I bet most people who dream of creating scores for video games don’t even contemplate the idea that they might be working with a Beatle one day.
Luckily for Marty O’Donnell (and everybody else who will play the upcoming shooter, Destiny), that’s exactly what’s happening over at Bungie. The news was announced via McCartney’s twitter: “I’m really excited to be working on writing music with @bungie, the studio that made Halo.”
When McDonnel received the news that McCartney had contacted Bungie, he was just as skeptical as you’d imagine. “‘Hey, we’ve gotten some interest, how would you like to collaborate with Paul McCartney?’ To which Marty replied: ‘Of course, I mean, why not?’ But I said that’s insane, that’s not gonna happen. And he says, ‘No, I think there’s some interest — we’re going to open a channel and dialogue.'”
The last time McCarntey was listed in the credits for a video game, it was for The Beatles: Rock Band, which is a monumentally different element.
[He] didn’t only want to do Paul McCartney kind [of] music and [to] look for a new vehicle for him. He actually wants to get involved in how themes are worked into the game, how melodies and motives can be an emotional touch point for people as they’re playing the game, and we’re really collaborating on this.
Bungie’s been fairly tight-lipped with the work that O’Donnell and McCartney are doing with the score, but O’Donnell is pretty (understandably) excited.
“My first meeting with him, I was giving him some ideas about the cool ways to do interactive [music],” O’Donnell said, “and I compared it to the way he did some of the work he did on Revolver with looping machines, [on the song] ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.'”
“He said ‘I’m gonna get that machine out of my closet and send you some stuff,'” O’Donnell recalled. “And he did. So, some of the stuff that he did in our game … comes from the machine he used on Revolver to make loops. That is just so cool.”
