Sounds that Do Stuff

I've always been interested in the use of music as a sort of force, like something that is used as a physical thing as much as a soundtrack. It's something that has been done before. If you've ever played any of the later Zelda games, you know what I'm talking about. The music transcends being some external influence in the story and becomes a factor that can change things within the story. And that leaves a lot open, because you can create a whole science behind how the whole "magic of sound" works. Since there are no rules around it, you can make music do pretty much anything. If you need to make rain, play a tune:

And you could open this whole idea up a bit, and say, "well musicals in general do the same thing." And they do, I mean there are just intervals of time where everyone falls under some goofy spell and can only interact by singing.

Another big moment that pushed me into this direction was watching the 1984 film, "Dune". There is a major sort of science that is used in the story, where the Atreides family finds that thoughts can take shape as certain sounds. Later on, this science becomes the turning point of the big war. A whole system of technology and weaponry is built to use this:

Eventually, Paul pretty much becomes the dovahkin (no doubt skyrim took some influence from this) and can change the world around him simply by yelling out cool sounding words.

Paul Muad'Dib being awesome


So these are just a few things that have poked at using sound in new ways. There are countless other examples of sound as something a bit more tangible. I mean, you could even reach all the way back to the idea of musical leitmotifs in things like "Peter and the Wolf", where all the characters are represented by specific instruments.

In the next day or two, I'll post up some of my own work that has been influenced by these ideas, along with some of the other ideas I had about character design and settings and stuff. Till then, hopefully this was kind of interesting at least.