On May 23rd, the world awoke to a new Google doodle daring us not waste our time pushing keys and turning knobs to make funky new sounds.  This doodle was of course a recreation of a Moog Synthesizer developed by Dr. Robert Moog who would have turned 78 had he been alive.

Thanks to one highly talented keyboardist, we were also treated to two blasts from the past, a flawless rendition of the Dragon Quest intro music as played on a Moog on Google’s top page.

Most inexperienced users like myself probably tried clicking a few keys making tinny noise far removed from music then gave up after a minute and went on with our day.  But pianist/keyboardist for the band Mint who goes by the name Akai Ruy-sei (Red Meteor) said “Nay! I shall conquer thee!”

And so he embarked on his quest to master the mighty Moog Synth and play the opening music to Dragon Question bringing joy and peace to the world via YouTube.

But his quest was fraught with peril.  Strangely, judging by the video, his keyboard layout only allowed him to play white keys using the keyboard number row (1 to 0). This meant that he had to play the white keys with his left hand on the keyboard and hit the black keys with his right hand using the mouse.

The intrepid Red Meteor pushed forward however putting building experience bit by bit, like killing blue slimes on the grassy plains.  Finally he composed his masterpiece using two tracks that you can watch simultaneously in the video.

The result is fantastic and sure to give any Dragon Quest fan goosebumps as it sounds pitch perfect to the original Nintendo version’s opening music.  This guy deserves all the credit he’s getting for recreating this music not only on a machine that predates MIDI synthesizers by a decade but on an emulator of that machine located on Google’s top page.

And for you youngin’s out there with your MTV and Final Fantasy 20,000 who might think this is easy, feel free to drop by Google’s doodle archive and try it out yourself.

Source: Youtube Akai Ryu-sei, Playable Google Moog

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