Blindfolded Mario Pianist!!

[bloodsample]

WOW! *jaw drops*

 

Watch this video of a guy who can play almost all the music from super mario world (the video game)

 

There was already a video like this released way back when and now here is "part 2".

 

It's 10 minutes long, and even if you're not a fan of mario it's worth watching just for the end where he goes on a crazy stride piano rampage! For a moment I thought the video was on fast foreward

 

This is very entertaining and if you have 10 minutes to spare, I encourage you watch it.

 

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO!

 

Enjoy!

[MidLifeCrisis]

Has to be sequenced. No way this guy is a goombah.

[yabbadabbadoo]

Yeah apparantly these days Hamelin et al finish their gigs playing Rach 3, Chopin etudes and so on and someone walks up at the end with "That wasn't bad, but I saw this lad on the internet playing mario bros. BLINDFOLDED!!!"

 

 

He's a lot better than I am, but he sounds awful.

 

Please no "But you have to see Jem boy" followups. I like piano music

[daBowsa]

The most amazing thing is that he hasn't changed his repertoire in 3 years.

[bloodsample]

The impressive part is not that he's blindfolded (cause for the majority he's not).

 

It's how well he reproduces the music and sounds of the game (including the "time running out" sound and the "coin collect" sounds, much like that guitarist who did something similar). I guess you'd had to have played the game to fully appreciate this video.

 

I was actually impressed at how well written the score for this game was..

 

And judging by the way this guy plays piano, I'm sure he mastered chopin's etudes. (Not that I wanna compare Chopin with *insert composer for Mario music* )

[Jessica T]

I thought that was very inspiring to say the least. What do you pros think of his technique? I liked seeing this video because it is one of the few that focuses on the hands and what they're doing for long periods of time rather than flashing to another camera angle every 30 seconds as many concert videos do these days. I appreciated being able to study his hand position and how he carries out that amazing reproduction! Thanks for posting it.

[Bridog6996]

He's a very talented dude. The whole "Mario" schtick is not my cup of tea, and his arrangements/transcriptions seem a tad bland, but from the way he plays he certainly sounds like a gifted young pianist.

[Martin Hines]

Originally posted by MidLifeCrisis:

Has to be sequenced. No way this guy is a goombah.

Not sequenced at all. He is just a very good pianist.

 

Given his talents, he has changed his name to "The Video Game Pianist".

 

Here is his biography. You will note he has participated in some International Piano competitions:

http://www.videogamepianist.com./index.php?id=bio

 

I like the video where he plays John Lennon's Imagine standing with his back to the piano. Obviously, his parents must have chained him to the piano for days upon end. LOL!!

http://www.videogamepianist.com./index.php?id=video

[MidLifeCrisis]

Originally posted by Martin Hines:

Not sequenced at all. He is just a very good pianist.

See Bouncing Ball thread for clarification on this satirical attempt at humor.

[J_tour]

What's with the blindfolded shtik, though? It wouldn't be hard to see the keys by looking downward from the blindfold (I'm not saying he does this, just that *I* would), and it seems so hucksterish.

 

It's impressive that he's a serious pianist who chose to gain notoriety by playing that stuff -- I guess it's a great publicity thing. Good for him!

[Bridog6996]

I saw one of his videos a while back (the above link doesn't seem to work for me), and from what I remember, he only wears the blindfold briefly. It's obviously just for showmanship. Lots of pianists play with their eyes closed most of the time. Wearing the blindfold just draws attention to it, as if to say "Look what I can do!" Although, I find it odd that he went out of his way to call himself "The Blindfolded Pianist" when 95% of the time he didn't even wear it.

[yabbadabbadoo]

Originally posted by bloodsample:

And judging by the way this guy plays piano, I'm sure he mastered chopin's etudes.

I believe he does study classical so you may be right.

 

However the point wasn't to compare Chopin with Mario bros.

 

He's technically good, but it's not musically good , imo.

 

I don't think that his playing demonstrates a degree of technical ability that is necessarily astounding compared with other kids you might grab out of a conservatory.

 

So what? Well, I just think some of the awe is misplaced, especially where folk question whether or not what he is doing is possible [not necessarily here, but if you look around the 'net you'll see he's done videos with metronomes to prove it hasn't been sped up and so on]

 

So evidently there is an audience for whom he is some kind of virtuistic piano god, to the point where his speed or choice of headwear defies physics and/or human abilty. I suspect that audience doesn't care that much whether you've mastered chopins etudes or you can just play them, no more than it appears to for mario's theme music.

 

In reality he's a technical good pianist, one amongst many and in that world possibly not even that notable compared with others [although he may well be]

 

OTOH, the quality of the recording doesn't help. But to me, I'd consider that pretty much spells out the purpose of the video, which is a video of someone's hands moving quickly wearing a blindfold, rather than one of someone playing music.

 

That said, the video is passed around and re-encoded, sites add logos etc. It might not necessarily be his decision that a video is released which effectively shows the music is unimportant. There's also the question of bandwidth with the video being on the internet too [but audio is less bandwidth than video, so even taking that into account, there could be a video with a sound track that did justice to his musicality and playing if he or someone else thought it mattered]

[David Loving]

That's pretty a goofy pigeon-hole to work out of from age 19. Read his bio. He has educational cred, for sure. Maybe he spent too much time playing Mario Bros, when he should have been playing scales!