[GBA] Wario Land 4 - "The Big Board" by quiggly650

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Super Mario
Game: Wario Land 4
Console: Game Boy Advance
Title: The Big Board
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: quiggly650

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[quiggly650]

youtube link: https://youtu.be/bei0bUlo5AE

[Libera]

Just a hint: you can use the youtube button (highlighted below) to post the link as an embed.

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[Brassman388]

Yeah, opening up links can be a little tedious when it comes to updaters checking sheets all in one go.

The first thing I noticed was how you have the 8va marking in between the staves for the first melody. Best to consolidate that to a more reasonable area like maybe the top of the staff?? That way, it's not going to get in the way of dynamics or hairpins or anything else.

There are a couple of note issues, missed syncopated notes, etc that I'll address more in depth tomorrow.

[quiggly650]

All right. I look forward to fixing this up with your help.

[Brassman388]

Okay, here it goes.

I feel this has a very heavy swing, almost to the point where you could get away with your syncopations being notated as 16th notes as in classic ragtime style. If we were to adapt this piece into that style with all of its little quirks in melody it would make much more sense to notate it the way I'm going to describe now.

Overall the bassline sounds separated, as does the top melody, but other times it's pretty connected. I blame the soundfonts used which seem to be some sort of plucked instrument with a heavy decay rate. Which would explain why there are rests peppered throughout your sheet.

I would suggest getting rid of those;

For example, in m. 32 where the bassline gets very legato and there's a quarter rest on beat 4 where there is audibly no rest. Again in m. 18, where you have the 8th note on beat 4 that could easily be traded for a quarter note and would make little difference. If it bugs you that the duration is exact, then I would suggest using a modified staccato marking in its stead.

Same thing happens in the melody too like in m. 20 where, since it's swung, would be a good idea to tie beat 4 of the previous measure then switch the & of 1 into a quarter note. Jazz players live for those kind of written syncopations and read and expect those type of written figures with ease.

Overall, most of the melodic figures just need to be more connected visually. The performer overall will hear and know how to interpret the song. But, if too many rests and breaks inbetween melodic melodies can become tedious to read.

Now we get to some interesting stuff which will prove your aural skills.

In the last section in measures 57, 61, 65; those last two notes on beats 4 and the & of 4. I see what you were hearing, and it's not an easy thing to hear and interpret at first. BUT what I hear is that figure starting on the & of 3 then switching to the & of 4. Notating that is rather easy and is an acceptable place to have eighth notes with rests inbetween them. I'd rather opt for an eighth note tied to a quarter note followed by an eight note but that's just me.

Lastly from what I caught so far; there's a small, quick syncopated lead in on the & of 4 in m. 36 in the melody that I heard but didn't see in your sheet. Best check that and see if it's something you can hear.

That's all I got so far. Hopefully this helps.

[quiggly650]

Thank you for the help. I'm occupied now, but I'll work on making the changes and get back to you in time.

[quiggly650]

The second draft of "The Big Board" is ready. No rush, check it at your leisure.

I spent some time listening to the piece and re-arranging the parts, and have uploaded the altered sheets. A list of the things I changed:

• Switched from Moderate to Heavy Swing. Definitely sounded better. I tried going as far as ragtime syncopation, but that swung far too much
• Removed excess rests in both melody and bass line. Thanks for that one; the sheet looks much cleaner now
• Changed tied notes in measures to standard notation. I figured this one was more dependent on preference. Personally, I split measures in half to make clear where the 3rd beat is, but I have no problem changing that.
• Extended notes as suggested. The quarter note endings for phrases sound much better than the eighth note ones.
• Added the lead-in notes to measures 36 and 70. I didn't catch that in my listenings, and in checking my work, I found a very subtle one at the D.S.

Changes that were suggested, but I didn't make:

• The 8va line. I wanted to add the line as an 8vb, as the notes should be played around middle C. I couldn't find said notation in finale, and when I searched online, the general notation I found was to place an 8va under the line. I'd be happy to change it if there's an alternative, but I didn't feel it necessary (I also didn't find much dynamic contrast in the piece, so I don't believe it would interfere).
• The phrase endings in measures 57, 61, and 65. I thought it was odd that I missed this, so I went back and listened to these parts many times. There is a slight difference in the three parts (though the soundfont didn't help). In 57 and 61, I listened both with and without metronomes, slowed it down, etc., and I personally hear the notes start squarely on beat 4 and the & of 4. For measure 65, there is a difference, with the high chord notes starting squarely on 4 and the & of 4, while the low chord notes start a split second earlier, probably by a 16th or 32nd note; I chose not to include this change because I feel it would look needlessly complicated for what it is in the piece.

I'll be happy to make further revisions as necessary, including among those I didn't make.

[Libera]

Just popping in to say that I'd write the top staff in bass clef wherever you're using the 8va.  The highest it goes in these sections is the A above middle C (which is not that bad) and it'd look a lot tidier (and would be more standard too).

[quiggly650]

That's a good idea. I guess I'm 50/50 on the prospect, though. I'd just be worried about excess ledger lines, especially within bass clef parts since, to my knowledge, most people focus on learning treble clef ledger lines for notes above the staff, often neglecting the same in the bass clef.

[quiggly650]

After some consideration, I think your idea for using bass clef is much better than using the 8va (or 8vb) throughout. The updated version reflects this (with the exception of the chromatic phrase, which I felt looks worse otherwise). Question: when would an arrangement like this be accepted?

[The Deku Trombonist]

You don't usually see 8va in bass clef in piano music. Usually you'd see a clef change to treble clef at that point (and back to bass clef as needed).

[quiggly650]

Yeah, that was a stop-gap solution. Instead, I had to mess with the spacing to prevent the Treble Clef from overlapping the last eighth note in m. 29, and it took me til today to learn how to do that.

As a clarification for my previous question, I may not have a ton of time in the future to work on this arrangement. As such, I'd like to finish it up for acceptance soon so that it doesn't sit for months. If there's anything else aside from corrections I'll need to do for that, please let me know and I'll be happy to get started on it.

[Libera]

Alright, checking now!

-I'd put a double barline at the segno.
-The Bn in the right hand of bar 23 should be a C#.
-The left hand of bar 30 should really be written in the same way as it is in bar 22 and 46 etc.  That being said, that rhythm should really be written like this:

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-The text in the copyright is too big; it should be size 10 as stated in the formatting guidelines.
-There's an extra speech mark at the start of the title.
-The G# at the end of bar 26 in the right hand should be an E.
-From the F# in the right hand of bar 30 every note is a semitone too low.  It should look like this:

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-You should really think about measure distribution.  That's the (sort of) fancy word we use for describing how many measures there are in every system.  At the moment, your sheet is using finale's default which can be pretty bad at times; also you aren't locking your measures (using ctrl + L while highlighting the measures in question) which means that when small changes are made, the sheet can end up changing a lot.  I've talked about this before, so let me quote what I said to Greg previously on this topic:

... you need to have a think about how you want the music to sit on the page and then lock it with that distribution.  Finale's default (which is what this is) is usually not very good.  Think about these things:

• Try to give everything an even look.  There should be roughly the same density of ink everywhere.
• If two sections of music are similar, they should look similar on the sheet.
• Make sure you stay within the margins at the top and bottom of the pages, and try to spread the music out vertically between them if you have enough systems to do so.  If you don't have enough systems to fill up a page, try and keep them roughly as spaced out as they are on previous pages.
• If it is possible, try to get sections changes to coincide with system changes or, even better, page changes.  This is less important than the others, but if you can find a way of doing all of them that's really good.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

-As per usual, I think this would look a lot nicer at 0.65cm staff size rather than finale's default of 0.72 something.  If you don't want to mess around with those settings, you can always just paste your music into the NSM template which can found in the formatting guidelines.
-I'd swap to treble clef for the right hand in the last 16 bars.  It looks an awful lot more readable that way.

All in all, a pretty good job for a first submission.  Keep it up!

[quiggly650]

Thanks for the help. I spent some time a bit ago fixing the notes, and I hopped on today to find a good "distribution" solution. Glad you caught small errors I missed.

Things I changed:

• The selected notes and clefs you mentioned. After more careful listening, they sounded more correct than my original notations.
• Removal of extra quotation marks in title and change of font size for copyright text
• To assist resizing, I removed the top line from the staff in the beginning of the song. Not only did this give it a more even look, but it also grouped the sections of the song properly (break between AA and BA sections, extension of transition into repeat on separate sheet) and removed some of the unnecessary rest measures.

The only change I didn't make was the suggested switch to .65 cm. I'll be happy to mess with it more if you'd like, but I won't be able to do it today.