Maestro Mario

How Nintendo Transformed Videogame Music into an Art

By: Andrew Schartmann

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

"Pa-dum-pum-pa-dum-pum - PUM!" Super Mario Bros. for the NES contains some of the most recognizable tunes in popular culture, and yet it’s safe to say that only a handful of people have thought beyond the music’s entertaining surface. After all, what could possibly be art-worthy about an early Mario score? Or any early game sound for that matter?

In search of answers to these questions, Andrew Schartmann takes us on a journey from the primitive "pongs" of arcade machines to the complex musical fabrics woven by composers of the NES era. Where does that distinctly Nintendo-flavored sound come from? What sets NES music apart from its predecessors? And how has that iconic ‘80s videogame sound "invaded" popular culture?

©2013 Andrew Schartmann (P)2014 Audible Inc.

The music of a game

Great for a musician, and the narrator is calming and make it easy to understand. I am lucky to get to listen.

Interesting

I did learn a lot from Nintendo, and how they changed so much of the video game history, without Nintendo, we wouldn't have the music of now.

Great book & narration, missed opportunity on SFX

An awesome book with tons of info about the classic NES music and how it has defined the videogame music genre. However, it was a missed opportunity not adding the sound effects or fragments of songs as they were referred on the book; maybe it was due to copyright, but it seems like falling short on that way.

A history of video game music but WITHOUT music!

This short book is mostly about video music from the beginning of the 70s to around 2014. The things it talks about are good discussions such console sound limitation and player connection. But the massive massive downfall of this book is that despite being a audiobook about sound and music there is no actual sounds or music from the games mentioned or discussed. Like what?! If you haven’t played a game mentioned or don’t remember the music you pretty much have to make it up in your head or take the author’s word for it. This is the book’s biggest and most major letdown considering the modern technology required to bring you an audiobook compared to a physical book

This book is a missed opportunity

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Granted, this is a short book at a low price point, but an audio format presented a prime opportunity to use clips of the tunes from the games being referenced to enhance the experience. The foreword even makes references to the transcription of certain scores, but those scores are not available in an audio format, despite the fact that the text (was altered to?) say "audio book" and not just "book".

Great writing

Mr. Schartmann has some great insights into the music behind early video games and Nintendo. For more information, I would recommend his second book Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. This book goes into much more detail about the music theory behind the NES games.

The performance by Kaleo Griffith does not do the book justice. Very disappointed in that.

Very good but could be GREAT.

As a lifelong video game fan who has grown up with the entire history of video games, as well as being a musician, I found Maestro Mario to be a very entertaining and interesting listen. If this had been produced with audio examples to accompany the work, this could be an amazing listen. Without the examples and the narrators somewhat dry delivery, this felt somewhat clinical. I would still recommend for anyone into video game music, history, or culture.

way too brief and missed opportunities.

this is more of a seemingly connected essays than a real deep dive. the audiobook version feels very lacking without audio samples. while understandably that could have been a listening nightmare, it still feels incomplete- akin to listening to someone talk about a movie rather than experiencing it.

Like sitting through a work meeting

Could not wait for this to end. The completionist in me wouldn't just let me walk away.

Boring. Disjointed. The narrator could have just been reading random paragraphs from Wikipedia. Other than a small mention about the importance of Space Invadors I was just bored out of my mind.

Very Musical and Relaxing, All in One

Being a huge fan into everything, Mario related, since I was a boy. I personally found all of this music to be very calming and relaxing.