Composer Austin Wintory seized an opportunity to write a type of music he'd never written before for his newest project. The game Monaco: What's Yours is Mine is a game where you get to sneak around a lot. You try to avoid guards and thwart security systems as you move from one place to the next.
All the while, the player is accompanied by a sound ripped right out of the pages, if you will, of silent film.
Austin wanted the score to have a sense of spontaneity to it, as if someone is sitting in the room accompanying you on a piano while you play.
There's a sloppiness and urgency to his music, and it does end up feeling like I have my own private piano band playing along.
The sound of the piano is interesting; a friend of Austin's bought an old upright off of Craigslist. Austin liked the sound of it so much, he brought over a mic one day and sampled each note so he could sequence it into his computer.
But throughout the score, he tinkers with the piano such that by the end of the game, it sounds entirely different.
After he finished the score for Monaco: What's Yours is Mine, Austin came up with an experiment of sorts.
Since his score was mostly piano, he decided to ask other musicians to listen to the Monaco soundtrack and do a cover of a piece.
Artists including Tina Guo, Chipzel, William Kage, Malukah and the Videri String Quartet contributed to the soundtrack, available here.
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