The Musical Evolution of Rainbow Road

[Music] there are very few things in this world that have caused as much damage to friendships as the Mario Kart series and of all the tracks across all the games I'd be willing to say none have caused quite as much pain and sorrow as Rainbow Road over the years the track has evolved from swamps and space to a rainbow in space to a Space Station in space and rainbow road's music has changed just as much in the 26 years since the original came in and started ruining relationships but the more things change the more they stay the same and looking at Rainbow Road over the years gives us an interesting look into how different composers handled this card in class so without further ado let's dive into the musical evolution of Rainbow Road the first incarnation of Rainbow Road can be found in Super Mario Kart for the SNES the stages music is a 16-bit funk tune based off of the simple c13 sus 2 c13 vamp note the more open bassline which plays around with the route v and octave as well as using this typical funk bass line thing where you overshoot and hit the second of the chord before resolving down to the root this tune is great but it's not until after the main melody that we see some foreshadowing for future installments this 8 bar transition between the a and the B sections gives us two of what I'm going to call our main motifs that we'll see evolve throughout the series first motif one which is this rising triad figure over a tonic petaled bass this is an example of chromatic parallelism or planing where a voicing stays intervallic Li consistent as it moves around different route notes even if that consistency takes some of the notes inside the chords outside of the HOME key of the piece in this first example the parallelism is sacrificed for making the first and last chords more colorful adding the major seventh to the C chord and the second to this F chord but we'll see more authentic examples of planing in later installments motif two is the melodic figure that we see here specifically this big open five one five leap in the first bar the B section of this tune is based off of this motif transposing it down to fifth and harmonizing it with these lush four parts in harmonies [Music] [Applause] more important than this full melody is the idea of basing a melody around the root and fifth of the key these wide leaps to such stable chord tones gives the melody a big bold quality which you can see use to evoke a feeling of adventure in a lot of Zelda music we'll see this idea in particular evolve as the series goes on this iteration of Rainbow Road is great but it's not the one that everybody thinks of when they think of Rainbow Road music that would be our next example in the series from Mario Kart 64 at first glance this example hardly has anything in common at all with its predecessor the vibe is completely different the open rhythmic bass line is traded in for the static chugging one and the funky silly dominant chords are traded in for more dramatic sounding triadic chord voicings despite all of this if we look closely both tunes do start in the same way a 2 chord once us to one vamp [Music] the way that the same harmonic idea is used so differently speaks to the difference in attitudes towards these two tunes we also see our second main motif the fifth based melody come into play it's not quite a direct reference to the original title but the a-section melody is based on the Salib from root to fifth and the subsequent walk down from fifth back to root before I play it for you though I want to draw attention to the last main motif we'll be looking at throughout the series motif three is this extended one flat seven one chord progression note the use of sustained notes inside each chord maintaining interest even with the slow moving harmony [Music] [Music] next listen to the B section of this tune and notice a couple of things first this melody is based off of the same five to one walk down that we saw in the opening phrase of the a section only this time in our new key of a major [Music] [Music] next check out the stanky F over E chord at the end [Music] this acts simultaneously as the flat 6 in our bridge key and the flat 2 of our original key bridging the gap as both a deceptive cadence and a major and a chromatic approach to our original tonic of a major ok ok enough about Mario Kart 64 moving ahead for years we get Mario Kart Super circuit for the Gameboy Advance I personally think this is the weakest of all the Rainbow Road music but we do see a pretty direct reference to our motif one that was introduced on the SNES this intro starts with the same 1 2 flat 3 4 2 progression only this time the tonic pedal only extends as far as the 2 chord we also see the same one flats have in one progression that I dubbed motif three although this time it's much quicker and funkier than in mario kart 64 moving on to the Gamecube brings us Mario Kart Double Dash which in turn brings a Rainbow Road track that owes a lot to the n64 version both visually and musically we open with a direct reference again to motif one which it seems has solidified itself as the go-to opening for Rainbow Road tracks at this point this time though we have no tonic pedal and the F add to chord from the original is rearranged as F over G chord to give a stronger transition into the main melody [Music] after this we see some influence from mario kart 64 in the overall tone of the piece as well as with the use of motif 3 the extended one flat 7 chord progression [Music] there is one more subtle reference to Mario Kart 64 Rainbow Road I'll go ahead and play it and you see if you can catch it [Music] okay okay so the thing about this direct quote from Mario Kart 64 is that it's written in the original key of this piece C major whereas the original modulated to the four of its original key this means that this final Steinke cord is even stinkier instead of smoothly approaching the tonic as a flat two to one move we get this raunchy flat six major over its major seventh that just sort of jumps to our one chord at the end [Music] Mario Kart DS gives us a funky rendition of the established intro with a slight variation we have the tonic pedal this time but just like in double dash the four chord at the end is reformed as a 5 sus chord [Music] the melody provides an interesting blend of influence from the first to Mario Kart games with this open funky bass line clearly inspired by the SNES track while the harmony gives us a slight variation on our main motif three [Music] the B section showcases our main motif - with this melody this time it's not just based on the idea of the open v it can actually be seen as an rhythmically altered reinterpretation of the same melody that was used over Super Mario karts transition section [Music] mario kart wii opens with an interesting evolution of our main motif one we start with a direct quote from the original version with a 1-2-3 form of over a tonic pedal but on the repetition we get faked out this time descending with a 1 flat 7 flat 6 for five more [Music] I think the sounds extra shocking because our ears are expecting the second chord in the progression to move in a brighter direction with this e / d implying a D Lydian sound from our D major bass but instead we get a C over D implying it at least a mixolydian sound moving a shade darker from D major mariokart sevens Rainbow Road track also plays with our expectations of main motif one this time moving from the major two chord down to a major flat two chord all over a tonic pedal in the Mario Kart 64 style chugging bass [Music] the melody is also based on this 5:1 motif which we can see is a direct evolution of our main motif to [Music] the B section takes after double dashes rainbow road track with a direct quote from Mario Kart 64 SB section staying in the original key of the piece E [Music] at the end we see some real musical evolution as the final stanky chord problem that the lack of modulation in the bridge presents has been solved this time instead of the flat 6 major 7 in 3rd inversion just jumping to our 1 chord the final flat 6 chord kicks off a classic Mario cadence back to the top of the form our final and most recent example comes from Mario Kart 8 which hosts one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time at this point we've come a long way from the SNES era of gaming and to me there's no clear indication of that than the music of Mario Kart 8 so let's take a look at what 22 years of evolution can do first main motif 1 Mario Kart 8's Rainbow Road uses Mario Kart Wiis variation of this motif as a transition between the bridge and the top of the forum with this one flat 7 flat 6 progression playing over a tonic bass pedal [Music] next main motif to this time the influence is more subtle but our melody is largely based off of elaborations of wide fourth and fifth leaps mostly between the fifth and the tonic of the key [Music] finally we do see some influence of our main motif three in the a section each phrase opens with a one two flat seven move but this is slightly obscured by the tonic based pedal and the way that the flat seven chord doesn't resolve back to the one immediately after [Music] it's always cool to see just how different the same musical ideas can sound in the hands of different composers and arrangers isolating these ideas from the specific context you hear them in can be super helpful for your own writing too if you felt so inclined you could try using these three main motifs the chromatic planing over a tonic pedal the melody centered around the root and fifth of the key and an extended one flat seven one chord progression in your own writing in fact you're kind of mowett to the musical lexicon to do so and and share your interpretation with the world so get on it okay thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the video you can find me on Twitter at it bit music theory and if you'd like to support this channel you can check out my patreon page here thanks again and I'll see you all in the next one [Music] you

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 410,276

Rating: 4.9691939 out of 5

Keywords: Mario kart, super mario kart, snes, mario kart 64, n64, mario kart double dash, gamecube, gcn, double dash, music, musical analysis, music theory, vgm, video game, DS, Mario kart ds, rainbow road, mario kart wii, mario kart music, mario kart super circuit, gameboy advance, gba, wii, wii u, mario kart 7, 3ds, mario kart 8, mario kart 8 deluxe, 8 bit music theory

Id: E0Ux3ULOuAU

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/avenp]

I wish he would explain the music terms better. I was pretty lost the entire time, and music theory is something I've been meaning to learn more about.