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Update: Cello Fortress sounded so bats*** insane that I decided to follow up with its creator, Joost van Dongen, to find out more about the project: notably how he reconciles making his music pleasing to listen to while simultaneously reacting to other players.On Dongen's blog he wrote, "He [the cellist] improvises live music on his cello, and tries to do that in such a way that the game not only does what he wants, but also that the music actually sounds good." This statement seemed strange to me, because it seems like what one should do as a musician to make the music sound pleasurable would be at odds with what they should be doing as a player to defend against unpredictable other people.
To this Dongen replied, "The biggest challenge for the cello player is indeed to play something that both sounds good and controls the game well. It took me a lot of practice to be able to do that! Improvisation can always be taken into all kinds of directions and it is very well possible to make little bridges from one musical type of thing to another. You can hear that between 40 seconds and 55 seconds in the trailer: I quickly go from slow high notes to fast high notes, then to dissonant chords and finally to low notes. I can make that sound pretty natural, I think. There is a lot of musical subtlety one needs to improvise to really make that sound good."
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