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Saturday, September 6, 2014

Song of the Week! 6 September 2014


A new month means a new week, and ultimately a new Saturday feature! For this one, just be sure to watch the video with the maximum volume if you want to hear the beats; this is the only HQ video of the song uploaded and it has a really low volume.

 September Earth, Wind & Fire
Version
Allx3 (171)x3 (220) x3 (415)x7 (556)
All (2P)x3 (166/166)x3 (216/216) x3 (395/395)x7 (540/541)
 TDM (JP only)
 125
 none
 earth


Since September has just begun, it makes sense to feature the eponymous song here. Although not very popular in Taiko, this particular tune had a quite heavy influence on the Western countries, because of the band that made the song!

This time around, it's about the African-American act known as Earth, Wind & Fire, a massive band which has well-credited experience in several musical genres with over 60 different members throughout its more than 4 decades of activity! Originally known as 'The Salty Peppers', the band was founded in 1969 featuring Maurice White as the band leader, strong from his past musical experiences with the Ramsey Lewis Band. The current name comes from White's astrological connections, with his zodiac sign being a Sagittarius (Fire) and his two seasonal influences being Air (Wind) and Earth. Since the foundation, EWF was nominated for several awards, and won 4 American Awards, 8 Grammy awards (with 6 for the band as a whole), many different Hall of Fame mentions (like the Rock and Roll HoF and the Vocal Group HoF), their very own star it the Hollywood Walk of Fame and over 90 different albums sold worldwide as of today!

Many of these albums and singles became Gold sellers in a very short span of time, and the single for September was also one of them. Published on November 18th, 1978, this R&B disco track was originally recorded during the production of the 1979 studio album I Am, ultimately resulting into being released both as a single and as an extra track in the first EWF song collection studio album (The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1), released 5 days after the single. Peaking the U.S. Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at the #1 spot, September's single reached the Gold status after a million copies being sold in the U.S. and in later years, after a million digital sales. The highly-positive reception for the song led to many song remixes from other performers, usage in television shows (in form of TV series and song choices for talent shows) and even two performances at the White House for Earth, Wind & Fire, performing for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama!

While September only had one appearance on our favorite drumming game, the situation is radically different for the Western rhythm games! Whether it's Nintendo or Konami, September was featured in a wide variety of games throughout the years: Donkey Konga, Wii Music, GuitarFreaks&DrumMania V4, DanceDanceRevolution UNIVERSE, jukebeat (the international version of Konami's jubeat) and iNiS's Elite Beat Agents. For the latter, the game's cheering agents have to support the meteorologist Sophie, who tries to clear an impending rainstorm so she can fulfill her promise to her son to go on a picnic together.

For the Oni notechart of the song on Taiko, September features a lot of plain, short clusters. It takes advantage of many of the best points in the song to place beats, but could have been a lot harder.