What does outer space sound like?
Well, if you go there in a rocket ship, not much. It’s silent. But in a video game,
composers need to give space a musical sound. They need to decide what kind of music
represents outer space. Sometimes that’s done using grand orchestral music, to show how
huge and expansive space is. Other times it’s done with futuristic sounding synthesisers
to represent the future of space travel. That’s just one example, but there are many
others. Places or things that don’t have an actual musical style of their own - composers
have just decided on a style. Underwater music in Mario games almost always features some kind
of waltz, but that’s totally arbitrary. When you go for a swim in real life, there’s no waltz
playing in the background. Forests are usually represented by rhythmic drums, the cold is
represented by glockenspiels and sleigh bells. But, what about racing? What kind of
music represents the thrill of high speed motor racing? Obviously the music
has to sound fast, but other than that, there’s not a particular style of music
associated with motor sports, is there? Except, in Japan there is! That genre is jazz
fusion, and Nintendo’s sound team took advantage of this fusion genre in a really clever way when
they worked on the soundtracks of Mario Kart 64, and in particular Mario Kart 8. So today I don’t
just want to talk about the jazz fusion genre, but also how Nintendo went right to the source
of this genre in order to make Mario Kart’s music memorable, catchy and iconic. Here is
the secret behind Mario Kart 8’s soundtrack. Part 1: F1 comes to Japan Our story begins in Japan in the year
1987. That is the year that Formula 1, the world’s biggest motorsports event, began
broadcasting on Japanese TV. It was one of Japan’s biggest TV channels - Fuji TV - who paid
a lot of money to get the rights to F1. And so, they wanted to be sure to make a splash
with their new program - specifically, they wanted some kind of easily recognisable
and iconic sounding theme song that viewers would link with motoracing. Who did Fuji TV call
upon for this? Well, in the end they decided on a jazz fusion band called T-Square - the most
famous fusion band in all of Japan. And so, in 1987, here is the song that played
over the show’s opening sequence. This is TRUTH, and it’s T-Square’s most well
known song. In fact, that’s kind of underselling it - according to Wikipedia, Japanese people
of all ages associate this song with not just Formula 1 racing, but also any kinds of TV show or
movie scenes that involve speed! The partnership between Fuji TV and T-Square had proved a huge
success, and other broadcasters soon wanted in on the action! Another network, TV Asahi, owned
the rights to a different racing event, that being Le Mans - and by 1992, a newly formed fusion
group named Dimension had provided them with a brand new theme song! And with that, fusion music
and race cars had truly been linked together. So, before we go any further, what exactly
is jazz fusion music? Well, at its core, “fusion music” is a pretty broad label. It just
describes a combination of two different music genres - a fusion, if you like. Put samba
drums over a classical concerto and that’s fusion. Put traditional Japanese koto over
heavy metal guirars, and that’s fusion too. But when people talk about fusion music,
especially in Japan, they’re usually talking about jazz fusion, which is a combination
of jazz and rock. So you’ll usually hear jazzy saxophone and synth solos on top
of rock sounding drums, guitars and bass. And in the world of Japanese fusion music,
there’s two bands at the very top - T-Square and Cassiopeia. Plus, there's one more band
that warrants mention called DIMENSION, who aren’t quite so famous but have put out a new
numbered album every year since 1993. These three bands - T-Square, casseopia, and DIMENSION
are the three bands that absolutely warrant talking about when it comes to this
genre of music. And out of the three, two of them are strongly linked with
motorsports. Dimension provided theme music for Le Mans in 1992 and 1995, and this
makes up there first ever album. And T-Square’s TRUTH has been used as the F1 theme in Japan
almost every year from 1987 to the present day. So linked to F1 is T-Square
that when Ayrton Senna, the most famous and well loved racing driver
in the world, tragically passed away in 1994, T-Square wrote and released an entire tribute
album to him. That is how linked together fusion music - specifically T-Square - and the world of
motor racing really were in Japan in the 1990s. Part 2: A new composer joins Nintendo So all of that brings us, at long
last, to Mario Kart and its music. So, in 1992 the game Super Mario Kart was released
on the SNES, and it has a really excellent soundtrack written by composer Soyo Oka.
It’s full of funk-inspired bangers with very groovy basslines. According to Oka herself,
“I couldn't focus entirely on the cool image of racing. Even though it was a racing game,
we had to make use of the Mario flavor”. Now, excellent though it is, I don’t want to
focus too much on Super Mario Kart’s music, because three years after Super Mario Kart’s
release, Soyo Oka left Nintendo to go freelance. And thus, in 1996 when Nintendo were
working on a sequel - that being Mario Kart 64 - they needed to find a new composer
to take on the mantle of “Mario Kart music maestro”. The person chosen was composer
Kenta Nagata, who said in an interview, “Mario Kart 64 was my first job as a new guy.”
Nagata had just joined Nintendo at the time, and he decided to change up
Mario Kart’s sound in a big way. And the result was this - a jazz
fusion inspired racing soundtrack, which in a lot of ways mirrors the real
world motor racing music of the era! Flip through the soundtrack
and you’ll hear all kinds of songs with that jazz fusion
influence stamped all over them. Now, obviously this is a
Mario game first and foremost, so the music featured here is pretty varied. You have country music to
represent the western tracks, there’s bossa nova for the beach level and so on… But if you take a listen to the menu music,
the title theme, the music that plays when you finish a race, and a good chunk of the
racing music too, it’s got the fusion genre written all over it! You have jazzy piano
solos over rock style bass and drums. I mean, this truly is jazz fusion, unmistakably.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the game came out in 1996, right around the peak
of jazz fusion’s link with motor racing in Japan. Even compare the game’s short jingles
with actual T-Square music of this era… There’s truly no mistaking where Kenta
Nagata got the inspiration from when he wrote Mario Kart 64’s soundtrack.
But this is just the beginning. After Mario Kart 64, Nagata also worked on Double
Dash, but this time he was just a co-composer, and the jazz fusion influence is much weaker. Double
Dash takes more inspiration from ska than anything else. Then Nagata was absent from the series
for a long time - take a listen to the music from games like Mario Kart DS or Mario Kart Wii
which Nagata had nothing to do with, and you’ll barely hear any jazz fusion influence at all - a
far cry from the T-Square inspired Mario Kart 64. But then, after 8 years away from Mario
Kart, Kenta Nagata made his grand return with Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS. Now I love
this soundtrack, and I think you can hear fusion creeping its way back into the series
for the first time in a decade. But it’s the very next Mario Kart game, Mario Kart 8, that
went even further than Mario Kart 64 did, even. It’s time to talk about the Mario Kart
game that went straight to the source of fusion. Part 3: Mario Kart music levels up So, everyone agrees that Mario Kart 8 has a
phenomenal soundtrack. Part of the reason is that for the first time in Mario Kart history, the
game’s sound team, led by Kenta Nagata, decided to make use of real instrument performances. Rather
than synthesised notes on a computer screen, most of this soundtrack was recorded by real people
playing real instruments in a studio. I mean, you’ve probably seen clips from that recording
process online - it’s really magical watching this soundtrack come to life! And according to Nagata
himself, doing things this way prevented composers from having to “painstakingly simulate guitar
performances”. But take a closer look at this studio footage. Because if I pause right here - do
you know who this drummer is? It's Satoshi Bandoh, the drummer from T-Square! Or how about this guy?
This is Takashi Masuzaki, DIMENSION’s guitarist. And these two guys are his bandmates, bassist
Teppei Kawasaki and saxophonist Kazuki Katsuta! That’s right - in order to
level up Mario Kart’s music, the game’s sound team hired not just a
whole bunch of talented session musicians, but also some members of Japan’s leading jazz
fusion bands, T-Square and Dimension! I mean, that’s surely the best way to get that authentic
motor-racing fusion sound that Kenta Nagata had been taking inspiration from since Mario Kart
64. In particular, Katsuta and Masuzaki from Dimension were actively performing music
for Le Mans in the 90s. And they’re the very people that sound lead Kenta Nagata picked
to work on Mario Kart 8’s brilliant soundtrack. Jazz fusion music is all over
Mario Kart 8 - like Mario Kart 64, not every song here sounds like a T-Square
hit… there’s bossa nova and orchestral and metal music in this game’s various courses.
But in the menu music, in the main theme, in the jingles and throughout loads of this game’s
courses you can hear truly authentic sounding jazz fusion songs. And the reason they sound so
authentic is because the musicians playing those very songs are some of the top
fusion musicians in all of Japan. In particular, it’s in the two F-Zero
tracks - Mute City and Big Blue - where you can hear this soundtrack at its absolute most
fusion-esque. According to Kenta Nagata himself, “We had the sax and guitar engage in a kind
of duel before a drum solo cuts in, and then added a buzzing bass solo on top of that. The
performances on this track really are white hot!” I mean, this sounds like it really was ripped out of T-Square or Dimension’s back
catalogue! It’s unbelievable. And even in the songs that aren’t so obviously
fusion, that doesn’t mean that these fusion musicians didn’t get their hands all over these
tracks. Dolphin Shoals has a truly brilliant sax solo which has become kind of iconic over the
past few years - and all of that was thanks to Dimension saxophonist Kazuki Katsuta. The
song’s composer said, “Kazuki Katsuta's sax is a perfect fit for the seaside vibes, and makes
for great driving music.” And it’s certainly true that Katsuta’s sax does indeed make for
great driving music, as he’s been doing that since the 90s! This one part in particular has
been named “the Mario Kart lick” by online fans, but you can find that same note sequence crop up
in Dimension songs going back multiple decades! So, next time you’re listening to the excellent
music of Mario Kart 8, you’ll know exactly why Dolphin Shoals has such a great sax solo, why Mute
City and Big Blue’s guitar parts are so grooving, and why this whole soundtrack makes you feel like
a racing driver. It’s because these performers have been making music for motor racing since
the 80s and 90s. Of course, the whole Mario Kart 8 sound team deserve a whole lot of credit
- if it wasn’t for them, T-Square and Dimension’s performers wouldn’t have any music to play! But
it’s those performers carrying on the legacy of F1 and Le Mans that are, I think, the secret sauce
that makes Mario Kart 8’s soundtrack so darn good. Hi, thank you so much for watching this video,
I hope you found it interesting! This topic was really fascinating to research but also took a
whole lot of time! I even ended up writing 2 of my own original fusion songs 'cause I couldn't really
use any copyrighted music in the video itself. So if you wanna go listen to them, and also
wanna check out a list of some of my favourite T-Square and Dimension fusion songs I found while
working on this video, then you can go sign up to my Patreon at Patreon.com/ThomasGameDocs. It's
the best way to support this channel and help me make videos like this in the future!
And I'll see you in the next video - bye! And as always, an extra special
thanks to my $10 Patrons!
