Playing the unplayable Death March (but not releasing the penguins)

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This isnā€™t actually that Death March, itā€™s Flandreā€™s Theme from the Touhou games.

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Err, the music in the video is unrelated to the image. Like, entirely unrelated. Might as well have been a picture of a cantaloupe and the theme from The A-Team.

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Soooā€¦ Every video claiming to be the death waltz on Youtube is this song. Most acknowledge being from the game.

Whatā€™s the truth of it? Why the connection? And if thereā€™s no connection, whatā€™s the deal with the game?

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The sheet music, she does not look like the things I am hearing boss.

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Definitely not the music portrayed, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Well, except that last note.

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Nevermind, found someone who researched it:

(tl;dr: some person in Japan made a medley based on a bunch of MIDI files, and one was John Stumpā€™s Death Waltz. That remix became popular, and the label stuck)

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Just came back to post this exact video.

As has been pointed out, itā€™s not the Death March. The wonderfully quirky people at the CTMSA performed it, live - WITH penguins! The ā€œmusicā€ starts at the 3:50 mark.

/edited to add: ā€œCrap! Someone beat me to it!ā€. Oh well, hereā€™s another synthetic version.:

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Actually, there was more after that apocalypse chord. There may as well not have been, though.

Not unplayable, perhaps, but unlistenable.

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This is a new, amazing height for the ā€˜people confusing Death Waltz and U.N. Owen Was Herā€™ phenomenon.

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Whatever it is it is really cool. Reminds me a bit of Conlon Nancarrow:

Except he did it with two player pianos in the 1940ā€™s.

There is no wrong way to play this.

Just thought Iā€™d drop off an acapella version of it. There are so many entries about it I canā€™t tell which part of the internet has the provenance right.

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I never really got the appeal of bullet hell games. But hey, at least Touhou has good music.

Iā€™ve never heard a song more deserving of a video by Cyriak.

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I remember a few years ago when I tried searching for a vid of the Death Waltz and the only thing that came up was a rather sad thing of a man melodramatically banging randomly on a piano. Wherever that is, it is now lost in a great sea of vids much like this one.

I will always remember it as the Ronald McDonald Insanity music, as many surely do.

But this one is so much nicer in so many ways.

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Cory, if the notes go up on the staff, they get higher in the music. Listen to the beginning. Do the notes go up on the staff, or down? Do they go up, or down in the music you hear? Does that sound like it matches, or not? Could it be, maybe, that this music is not an attempt to play this joke?

Although I just spent a good twenty minutes on the piano trying to play this. So that was fun. Even if this isnā€™t remotely what you say it is.

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