SlowPokemon's Halloween Sheet - [SWITCH] Luigi's Mansion 3 - "2F: Mezzanine"

[SlowPokemon]

Seconded.

No, that's different, because G# major is not a key on the circle of fifths and therefore not traditionally acceptable. A# minor is perfectly acceptable (as I said, even Bach used seven sharp keys).

[mastersuperfan]

No, that's different, because G# major is not a key on the circle of fifths and therefore not traditionally acceptable. A# minor is perfectly acceptable (as I said, even Bach used seven sharp keys).

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.

[Static]

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.

[SlowPokemon]

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.

[Libera]

Just want to say that I agree with Static, msf and Maelstrom.  This isn't challenging people outside of the comfort zone, it's just writing things in an annoying way for no benefit.  There's lots of things in sheet music that you could write out in more 'difficult' ways that would only amount to annoying the reader for no reason.  The purpose of sheet music is to convey the musical information of the piece in the clearest form, not to 'challenge [people] outside of their comfort zones'.  Complicated sheet music should be reserved for conveying complicated musical ideas, rather than just to make music more difficult to read.

[SlowPokemon]

Respectfully disagree—I think it's valuable

[Maelstrom]

As I said, it may be valuable, but it's force feeding veggies to a poor unsuspected performer. NSM isn't a site for force feeding veggies, that's for piano lessons. Here, our goal is accessibility in notation and providing sheets that can be sight read by most pianists.

[Static]

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]

[Static]

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.

[SlowPokemon]

The in-game sound test doesn't label any of the tracks, so it's just "track 4" of the Mezzanine album. It's a weird lazy point of the game that's otherwise really polished. I used the floor number so that if the other floor themes are arranged by people, they could be in the correct order on site if the arrangers used the same system. Going by this method, Rubikium's would be "B2F - Boilerworks." Let me know if you still want to change it, I don't mind at all and I agree that they should be uniform.

[mastersuperfan]

I would remove the parentheses in m28-29. I assume that you intend for the pianist to re-articulate the notes with the LH, but the parentheses imply that they shouldn't be re-articulated. (If you don't intend for the notes to be re-articulated, then I would suggest just removing the notes from the LH entirely.) So I think the parentheses just create unnecessary ambiguity.

Apart from that, the key signature: I'm still completely in favor of changing the key signature to Bb minor. Frankly, I don't feel comfortable accepting this sheet as is. There's not a whole lot more I can say here—the arguments have been posted already, and it's pretty clear that none of the updaters are on board with keeping it in A# minor.

[LeviR.star]

Not an expert here, but I agree with the updating staff. Bach's not the best example for this situation, as his keyboard music was written to be technically challenging as a way of teaching his students, children and other less experienced musicians; we're not trying to be teachers. People can put their talents to the test elsewhere, as NSM sheets are only as challenging as they absolutely need to be.

[Static]

The in-game sound test doesn't label any of the tracks, so it's just "track 4" of the Mezzanine album. It's a weird lazy point of the game that's otherwise really polished. I used the floor number so that if the other floor themes are arranged by people, they could be in the correct order on site if the arrangers used the same system. Going by this method, Rubikium's would be "B2F - Boilerworks." Let me know if you still want to change it, I don't mind at all and I agree that they should be uniform.

I think using the floor numbers would be good - although B2 instead of B2F because that's how it's shown in the game. I'll let Rubikium know, and you can keep this title the same.

[SlowPokemon]

Gotcha, let me know if anything changes.

[Latios212]

Hey Slow - about the key signature. We generally like to leave a lot of stuff up to arranger discretion, and I understand you want to keep it as you have it. But this is a rare occasion where the entire updating staff agrees that this would be better written in Bbm, and I don't really have much to add to what others have said above. I don't think any of us are really comfortable accepting this sheet as is.