Wednesday, March 20, 2024

MIDI Week Singles: "Music 2" - Tetris (NES)

 


"Music 2" from Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989)
Composer: Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D 1, Alexey Pajitnov


"Music 2" from Tetris is a bit of an outlier between the NES and Game Boy releases.  Hirokazu Tanaka wrote the original music and arrangements for both games, but "Music 2" is the only in-stage music featured in both games.  "Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairies" was "Music 1" on the NES version while "Korobeinki" was "Music A" on the Game Boy. The third respective songs, "Music 3" and "Music C" were original compositions from Tanaka and while they had similar vibes, they were both different songs.

Because I am neither a musicologist, a music historian, or someone who has a major in Russian Folk Music, I feel only a little bad/guilty for saying that something about "Music 2" just feels like a traditional Russian folk song, or at least composed by someone familiar with Russian music tropes.  On a different note, I also felt bad since I often skipped over "Music 2" despite liking it because I thought the sped-up version was difficult to listen to.  When your blocks reached a certain height, the music became too frantic and got under my skin, making me panic even more than I already was.  But I still enjoy "Music 2" as a song by itself, likely more outside of the context of Tetris than actual in-game music, but that's something too.



~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

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