I’ve previously written about how Rene Derks and I did a live musical improvisation to someone playing Journey and Ori And The Blind Forest. This was a pretty unique experiment already, but recently we kicked it up a notch with an even bolder performance: instead of knowing what was coming, we let players choose whatever game they wanted to play and we had to improvise live music to that. Since this was an experiment not all of it worked well, but I think it was a success: a bunch of games turned out pretty awesome and we learned a lot. Today I’d like to explain how we approached each game and why some of them worked, and others turned out not to be a great fit for this format. I’ve included a couple of short videos from the performance, check ‘m out!
The basic idea for these performances is that we mix live improvisation with gameplay. Instead of playing the original game’s soundtrack we come up with new music on the spot and try to respond to whatever is happening in the game. The result is a truly adaptive soundtrack, by the magic of spontaneous improvisation. As always with improvisation, some of it sounds bad, a lot sounds okay, and some moments are pure magic that can only be experienced there and then.
