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Frame from Super Mario World Ending Theme sight-read by Tom Brier Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Super Mario World Ending Theme sight-read by Tom Brier

Keeper1st
Music
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this music video2 months2017–2025 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN commenters recommend it as a showcase of remarkable sight-reading and a favorite when sight-reading or notation comes up.

Pianist Tom Brier sight-reads a piano arrangement of the Super Mario World ending theme, working from a first-draft score by Keeper1st. He takes some liberties with the score as he plays.

“He's a rare gem and a treat to the ears.” (HN, 2023)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 2 citations · Music

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@smoldesu Aug 2023 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Super Mario theme played “blind” by Tom Brier (2008) [video]
An amazing morning to rediscover this amazing artist. I remember watching his videos when I was in school, enjoying his interpolation of popular video game ragtime. The last thing I remember hearing is that he was left comatose after a car crash, with poor outlook for his future. Turns out he's still alive and fairly well, which is a huge relief: [link] If you haven't; treat yourself, and just listen through a mix of his sight-read performances on the internet. He's a rare gem and a treat to the ears. [link] [this video] [link] [link]
Rare-gem pianist sight-reading video game music
@airstrike Sep 2023 Recommends
on HN thread Show HN: Learn piano without sheet music
This reminds me of this excellent video: [this video] Can we get this guy to play the Super Mario World ending theme with the notation from TFA?
Excellent video of sight-reading performance

Citations, criticism and jokes

@bane Oct 2017 Cites it
on HN thread A History of Music Notation
Read more
Piano roll style notation systems can be useful, but they're very hard to use for human playback for basically all the reasons jcranmer states. They're originally intended for automatic playback in mechanical systems, and they work well for that, but for humans they waste lots of space on things that aren't terribly useful. They're about 1 level of sophistication above the "Square Notation" on the chart. They've become very popular on digital systems were lots of the expressiveness of the notes doesn't really need to be encoded and the playback is automated. Another popular and very similar system are tracker interfaces [1] which are at a slightly higher level of sophistication than many of the other examples given, but has a similar purpose to piano rolls in terms of automated playback. However, due to robust "effects" columns, can be very expressive in terms of encoding [2]. In this example, all the various pitch bends, volume, vibrato and so on are specifically encoded next to the notes. But it's also almost entirely impossible to read for human playback. Piano roll systems usually offload this kind of encoding to secondary displays and input systems and this further disassociates lots of the information from the note information. [3] Compare to a full score [4] which has - a couple dozen different voices - phrase encoding (important for performance) - timing (4/4 4 beats per musical unit with quarter notes being the unit of tempo) - rests where the instrument isn't being
Linked in discussion of notation systems
@xibe Mar 2025 Cites it
on HN thread Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)
Read more
Akshually... According to Wikipédia FR, the French equivalent of Sight Reading is "Lecture à vue" [1]. Notes: - I'm French; - I learnt to play the piano as a teenager, and I'm trying to get back to it again as at 45+; - I too discovered the "sight reading" term online, but that was long ago (as I recall, through a video of an adult piano player doing "live sight-reading" versions of songs he didn't know beforehand, such as the Mario theme [2]; ... and YET neither have I ever heard of nor used "Lecture à vue" (that I remember of). I too would use "apprendre le solfège" (EN: learn solfège) when saying that I'm learning to read the notes on sheet music while playing at the same time. [1]: [link] (change language for confirmation) [2]: Possibly this one? [this video]
Possibly the video where he first encountered sight-reading

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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