Talk:Paah

Really needed?

Is this page really needed? -- YoshiHater at 14:05, June 24, 2022 (EDT)

It's a recurrent game feature with a perceptible effect on gameplay. Therefore, yes. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 15:25, June 24, 2022 (EDT)

Also, the effect on gameplay is hardcoded into the "bah" itself rather than just being aligned to the occurrence of the "Bah"s, so the gameplay effect isn't a coincidence. ^S _o ^m _e ^t _h ⁱ _n ^g _o ⁿ _e ! 15:32, June 24, 2022 (EDT)

Yep. To wit, when a level's current music changes as a result of obtaining a star, pressing a P Switch, or some other thing happening, and there are consequently no vocals or equivalent sounds in the new music, enemies stop responding to the audio. This is the case in all NSMB games. Perhaps both this bit of information and yours should be incorporated somewhere in the article. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 15:51, June 24, 2022 (EDT)

IDK if that's the case; "bah" noises don't seem to line up very well when you put music mods in New Super Mario Bros. Wii; enemies still "react" with custom soundtrack, and not in sync. It's me, Mario! (Talk / Stalk) 22:41, June 24, 2022 (EDT)

“Bah” in The Super Mario Bros. Movie

When Mario exits the Warp Pipe to Peach’s Castle, the note that plays at the end of the song playing is the “Bah” sound.

You can copy and paste this into the article if you want, while adding to it of course. This was signed by NintendoFan08 14:13, December 10, 2022 (EST)

Rename to Paah?

Since the original sample as it appears on the CD Library is called "Paah", shouldn't we be calling the article that unless Nintendo comes out with a unique name for it? We don't plan to put this to a vote unless it feels contentious enough, but just wanted to know what others think. (Bah would probably remain a redirect, since most people know of it as the "Bah" sample.) ~Camwood777 (talk) 17:08, December 30, 2022 (EST)

If there's no other working source for it, I agree. LinkTheLefty (talk) 17:46, January 4, 2023 (EST)

Yeah, that's what I'm confused about myself. The article is "Bah" which is what everyone knows it as but the article itself calls it "Paah" from the CD library. Plus, if you listen, it sounds like the sound is "Bah" and not "Paah". PrincessPeachFan (talk) 12:53, January 9, 2023 (EST)

Proposal: Either expand scope of article, split article, rename article, or delete

Either expand scope of and/or rename Paah, split Paah, or delete Paah

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 19:50 GMT

I was genuinely surprised when I found that the "bah" had an article. I suppose it makes sense, since enemies do react to the music in certain games, but the article is named "Paah" when it also features two other instruments that are clearly not named Paah. The article name seems to be little more than a holdover from the article's previous fanon name, "Bah", which either way should not be used as an umbrella term for the differently-named "Taaaa" and "Cartoon Bell" samples.

In fact, why is this article restricted to the New Super Mario Bros. games (and these three samples) at all? Why not have a general page for notable situations where the environment and/or enemies react to the music? The article even mentions in a footnote that flowers in Super Mario 3D World also dance to the music, despite that having nothing to do with any of the previously mentioned instruments.

Going by the wiki's naming and article standards (that I'm aware of), I think that leaves a few different options for how this should be handled:

1. Split the article into Paah, Taaaa, and Cartoon Bell.
2. Expand the scope of the article to encompass more games and rename it.
3. Delete the article and move the info relating to how objects react to the music to their respective pages.
4. Leave article as-is, but give it a different name (i.e. not named after one of the samples)

Proposer: DrippingYellow (talk)
Deadline: November 7, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Expand scope of article, rename to conjectural name (or official name if available)

1. DrippingYellow (talk) Per proposal.

Do nothing

1. Koopa con Carne (talk) I don't see a point in doing anything proposed here. "Paah" does work as an umbrella term because it's the most common "interactive" sound throughout the NSMB games, with all the others being derivative and theme-specific. Furthermore, the gameplay function of these samples is identical no matter how they were created, be it through human voice, bells, marimba, or cymbals (the last two of which aren't given consideration in the proposal), which is why I disagree with having them split.
2. Camwoodstock (talk) Splitting this article up just because of different instruments being tied to the mechanic feels... Very sketchy. Stuff changes visually while still being the exact same mechanic and same name all the time--we don't exactly split the Hard Blocks because one is wood and one is concrete. This is just kind of the audio equivalent to that, and the idea of splitting it up feels like it'd just over-complicate things. For renaming, there's not really a better name seeing as there's no official name beside what's on the original sample CD for the most commonly used instrument (the Paah), so unless Nintendo decides to name this for whatever reason, Paah is our best option. And uh, deleting this page and splitting everything about this mechanic across dozens of enemy pages is as cumbersome and over-complicated as you could get, and as far as we can tell, is entirely unprecedented. If it ain't broke, don't fix it--and, y'know, this isn't exactly broken enough to warrant any of these much more convoluted changes.
3. Arend (talk) "Paah" or "Baah" works perfectly fine as an umbrella term for this effect: as Koopa con Carne has stated, it's the most well-known term for it, since "Paah" is so common in the NSMB; that rules out Option 4. Splitting the articles into multiple, smaller articles just because of the different instruments feels incredibly minor and cluttery for what is essentially the same mechanic of enemies doing a little dance when a certain sound plays in the music track; so that rules out Option 1. Out-right deleting it makes no sense, since it's something that does appear in the games and is quite prevalent, so no Option 3, either. Expanding the scope or at least making mention of similar effects under a different header is a good thing to do, but again, the article doesn't need to be renamed; so Option 2 is ruled out as well. Best to just leave the article as-is, then; per all.
4. FanOfYoshi (talk) "Paah" all.
5. Hewer (talk) Per all, I don't really see much of an issue here that needs fixing.

Comments

"In fact, why is this article restricted to the New Super Mario Bros. games (and these three samples) at all? Why not have a general page for notable situations where the environment and/or enemies react to the music?"
FYI, the article was originally going to encompass instances of music that is integral to the world of Mario games, but that would have come with a risk of bloat and padding: a lot of such instances are purely stylish, such as the TV in DK's shack in DKCR and the phonograph in Luigi's Mansion 2. This led me to restrict the article's scope significantly. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 16:16, October 24, 2023 (EDT)

I agree, the article you were originally making would've been kind of pointless and bloated. But my idea of "expansion" was just to add more instances of the phenomena of enemies/the environment reacting to the music in some way, not listing every instance of music being played in-universe. Reacting to the music and playing the music are two different beasts.

On your point about "Paah" being the title because of it being the most common of this type of sound in the NSMB games, the problem for me is that the name of one instrument is being prioritized over the other two samples. All three samples should have approximately the same priority in the list of names for the article, since they were all introduced in the same game (not counting SM64, where Paah is used as an instrument and nothing more).

If we're going off of usage in the game of origin, then we actually ought to be naming the article "Taaaa", since that sample is used in twice as many themes as the "Paah" sample. But still, we're left calling the Cartoon Bells a sub-type of a feature named after a vocal instrument, which is just awkward. And things become even more complicated if the article gets expanded to include non-NSMB games that don't predominantly feature vocal riffs in the soundtrack. Continuing to name the phenomenon after the "bah" sound effect that isn't even featured in the latest games would be really convoluted. DrippingYellow (talk) 00:00, October 25, 2023 (EDT)

Why should the game of origin be prioritised? And why should an expanded scope be taken into consideration when we're voting against expanding the scope in favour of keeping the name as is? These are strawman arguments. Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 06:14, October 25, 2023 (EDT)

@Camwoodstock "For renaming, there's not really a better name seeing as there's no official name beside what's on the original sample CD for the most commonly used instrument (the Paah), so unless Nintendo decides to name this for whatever reason, Paah is our best option."
For what it's worth, the Mario Wiki naming guidelines do not mention licensed sound CDs as potential sources for names. The closest thing they might fall into is #5 (names used during development), and it's impossible to be certain that the developers referred to the vocals in the music as whichever samples they were.

@Arend I didn't include "Expand scope, don't rename article" as an option because adding instances from other games that don't have Paahs and Taaaas in the soundtrack would beg the question as to why it's still named Paah. I'll still add that option to the poll, if that's alright with you all. (I feel like I remember someone being chastised for changing a poll while it was running) DrippingYellow (talk) 00:00, October 25, 2023 (EDT)

Per rule 14, you can change this proposal if it's within six days of its creation. Anyway, why are you calling the validity of the sound effect library names into question when you're proposing to split into more articles also using the names? They're being used because it's the best we have in lieu of a proper official name, as the only alternative is outright conjecture. Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 06:14, October 25, 2023 (EDT)