Humoresque of a Little Dog – EarthBound

About game/music

This is “Humoresque of a Little Dog” from RPG “EarthBound”(1994), developed by Ape and HAL Laboratory, published by Nintendo.
This is composed by Hirokazu Tanaka (Youtube/Twitter).
He also composed the music for “Dr. Mario“(1990), and the first opening song for the Japanese version of the anime “Pokémon”, for example.

EarthBound is the story about the main character and his friends who are trying to stop an invasion of the earth by mysterious aliens.

This music is played in the drugstores in each town that the main character Ness visits.
This is an arrangement of a song that was also used in the previous title “Mother” a.k.a “EarthBound Beginnings”(1989).

All of the characters in the game have oddly human-like dialogue, giving the game a unique atmosphere that is hard to find in other games.

This time, I omitted the accompaniment in the first half of the piece so that I could concentrate on muting the notes to get the groove going.

Analyzing

• The bluesiness is probably due to the appearance of the minor third and minor seventh degrees.
• bar 7th: the major 7th appears, but it is probably just an approach note to the next note.
• bar 9th: I can’t understand the major 7th here… I guess it is used as a series of approach notes together with the next minor 3rd.