Feb 20 (Var 5)

There's a game for the NES called Dragon Warrior. I had a copy of this game when I was a kid. I played it a lot. It was a genuinely excellent game. But that's not why I mention it here, of course! I mention it because of the music in that game.

I always suspected that whoever wrote the Dragon Warrior soundtrack was inspired by Bach. Today, I found proof! Have a look at this photograph:

These 9 notes are encoded so deeply in my auditory neurons that after I played this the first time I stopped dead. I know it doesn't look like much, but here's what it reminded me of:

Do you get it? Can you get it? It's a work of genius, seriously. There was an incredible amount of really really good music in those old video games, more than there was any right to be. 

OK, so I have two maxims for you today. Number one: Constraints breed Creativity. The Dragon Warrior castle theme is a great example of that. The NES just wasn't capable of realistic audio; what it could do was beeps and bloops and noise. Seriously, check it out: famitracker.com. But great art comes from working within limitations, whether they're self-imposed or exogenous. And I guess the NES was just limiting enough, but had enough capability, that people managed to wring some beautiful sounds out of it.

Maxim number 2: the 80-20 rule. In any project, the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. I should have kept that in mind when I told you two more days! I moved up by just 4bpm tonight. I'm finding that my practice sessions are so much more productive when I'm well fed and well rested. And I've been skipping lunch lately...