Messages

m28 and 44 look the same to me in the new file. Sorry if I was unclear but I meant removing the 16th notes from the LH part.
Looking at it again, I noticed some extra doubled notes (the last 16th notes in m29-30 and 45-46). This is what I'm suggesting:

Spoiler

[close]

A few ideas:

• Have you considered using 16th note triplets in the LH like in the original? This can be played fairly easily with a 3-2-1-2 pattern or something similar. It takes a lot of practice/effort to get it consistently though. Or, alternatively, make the 2nd note in the triplet a lower note like C or G.
• There's a lot of placed where a bass trombone comes in on beat 3 (like m5 for example), maybe put accents on those notes to show the slight change in texture.
• The amount of empty space on the bottom page of page 1 seems like a little too much compared to the space between systems and on top.

• You don't need the extra 16th notes in m28 and 44 because they're doubled in the RH - those measures should look just like m29 and 44.

...and that's all I got, nice sheet.

One last thing from me about the title of this song, since this was brought up by Rubikium in this thread.

We should probably go by whatever the official title of the song is - I don't have the game or my switch with my right now but I'm assuming it's probably like "Mezzanine - Track 1" or something similar. There should be an in-game sound test. I'd be fine using an alternate title scheme as well, but your sheet and Rubikium's should match.

Just "Mezzanine" would probably be a good title.

• For the title, I'd be tempted to go with what's listed in the in-game soundtrack, since that is the only official source we have to go by. I'll be posting in the other LM3 thread about this after I'm done here...
• Edit: I'd actually be fine with just naming this "Boilerworks", I think it's the most clear. I just want to make sure the title scheme for this and the Mezzanine sheet match.
• The swing playback isn't working for me, is it for you? If not, I can fix it for you.
• Beat 3 of m2, 6, 18, and 22 sound like half notes to me instead of 8th notes.
• Beat 3 of m17 and 21 should have an F under the A (you can also include an E# grace note under the G# if you'd like). These notes also sound long, like quarter notes rather than 8th notes.
• The melody starting at 17 has different articulations from the first time - it's not all normal 8th notes.
• m19 RH beat 3: These 2 8th notes are actually straight instead of swung; you could indicate this with a bracket above and text saying "straight".
• The banjo part starting at m24 beat 4 should be constant 16th notes - I'm not hearing any of those 8th note rhythms like in m24, 26, or 28 for example.

Nice sheet!

[accept]

- personally I thought these rhythms were already easy enough to read, but if you say so, I can change them. Did you want m. 12 written like that?
- I get what you're saying, but seeing as we've already got two sheets made under the 2A03 soundtrack, I think I'd rather start a new section for the VRC6 version if I felt inclined to arrange from it. Localization rules like these should probably be addressed in the rules; this game and others like Sonic the Hedgehog CD could benefit from separate listings
- I already moved that 8vb, but sure, I can move it up a little further

- Yep, m12 looks good. The rhythms were fine to read before, but I just think it looks nicer when the RH and LH beaming matches up. Just a personal preference I guess, so if you really prefer it the other way that's fine too.
- Fair enough. I just brought it up because both of the separate OSTs are very similar, it's just that the VRC6 has a few added notes. I don't know if that's really worthy of having a completely separate sheet for, but that's just me. This case reminded me specifically of Bespinben's Mario 3 Athletic sheet. Of course, we can also edit the other two CV3 sheets later.

I'll accept now.

Good question! This topic gets brought up time to time.

Basically, the biggest issue with implementing something like this is that difficulty is very subjective. What counts as an easy piano piece for you might be hard for me, and vice versa. It's relative to the individual player's skill.

If you want a sheet to be easier or harder, it's easier to just remove/add some notes or simplify/complicate accompaniment patterns. That's what I do all the time when I play sheets from here, I use the sheets as a base and then change it to what suits me the best.

In my opinion, I think that LH accompaniment in 46-49 is actually fine, and I prefer it to just the regular octaves. The most important part in that whole page is keeping the constant 16th note feel to drive the music forward, and the listener has already heard that LH melody in the previous measures (and will hear it more prominently again after 49). I don't think varying up the accompaniment is a bad idea for a dramatic piece like this. My main point though is just having the 16ths be there at all, and I would rather there be 16th notes in the LH than none at all. However, I think it might be good to mark the LH there as p or mp.

Hey nice sheets! It's amazing what an extra 8 bits and a bit more creativity can do to a piece even just a few years later...
Glad we implemented the system data on site for games like this lol

Congratulations on clearing your WIP backlog by the way, I still have ~20-30 in mine.

I actually agree that you have fantastic points (I meant what I said, I get where you're coming from), it's just that I'm just always going to advocate for everyone who plays the piano to challenge themselves outside of their comfort zones occasionally. This is something that's important to me personally. When it comes down to it, regardless of arguments about B-flat minor being a simpler key to read in or needing fewer double accidentals, the reason everyone wants it changed comes down to wanting an easier experience. Which I get, but in this case I'm not going to agree. I do apologize for being so stubborn.

The thing is, reading a bunch of double sharps isn't really that difficult - it's just annoying and time-consuming. Why should someone sightreading this piece waste their time combing over all the accidentals instead of focusing on the music itself? There is literally no reason to put this piece in A# minor other than purposefully forcing other people to spend time looking at all the accidentals - and quite frankly I think most people who would click on this for their first time would probably just go back because it looks too complicated (even though like you said it shouldn't be that hard). Who benefits from this? The reader is just going to be annoyed, they're not going to learn anything and they probably won't really care afterward because most players here are not professional performers. Most people are probably going to write in annotations anyway like "A-C#-E" because reading Gx-Bx-Dx is just unnecessarily annoying. Why make people jump through all these extra hoops just to play a simple sheet like this? What's the point? You aren't challenging the performer by doing this, you're challenging the performer's patience.

Reading overly convoluted music is important for music theory and aural classes because it exercises musicians' skills that they need to be competent professional musicians. But once you get out of music school, how often do you see music like this? When composers and arrangers and other companies hire musicians and they only have time for 1 take (sightreading of course), they don't want the musicians to try to decipher notation that could've been written in a much clearer way. Time is money, as they say. And this is for professional musicians; there's even less of a reason to notate music like this when writing for amateur musicians.

NinSheetMusic is not a music teacher, it's not our job to try and educate people about complex music theory topics when most of our users don't care about any of that anyway. They just want to be able to find their favorite video game pieces and sit down and play them on piano - they're hobbyists not professionals. And again, I don't mean to demean amateur musicians, but most people have busy lives outside of music and don't care about music theory and Gx major chords and all that. If you can write something more simply and the music sounds the same when performing it, there's not really a reason to make it more complicated. Practicality is much more important for our purposes, at least I think so.

I know by now I've written like a novel on this topic, but I think you should reconsider; there aren't really any benefits to A# minor in this specific case.

Edit: If you want a similar example to your sheet, take a look at my Halloween submission. I put the piece in D# minor specifically because of all the double (and even triple!) flats that appear if it was in Eb minor. And as a result, It's much easier to parse. As valuable as it is as an exercise for a proper music student, no one wants to read this in a practical setting:

Spoiler

[close]

Whether or not it's "traditionally acceptable" is not the point here. The important part is that Bb minor is significantly easier to read than A# minor, just like Ab major is significantly easier to read than G# major. There's no point in forcing people to learn how to read a less familiar key signature when it provides zero benefit for the actual sheet itself.

Just to clarify, I'm not arguing that Bb minor is universally a better key just because it only has 5 flats. I just think that it's more appropriate for this specific piece due to the abundance of double sharps in A# minor.

Whether you write something diatonic to the nontraditional key of G# major or use chromatic chords in the traditional key of A# minor, the end result is the same: a lot of double sharps and a headache.

[approve]

I get where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree on a fundamental level. It's only harder to read in 7 sharps because the trajectory of music has led people to practice reading in 7 sharps much less (or not at all). Key signatures like E major, with 4 sharps, can easily be read without any additional "things to think about" through practice; the same goes for keys in these extreme signatures. The only way to get these keys to be a "good reader experience" is to use them. Amateurs can handle a lot more than you'd think, and since my arrangement itself is fairly easy to play, I'm in favor of giving the performer the reading experience of 7 sharps that they probably wouldn't encounter otherwise. When I taught music theory last year, there were students who had a hell of a time trying to catch up in these concepts, and most of the issue was that they had never been assigned music in a key more extreme than B-flat or maybe E-flat. If you guys want to add a rule that we can't go beyond six accidentals as a starting key for an arrangement here (which I think would be a mistake), I'll change my arrangement, but otherwise I really don't want to.

Personally, I think it's better to write what is simplest and easiest to understand for the performer. I could write a piece in Ab major in G# major because players wouldn't otherwise encounter such a key, but why would I? It's cumbersome for the sake of being cumbersome. I would rather my musical ideas be clear and easy to execute the first time than waste valuable rehearsal time trying to figure out a passage with B double sharps. It's like writing a 4/4 piece in 4/64 or something, with lots of 256th notes everywhere. Sure it would sound the same and musicians should be able to decipher it, but most people aren't going to encounter anything like that outside of a theory or aural skills class, and most people who use this site are not music school students. It's just as you said: "most of the issue was that they had never been assigned music in a key more extreme than B-flat or maybe E-flat". I don't mean to imply everyone who isn't a formal music student is bad at music or anything, but I don't see a reason to write something complicated just to "test" our users or something, we're not a school. There's a very good reason why these kinds of keys are not used very much. I say this as a music student myself.

Also, music notation is not concrete. For example, in 99% of jazz charts, any chord with a #9 is almost always spelled as a b3 (sometimes this means having both the major and minor 3rd in the same chord); theoretically this isn't correct, but it is technically correct because it makes things less complicated (depending on key of course). Similarly, the #4 and b5 are sometimes interchangeable in order to make a musical line easy to read (Fn-F#-Fn-F# over and over again is kind of annoying to write and read). Why would composers make these simplifications? It's because getting good results on the first read is important. I know this piece isn't jazz but the same principles can apply to any written music.

Of course it's not like there isn't a use for 7-accidental key signatures, and I would actually prefer you to write this in A# minor if the piece contained many double flats in Bb minor, since it would be easier to read with naturals in A# major. But what you have is the opposite - many double sharps that don't need to be double sharps. In this case specifically, switching to Bb minor eliminates almost all of the double sharps without introducing many double flats.

Sorry for rambling lol, but hopefully this explains where I'm coming from a bit better.

With that said, if you really think that having this piece in A# minor makes the musical ideas in this piece more clear for the reader, then you can leave it, and I'll approve.

Awesome sheet here, glad to see some more Castlevania III.

• Since this piece uses a lot of 16th note rhythms, I think it would be helpful to keep (mostly) everything beamed across 1 beat at a time. What I mean by this is writing m6/10 and 12 RH with tied 8th notes so that beat 2 is defined. Half notes on beat 2 and 4+ 8th notes in a row are fine as-is.
• Since there isn't any kind of separate listing on site for the Famicom version of this game, you might want to consider including the additional harmonies in the RH melody (specifically m7-8 and 11-12) - maybe use small notes for that. Also that version has a repeat at m12, you might want to include an optional repeat there as well.
• The 8va at the end is slightly outside the page margins.

That's all I got.

[approve]

Looks good! I went ahead and made the other formatting changes for you and also edited some rhythms/notes a bit more:

- m5-8 LH beat 3 (i.e. the first 8th note) should be F
- The LH rhythm in m12-13 sounds like it should be like m14-15
- The last 8th note in m13/15 was changed from Eb to Db.
- m16/18 RH 16th note rhythm was changed to 16th note triplets instead of normal 16ths
- Tempo marking was changed to dotted quarter notes to match the 6/8 time signature

Here's the file with all the changes. If you like what you see, feel free to upload it to the folder.

Also with this, I approve now