Super Mario Guitar

Who doesn’t remember the glorious days of the 8-bit console of Nintendo? Specially this game which was the most representative and is also the most sold worldwide to date. Here at the bottom of this page you can download sheet music and tabs for guitar of my own arrangement of its music.

Generations of gamers enjoyed and suffered getting through its stages. I must have listened to the upbeat main theme millions of times.

Koji Kondo, the composer of Nintendo responsible for the Super Mario Bros. music had only two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion at his disposal. That is a serious limitation for a composer. Koji Kondo, however, somehow was able to pull out beautiful tunes that people still hear and enjoy today.

Many renditions where made of his compositions, including one with full orchestra. How many composers have that honor?!

The original Super Mario Bros. had four themes played during gameplay. If you are a 80’s or even 90’s gamer you probably know them by heart (even people who never played the game know them!). The themes are:

• Overworld - The famous main theme; a Latin jazz score that matches the bright, cheery and fast-paced nature of the majority of the game's levels.

• Underworld - A simple, minimalist jazz theme used in the underground levels.

• Underwater - A slower, waltz theme used in the underwater levels.

• Fortress - A fast-paced theme used in the castle levels.

And of course, although not considered an individual piece, the victory song played when a stage is finished, we all love that one!

There are many renditions for guitar, both electrical and classical on the Internet. Here you can download my own arrangement for classical guitar in PDF format with both standard notation and tab, and a Midi file to facilitate learning.

Apart from being very enjoyable pieces to learn on the guitar, it is also clever to add pieces like these to your repertoire, your audience will recognize them instantly and love them. As Thierry Gomez put it: "From the moment I incorporated it in my live shows, I get asked the Super Mario theme every night with thunderous applause."

Videos

This is my favorite version. Is by above mentioned Thierry Gomez on classical guitar. It is a beautiful arrangements by himself of all the themes from the game.

There are also other versions. For example this impressive version by Zack Kim on two electric guitars!

Download

• Overworld: This the most well-known theme. Play this song and your audiences will love you.

  PDF sheet music

  Midi

Return from Super Mario Guitar to Guitar Tabs