Pass Me The Controller

It was tricky to pick a concept for this challenge, since I don't usually play videogames. Having to share with two brothers makes most games pretty difficult, too. I realized one thing all of my video game memories have in common - it wasn’t the games that were important, but the people I played them with.

So I put together an idea - it wouldn’t be a score about a game, but a score about a pair of siblings (with inserting and ejecting a disc as a framing device) and the game that binds them together.

There are three “characters” to keep track of throughout the song: The pianist, guitarist, and the game they both play, represented by violin. These instruments were all chosen because of their versatility, though they still keep their own distinct sound as they evolve. The arrangement is built off an experience I had with my brother as we played through Kingdom Hearts (An action game where you play as an anime boy traveling through Disney worlds and beating up bug monsters with a giant key) It’s a one-player game, so we set up a policy where deaths meant controller switches.

So, in the piece, we get two vastly different “characters” passing the violin melody off between them, until they forget the game entirely and devolve into shouting. Once again, this is derived from time playing Kingdom Hearts, specifically in the Tarzan world, where a hard boss had my brother and I screaming unwanted advice at each other. We both had very different styles of playing, which is represented in-score as 6/8 and 3/4 time - equivalent fractions that just can’t line up.

In the end, the siblings sort out their differences, and realize that only through combining their distinct skill sets can they succeed. This is based around a time where my friend and I were playing Kirby, and since we only had one controller, we each took control of half. To represent this, the piano and guitar both play together in 9/8, a happy medium where each of their main themes can comfortably sit.