ratchet and clank
it’s things like this that inspire me to keep trying to infuse non-traditional instrumentation and performance techniques into the often traditional realm of video game music. look at that thing! listen to that thing! it may be a little gimmicky, but still…the ability to have those kinds of timbres on the receiving end of real-time musicality is awesome. good luck trying to reproduce that with sample libraries and a keyboard controller.
that video sent me scurrying back to this one, another fine example of rethinking composition and instrumentation. and for a video game, no less! the score for inFamous is one of my current favorites, and a go-to reference when i need to remind myself there can be more to MMO music than orchestras, choirs, and big ethnic percussion.
working in this way results in a number of excellent truisms. 1) your music is bound to sound unlike anything else. 2) you’re inspired / forced to write differently, kicking you out of your comfort zone, your habitual compositional crutches left behind. 3) you can perform it…really *play* the stuff and come away with a truly musical delivery. 4) and clearly, that shit’s just fun as hell.
i did a little of that sort of thing on warhammer – having performers do a variety of unnatural things to their beloved instruments in the name of “art” – but never went so far as to *invent* whole new instruments. i just might have to start perusing junkyards and pawnshops…
