Fulcrum
| Year | 2009 |
| Time | ~1:47 |
| Size | 1.75 MB |
One of the most frustrating aspects of video game music is its repetitive nature. Players must typically spend an extended amount of time in one area of the game before moving on, and each area has traditionally contained a single track that loops continuously. Listening to the same music over and over becomes irritating, especially if the player fails at the task necessary to continue and is further delayed in unlocking a new level and its music.
This piece for two pianos, called Fulcrum, is a small-scale example of a possible solution to this issue. It is divided into sixteen segments, each of which is linked to a frame in an Adobe Flash animation. A simple ActionScript 2.0 program determines which segment would follow which based on a system of guided randomness.
This is a chart demonstrating the architecture of the piece. At each point that a fork occurs in the path, the code randomly chooses one of the two segments to play. It will loop infinitely until the user chooses to stop.
Tags: duet, electronic, flash, mixed media, mobile form, piano