular parts (measures 15 and 18) where I feel it's necessary to cross hands, so those are the only places I'm requiring it in the sheet.

Hope that helps to explain things a little! I'll update this sheet soon if I can ever put down Super Mario Maker...

Fair enough. Although, are we worried about users not knowing to look in the Personal Arrangement Threads? If I were a new user/beginning piano player and wanted to find a collection of easy titles, I'd have to learn about individual forum members in order to know that their threads could have simplified arrangements. I don't know if that's a big deal or not - I'm obviously not fully acquainted yet with NSM, its forum, members or history.

As someone who sucks at piano but wants to learn to play a 'working' version of some Nintendo songs, I think the idea of easy arrangements is a great one.

But I also understand the point that the NSM page should be dedicated to accuracy over any difficulty levels, and like Olimar said earlier every piece is very different so finding an appropriate difficulty level for each piece is a big ask.

Here's my thought: What if we had a new forum category for 'easy' arrangements? I'm imagining that it would work like the Personal Arrangement Threads - each person could make a thread for their own work and post the simplified arrangements to that thread. Maybe it's reinventing the wheel here but I know that I personally am going through my arrangements and simplifying them so I can actually play them for fun instead of waiting for a virtuoso to come along and play the super overcaffeinated  MarioKart titles I've been working. To me, that would be a way to offer simpler arrangements to users without deprecating the accuracy of the sheets on the NSM site. What do you guys think? Is it hard to add a new forum? On some of the other forums I've moderated, our framework just has a giant "Create Forum" button that we can click to make a new one.

[Version 3 Notes:]

Version 3 Notes:

• Changed System Margins to 1/2"
• Resized Page to 85%
• Changed Staff Scaling to 75%
• Corrected slurs in measures 1, 3/4, 7, 22, and 38
• Corrected tie positioning in measures 12, 16, 19, 31 - 33, 40 and 41
• Repositioned sforzando markings in measure 4
• Added an "m.g." marking to indicate left-hand involvement in measure 15
• Added slurs in measures 43 - 45
• Changed slur at the end of measure 46 from a SmartShape to a Shape Expression, to fix a playback bug
• Changed repeat bar at measure 46 to prevent a playback bug

I really like how this looks feels, and sounds now, so I likely won't make any more changes unless someone has further feedback for me. I'm going to bed.

My dreams of getting to play this in a studio were dashed recently, so I recorded myself playing it to a MIDI keyboard. The closest I could get it to was 120, but I can keep trying to get it up to speed. The devil in me tried to speed it up artificially, and it sounds ok sped up to tempo that way, but it's not "authentically" a recording of me trying to plunk through it.

Edit: I actually changed my mind on this. I'd rather the MIDI file reflect exactly what's heard in the Finale output, so I uploaded the original MIDI file instead. I think I might start making recordings of these pieces as I learn to play them. I'm not a good enough performer to play it all at once but I've been thinking of making a SoundCloud specifically for my sheet performances and posting that elsewhere...

Heh, well I lived in constant fear of offending someone so I never literally said "have you tried turning it off and on again," but yeah I made people restart ALL the time. Actually the steps I posted about clearing preferences is probably the closest thing to a catch-all solution to most problems in Finale, and you have to restart your computer in order for them to work, so we used them a lot, haha!

Also, just in case you were referencing The IT Crowd, that is the best TV show ever made. I don't even care that it's British.

Um... Would people be interested in engraving/Finale tips? Part of my job is literally to write how-to articles for Finale's blog.

I can write an article with some general, VERY BASIC engraving tips about how most contemporary music *should* look. I've actually been meaning to do this for a long time so I can organize my own personal rules, so this might be a good project for me to try.

Also - and I don't mean to brag - I can write anything about any topic in Finale if needed. Where should I start?