ReMix: Tetris 'Piano Concerto in A minor'

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Jeremy Robson writes:

"Here is another classical-oriented submission of mine. It's a concerto for piano and orchestra based on two of the Russian folk songs from Tetris. It's not exactly a piano concerto, but it's written much in the same way as one from the classical-romantic era. It's written in a kind of condensed sonata-allegro form with several key modulations and some motivic technique I attribute mostly to Beethoven and Mahler. The tonality, however, is mainly Russian folk song-sounding, along the lines of Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov. I don't claim to be the cleverest in writing for the piano, so it's all in good fun."

Good fun indeed - a little lighter than Jeremy's previous mixes, compositionally and thematically, this is nonetheless a treat for fans of falling slavic geometries the world over. I'll be frank in saying that, along with the Pokemon games, Tetris is a title that we recieve a disproportionately high number of less-than-stellar arrangements covering. For me, the definitive version of the game was the initial release for the original Gameboy, and I think that's where a lot of the momentum behind the phenomenon picked up, and thus what's inspired so many mixes. Robson brings something new to the act, however, with an arrangement that while light and fun, gives a little more weight to the themes by providing an orchestrated rendition, led largely by piano, as the title would suggest. John Burnett, who likes to place SF2's Zangief in compromising positions when creating animated GIFs for his forum signature, writes:

"This is a delicious feast for the senses. An orgasmic journey through time and space, where Jeremy holds the key unto new worlds, and in those new worlds, we are born anew in his image. There, under the watchmaker's delicacy of his mind and betwixt his strong and tapered fingers, music become wonder, and wonder becomes something beyond the human capacity to embrace, let alone understand. When we listen to his music and we unite, not just as a nation, not just a people, but as living creatures. As entities. As souls, balanced on the fragile edge between existence and Jeremy's heart."

...We keep him around because he has no place else to go, as the above should indicate. Whether Beethoven and Mahler would be proud to have their names cited as influences or not, this is a fairly mature and well-planned arrangement of extremely familiar source material. One issue that judges GrayLightning and zircon both cited was the "machine gun effect" common to earlier or less expensive sample libraries, wherein the repeated, consecutive attacks of a given instrument playing the same note give away the synthetic nature of the sample through the extreme uniformity of the sound. GL, who refreshingly chose to actually describe the music a bit in his decision, writes:

"I don't think most people would notice it anyway. It's noticeable, but it's not a huge deal ultimately. Now as far as this mix, really great arrangement. The orchestration is wonderful. All the different instrumentation, change ups, pacing and articulation usage is used expertly. Production values are generally excellent. I thought the dark sound here is perfect. It's got the perfect european sound. I would not like it any brighter."

Either way, it's a bit of a change of pace for Robson, but also for Tetris, which tends to garner more electronica attention than suitors from other genres. Enjoyable and also mature, but not so much so as to take itself too seriously or not have any fun with the inherently energetic slavic folk tunage.

― djpretzel