The Song Everyone Associates With Falling Blocks

A nineteenth-century Russian folk tune about a pedlar, and how it became the most recognisable video game music ever written.

The melody nearly everyone hums when they think of falling blocks is Korobeiniki — a Russian folk song dating to the nineteenth century, based on a poem by Nikolay Nekrasov.

What it is actually about

A pedlar and a young woman negotiating, in a field, over goods and rather more than goods. It is flirtatious and quite charming, and it has nothing whatever to do with puzzles.

The tune's characteristic feature is its accelerando: traditionally it starts moderately and speeds up as it goes, which turned out to be extraordinarily convenient for a game that also speeds up.

Why it was chosen

Two practical reasons and one aesthetic.

It was in the public domain, so no licensing, which for an early handheld release mattered a great deal.

It suited the hardware. Its melodic structure works on a small number of simple channels, so it survives being played by a handheld's sound chip intact.

It was fitting. The game came from Moscow, and a Russian folk tune signalled that.

Why it stuck

The accelerating structure maps perfectly onto rising tension, so the music tells you the same thing the falling speed does. And it is genuinely memorable: a strong minor-key melody in a compact form.

A great deal of game music of that era was written to fill space. This was borrowed, and it happened to fit better than most commissioned work does.

What TETERI does instead

TETERI does not use it. Its soundtrack is generated at runtime: a four-bar progression in A minor with drums, bass, an arpeggio and a lead, whose tempo and arrangement climb with your level.

That is partly for the same reason the original chose a folk tune — no licensing — and partly because a sequencer can do something a recording cannot, which is respond to how you are doing. The idea of music that accelerates with the game is directly inherited, though. That part was too good not to borrow.

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