The brilliance of Wii Music - Part 2: evidence of awesomeness

by Jacob Crites

Posted: 24-02-2010

The following is the second part of a series that demonstrates what can be done with Wii Music, arguably one of Nintendo’s most misunderstood games.

I already used this great quote by Elvis Costello in part one but I think it’s worth repeating: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” I can tell you how great Wii Music is, I can tell you how you can alter the time signatures of these songs to make them totally unique, and I can tell you that you can take these crappy public domain songs and turn them into something beautiful. But it would be better if I showed you. In this section we’re going to take a look at just a few examples of what can be done with Wii Music when the player is willing to use his or her imagination.

First, let’s take a look at the result of someone who clearly didn’t take the time to learn the ins and outs of the game, courtesy of a little site who’s name shall remain IGN. Whoops.

How not to use Wii Music

If you watched that thing to the end, you’re a stronger man than me. Painful, right? I actually think he might have been trying to make it sound terrible. If so, mission accomplished, soldier.

But now let’s look at some videos from people who clearly did take the time to lean the ins and outs of the game. Now remember, this ain’t Rock Band. If you’re expecting power chords and face-melting guitar solos you’re destined for disappointment. Wii Music is about craft, interesting song arrangements, creativity, making the song your own. In addition to showing you some of the better Wii Music Videos I could find (typing in Wii Music on youtube is a crap-shoot) including a few of my own arrangements (I’m not the best out there but I think I do pretty well) you might learn a little something about how the game is played -- there are many different techniques to creating unique Wii Music Videos and this article will outline a few.

Simple covers

Wii Music involves overdubbing. You go into the song, play one part of the song (unless you have friends playing of course) then go back and play another. And since you’re not tied down into any specific note chart, you can play at any time during the song you want. Use that to your advantage and you’ll come up with some pretty good stuff.

However, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make a good Wii Music Vid. You don’t have to completely restructure the song -- that takes a lot of practice. When you start out, you’ll likely be doing some simple covers of songs to get a feel of the game a little bit. But even simple covers, with a few tweaks here and there, can turn into something unique and original. Here’s a video I did of My Grandfather’s Clock. I think it’s a pretty good example of that.



My apologies for the freakout at the beginning. Couldn’t help myself. Anyway, this is still very much My Grandfather’s Clock. The melody is still there. But the way I arranged it made it sound much more unique and interesting than the actual song (at least I think it does). If you listen to this with a decent set of headphones you’ll notice there’s some pretty cool stuff going on here. The acoustic guitar part is surprisingly tricky. (Remember that each song is broken up into 6 parts -- bass, percussion 1, percussion 2, chord, melody and harmony. Holding the A button while playing a chord instrument lets you play arpeggios instead of chords. That’s how I got the acoustic guitar part). The harmonized handbells towards the end took a few tries, but in the end I think it was worth it.

Here’s another video I did. This one is all about buildup. The piece starts off with just a piano, but builds up into something that’s actually quite beautiful.



Doesn’t exactly rock your socks off, but of course that’s not the point. I wanted to make a minimalist classical music piece. So I did. And if I may be so bold, I think it turned out pretty darn good.

If you’re really interested in learning about the awesome stuff you can create with Wii Music get to know the name Wassijames. That’s his Youtube name, and quite frankly, he’s incredible. This isn’t his best, but it’s still darn impressive for a simple cover. And I use the term “simple” loosely. We’ll be hearing more from him later.



But those are just a few examples of cover songs. You can do much more complicated stuff with this game.

Knowing when not to play

A wise fictional uncle in a certain superhero movie once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Wii Music gives you the power to play whenever you want. Your instinct is going to tell you to play all your instruments all the time just because you can. But if you do that it’s probably going to sound like crap. Indeed, knowing when you shouldn’t play is just as important as knowing when you should play. Here’s a spacy rendition of Frere Jacques I did that exemplifies that. Pay attention to the relationship between the harp and the toy piano. That turned out pretty cool.



Doesn’t exactly sound like Frere Jacques, does it? You can hear bits of it coming out if you really listen, but ultimately it sounds pretty original. And kind of catchy, too.

Deconstruct. Rebuild.

The only thing guiding you in Wii Music are the computer players, little bouncing notes at the bottom right corner of the screen that keep the tempo, and your imagination. You can take out the computers. You can ignore the bouncing notes. But if you don’t you know what you’re doing the result will probably be disastrous. If you know your way around the game, however, you can use this to your advantage.

For the record, I suck at this. Deconstructing the song and rebuilding it in an interesting way is tough work -- I’ve been playing this game pretty frequently since launch day and I still can’t do it. In fact, I don’t know how in the blazes these people actually do what they do.

But they do it.

To all the people who say you can’t create your own songs in Wii Music: prepare to feel foolish.

Here’s one by that wonderful Wassijames. Everything this guy does is amazing, and if you have some free time on your hands I implore you to check out more of his videos. But in the meantime, here’s this little masterpiece:



That one just blows my mind. The title tells us that he used Frere Jacques as a template; I don’t know about you but I sure as heck wouldn’t have guessed that that song was an evolution of Frere Jacques. That’s an original song that he created. He created his own melody, his own beat, his own everything. Just don’t ask me how he did it.

Here’s another equally talented fellow who goes by the name Br0therFL on Youtube. He’s got some really clever stuff on his page that’s worth checking out if you get a chance. This one here is a rather catchy tune he created using Ode to Joy as a template.



Our next exhibit is by another Wii Music prodigy who I know as Warioswoods around NintendoLife, but goes by WiiMusicBox on Youtube. Whatever his name is, the guy knows his way around Wii Music. In fact he’s currently creating a website dedicated to Wii Music, which will serve as a central hub for fans of the game to share each other’s videos and give each other feedback. Anyway, this video features great use of the Balance Board drum kit -- and if you know anything about music composition you’ll quickly realize that what he’s doing in this video is pretty darn impressive.



Like I said, these are not rockin’ tunes. The purpose of Wii Music is to express your inner artist, not your inner rock star. And making quality music videos isn’t easy -- at least not at first. Overdubbing can be a time consuming process, especially if you’re obsessive like me and have to get all your parts juuust right. But the payoff is extraordinary. Creating something that you’re actually proud of in this game is one of the most satisfying things you can experience in a videogame.

Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of myths surrounding the game. That it’s shallow. That it’s a glorified noisemaker. Well in Part 3 we’re going to go through and debunk them one by one. Yeah, there’s a Part 3. I’m not done ranting yet.

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