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This episode is brought to you by Reese's

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Peanut Butter Cups. In breaking

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news, leading scientists worldwide are conducting

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experiments to determine if Reese's Peanut

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Butter Cups are the perfect combination

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of peanut butter and chocolate. However,

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it appears the study was inconclusive,

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as the scientists couldn't help but eat all

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the Reese's. Because when you

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want something sweet, you can't do better than

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Reese's. Find Reese's now at a

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store near you. Hi,

0:29

future of Everything listeners. I'm Ben Cohen, and

0:32

I write the Science of Success column here

0:34

at The Wall Street Journal. We're trying something

0:36

new and bringing you a new feature based

0:38

on my column. Take a listen and let

0:41

us know what you think. Drop a line

0:43

to foepodcastatwsj.com. Every

0:47

year, the Library of Congress enshrines a

0:49

new collection of music into the National

0:51

Recording Registry. The idea is to, quote,

0:53

highlight the richness of the nation's audio

0:56

legacy. Last year's inductees included

0:58

Like a Virgin by Madonna, Margaritaville

1:00

by Jimmy Buffett, and All I

1:02

Want for Christmas is You by

1:04

Mariah Carey. Among those karaoke

1:06

classics was a song with a title

1:08

you wouldn't know written by someone whose

1:10

name you've probably never heard. But

1:12

I bet you recognize the tune. Doo

1:26

doo doo. The

1:31

song that many of my colleagues at The

1:33

Wall Street Journal attempted to sing is by

1:36

Koji Kondo. It came out in 1985 on

1:38

one of Nintendo's most beloved games. So

1:41

what's it called? It's like the

1:43

opening level song. Super Mario theme song? I

1:45

have no idea. I should know the name of the song, but

1:48

I don't. It's just the theme from Super

1:50

Mario Brothers. Formally known as

1:52

ground theme, this melody begins the

1:54

first level of the iconic video

1:56

game Super Mario Brothers. But

1:58

The tune isn't just an earworm. Or

2:00

the soundtrack to so many childhoods.

2:02

It's also a breakthrough. The.

2:04

Origin story behind the music of

2:07

Super Mario Brothers is a tale

2:09

of invention that involves transcending the

2:11

limits of technology, physics, and human

2:13

sexuality. From.

2:17

The Wall Street Journal. This is

2:19

a science of success. A look

2:22

at how today's success could lead

2:24

to tomorrow's innovations. Ribbentrop I wrote

2:26

a column for the Journal about

2:28

how people, ideas and teams work

2:30

and when they thrive Today were

2:32

tuning into the work behind our

2:34

place and the revolutionary minds behind

2:37

this music we can't get out

2:39

of our heads. Condos

2:44

music has more than with stood the test

2:46

of time. The songs been not

2:48

only relevant but residents for almost

2:50

forty years. It's been rearranged for

2:52

other games, and for ringtones, you

2:54

tube is littered with our capella

2:56

versions. Even the London Philharmonic played

2:58

it for the Game Awards. Last

3:03

year the tune could be heard from coast

3:06

to coast. Hollywood. Was taking

3:08

it all the way to the bank

3:10

in the Super Mario Brothers movie. Twenty

3:12

Twenty Three His biggest box office smash

3:14

after Barbie. And. In Washington D

3:16

C, it was going down in history.

3:19

After. Having his song enshrined in

3:22

the National Recording Registry. Sixty.

3:24

Two year old Koji Kondo told the

3:26

Library of Congress about some of the

3:29

challenges of creating video game music in

3:31

the nineteen eighties. Basically.

3:33

The. Amount of data they could use

3:36

for music and sound effects was

3:38

really small so see how to

3:40

be really innovative. It. Sounds

3:42

like a com and business conundrum.

3:44

Creativity born from constraints. Koji.

3:47

Kondo doesn't give many interviews. In fact,

3:49

according to Andrew start men a professor

3:51

of music at the New England Conservatory,

3:53

Nintendo tends to play thing as close

3:56

to the vest. one of the

3:58

challenges and studying nintendo in general, whether

4:00

it's music or not, is that it's

4:02

like Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Like, it is

4:04

impossible to get in the door and

4:06

talk to anyone. Sharptman would

4:08

know. He literally wrote the book on Kondo

4:11

and the music of Super Mario Bros. His

4:14

2015 book is called Koji Kondo's

4:16

Super Mario Bros. soundtrack. Nintendo

4:19

declined to make Kondo available for comment,

4:21

so I turned to the expert to

4:23

help me understand the unique challenges faced

4:25

by video game music composers of the

4:27

time and the unique background

4:30

of Kondo himself. Koji

4:32

Kondo had a pretty musical

4:34

childhood. He took Yamaha keyboard

4:36

classes. He was in a cover band

4:39

in his high school college days

4:42

and just also immersed

4:44

in the video game

4:46

scene of the early 80s, late 70s. Kondo

4:50

grew up in the 1970s playing

4:52

the electric organ in elementary school

4:54

and fiddling with a synthesizer in high

4:57

school. As it turned out, his timing

4:59

was exquisite. During his senior year of

5:01

art school in Osaka, Japan, Nintendo happened

5:03

to be hiring a team of sound

5:05

geeks. Nintendo posted

5:08

a job and

5:12

he applied to one job, only one

5:14

against the advice of his mentors and

5:16

he got it. It was the

5:18

first and last job that Kondo would apply

5:20

for. But when he joined

5:22

the company in 1984, he soon learned

5:25

something important. Writing music for video games

5:27

was entirely different from writing music for

5:29

an orchestra. What

5:33

exactly made it so different and how

5:35

did Koji Kondo overcome those challenges

5:37

to create this enduring and beloved

5:39

masterpiece? That's after the break.

5:45

This episode is brought to you by Reese's

5:47

Peanut Butter Cups. In breaking

5:49

news, leading scientists worldwide are conducting

5:51

experiments to determine if Reese's Peanut

5:53

Butter Cups are the perfect combination

5:56

of peanut butter and chocolate. However,

5:58

it appears the study was inconclusive,

6:01

as the scientists couldn't help but eat all

6:03

the Reese's. Because when you

6:05

want something sweet, you can't do better than

6:08

Reese's. Find Reese's now at a

6:10

store near you. These

6:21

days, video game music can be as complex

6:24

as any other music we listen to. But

6:26

in the 1980s, it was constrained by the

6:29

hardware. Andrew

6:39

Chartman told me that memory, or

6:41

lack of memory, meant that 1.

6:44

Condo couldn't write anything too complex and

6:47

2. Whatever he did write

6:49

couldn't be too long. It would have to

6:51

repeat again and again and again because it

6:53

couldn't take up too much space. How

6:56

do you create a song that

6:58

repeats nearly endlessly and doesn't get

7:00

annoying? According to Chartman, it helps

7:02

to disguise the loop. If

7:05

you actually separate out the little

7:07

chunks of music, you can think

7:09

of this kind of in a

7:11

modular sense. He's basically taking these

7:13

Lego blocks and rearranging them in

7:15

different orders that work musically so

7:17

that by reusing the same Lego

7:19

block, you're saving memory. But

7:21

by putting it in different orders,

7:24

the listener doesn't necessarily notice it

7:26

as an exact repetition because the

7:28

context is different. Think

7:30

about that first little chunk of music in the main

7:33

theme. But

7:46

not always. And

8:02

so by reordering these things and creating

8:04

the expectation that this is going to

8:06

happen, but oops, something else actually happens,

8:08

he makes it harder for us to

8:10

figure out where the loop actually is.

8:14

The result is music that's accessible

8:16

and compelling and surprisingly

8:18

complex. But

8:22

there were other constraints that Kondo had to get

8:24

around. Not just a shortage of

8:26

memory, but limitations in the Super

8:28

Nintendo system, which could only produce five

8:30

sounds at a time, significantly

8:33

less than a symphony orchestra. You've

8:38

got five channels, but

8:41

you've only really got three that

8:43

work for making basic notes. And

8:45

then you've got a noise channel, which

8:48

can imitate percussion and create sound effects.

8:50

And then you've got a sample channel,

8:52

except they're extraordinarily memory intensive. So most

8:54

games didn't use it anyway. So you've

8:56

really got three sound channels.

8:59

So how do you make that sound like

9:01

music rather than a computer trying to make

9:03

music? Kondo's solution was

9:05

to space out the notes. Take

9:08

a C major chord played by a pianist.

9:15

Coming through a Nintendo system, it's

9:17

going to sound pretty confined, tinny

9:19

and small. So Kondo spaced

9:21

out the notes over more than a single

9:24

octave. The result, a sound that's

9:26

richer, fuller and more clear.

9:33

More compelling, more

9:35

atmospheric. And that is

9:37

one of the keys to the Super Mario

9:39

Brothers theme and what made it so influential.

9:42

According to Chartman, Kondo changed the

9:44

world of video game music by

9:46

integrating the music into the game

9:48

development itself. At this period in

9:50

the 1980s, video game music is

9:53

still largely either just not a thing, most

9:55

games just have sound effects, or

9:57

it's kind of this wallpaper effect. It's in the

9:59

background. nice we don't really pay attention to it.

10:02

But Kondo had these two main

10:04

goals. He wanted to create what he

10:06

called a sonic image of

10:08

the game world and he also wanted

10:11

the music to enhance not just the

10:13

emotional but the physical experience

10:15

of the gamer. Remember level

10:17

one, the overworld. You're

10:20

Super Mario. You're running in front of a

10:22

blue sky dotted with white clouds. You've got

10:24

to jump over evil goombas and tall green

10:27

pipes. All the while you have to be

10:29

careful not to fall into those pits. It's

10:33

a little bit terrifying. Your heart's in

10:35

your throat. You're like, I'm I gonna actually

10:37

make it and it's this nerve wracking experience.

10:39

It's a physical experience. And so in the

10:42

ground theme, you have all

10:44

of these offbeat accents. So few things

10:46

actually land on the beat. So the

10:48

music is off kilter. If you've got

10:50

like one, two, three, four,

10:53

one, two, three, four,

10:58

right? That's your basic pulse. And

11:00

the music is rarely on the one, two,

11:02

three, or four. It's on a yeah, bah,

11:04

bah, bah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,

11:07

dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's

11:14

often on the offbeat. So

11:16

it kind of feels like you're not on solid

11:18

ground, which is exactly what he wants you to

11:20

feel in the overworld. That

11:24

breezy cha cha cha melody that matches

11:26

the rhythm of characters running and jumping

11:28

actually reflects the way Kondo thought about

11:31

the soundtrack. The music wasn't an afterthought.

11:33

It was essential to the game itself.

11:35

And that is how Koji Kondo took

11:38

the Super Mario Brothers theme and video

11:40

game music as a whole to the

11:43

next level. And

11:47

that's the science of success. This

11:49

episode was produced by Charlotte Gartenberg.

11:52

Michael LaValle and Jessica Fenton are our

11:54

sound designers and wrote our theme. I'm

11:57

Ben Cohen. Be sure to check out my column

11:59

on W. And if you

12:01

like the show, tell your friends and

12:03

leave us a five-star review on your

12:05

favorite platform. Special thanks

12:07

to all my journal colleagues who

12:10

helped sing the theme, including Ben

12:12

Fouldy, Nelly Givin, Rachel Bachman, Yalisa

12:14

De Jesus, Chris Dinsley, Brian Fitzgerald,

12:16

Pierre Bien-a-Mae, Todd Olmsted, and Jessica

12:18

Fenton. Thanks for listening. Good.

12:22

Okay, we're good.