If you teach boys in particular, you have no doubt had students requesting to play pieces they’ve heard from computer games – Super Mario, World of Warcraft, Zelda, Mass Effect – are just a few that come to mind from my experience. Video game music is pretty popular with my teens.
Computer game music is big business and kids (boys in particular) love playing them.
Thankfully, some of it is really very musical and has great potential as piano solos.
Teaching Options
Even though I consider myself borderline Gen Y, I never played many computer games when I was younger (and still don’t) and so have little knowledge of this music; I can therefore only imagine how much more daunting it would be for older teachers! Given this, I thought I’d post some ideas of how to approach this music and a heap of good internet resources for your studio.
If you’re prepared to entertain the thought of a student learning video game music (which I sincerely hope you are!), you’ve got three options:
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- Find the sheet music and teach from it (re-arrange if necessary)
- Learn the music by ear with the student (or transcribe it beforehand if you have time!)
- Get the student to learn it off youtube!
Option 2 is great if you have time as the skill of transcribing and playing by ear is fantastic for any student. Kids can do option 3 in their own time anyway (I actually encourage it as long as they’ve done my work first!).
Where to find transcriptions
There’s very little officially published video game music.
Alfred did publish the Super Mario Series book a few years back which will be a great resource if students want to learn that music. Unfortunately, kids tend to be very specific about what game they enjoy playing and the pieces they most want to play, so ordering books such as these might not be best value for money.
Another option is to find transcriptions online. Many of these sites have a really bad layout, but if you can look past that, find the search box and hit enter, you’ll have instant access to music that can at least get you started.
Transcription quality varies HUGELY so be prepared to adjust and simplify as you go!
Game Music – HEAPS of music arranged console/company or game. All the main games are featured. Great site. I recently got the Super Mario Bros theme (very difficult by the way)
Rampancy.net – for HALO music
Herbalcell – strange name, but lots of Zelda music!
Ichigo’s – Final Fantasy + others
Adventuresinpixels.net– All the cartoon themes you need in easy/hard arrangements – including things like Rug Rats, Inspector Gadget, Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. Great site!
What’s your favourite?
Have you taught video game music? What’s your favourite piece so far?
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5 Comments
So I had thought that the adventuresinpixel site offered sheet music with different arrangements, but that’s not actually what I found. Had I simply misunderstood?
Thanks
hey Julia. Thanks for checking out this post on video game music. It looks like we could do an update on this post – it’s been a few years! In the meantime, please check out more recent advice : https://dev.topmusic.co/how-to-teach-video-game-music-on-the-piano/
Being in the Gen Y, finding anime sheet music to play is always my passion especially when I was a teenager! Anime’s music can range from simple to advanced thus, suitable to any level of players. I remember spending so much time on this Chinese piano sheet music website that curates anime sheet music.
Nowadays, the market is still there but I thought that it isn’t as much as before, even some of the sites mentioned here aren’t that active anymore. For instance, the last site mentioned here is down and not available anymore.
There’s still tons of website out there that offers arrangement and sheet music like MuseScore, as a music transcriber I do share some of my personal arrangement there as well and I always happy to get request transcribing any anime sheet music!
Great article!
Awesome! Its really awesome article, I have got much clear idea concerning from this paragraph.
I’ve had many students bring in, learn (polish/memorize) and perform music from the Final Fantasy games in recitals, and it’s consistently been the favorite music of those in the audience.