Explanation & reflection: The goal of this study was to explore the experimental concept. An explanation and personal review is included below ​The intention of this demo was to test the concept of dynamic instrumentation/orchestration in response to the action of the game. I did this by swapping between 3 simultaneous versions of the soundtrack: Balanced - core F Zero ensemble in the spotlight, with accompaniment parts shared by instruments belonging to each character. Mario power - Core F Zero ensemble enhanced and over-taken by mario instruments (samba percussion, accordion, steel pan, glockenspiel, synthezised voice, etc) Donkey Kong power - Core F Zero ensemble enhanced and over-taken by DK related instruments (marimba, flute, funk sax, jungle percussion The rules to switching between tracks were: Kill - When a player eliminates their opponent, the ‘power’ track for that player is heard for 6 seconds, before fading. Dominance - when a player’s opponent has 80% damage or higher (and the player has 50% or less) the player’s power music will play. This lasts at least 6 seconds (to avoid too frequent changes). When both players are above 50% dominance is established by having at least 30 fewer damage% than the opponent. Review: In general, I think this demo succeeded as a proof of initial concept. The transitions are noticeable but subtle enough to not detract from gameplay. The rule set is simple enough to implement, and the result is audibly and musically pleasing. However, using instrumentation to represent a character seems to give a much weaker representation than I had hypothesised. The Donkey Kong and Mario (sunshine) sound worlds - while definitely different from each other - when combined in this fashion are sometimes indistinguishable from each other. I imagine this would become a big problem rolling the concept out across the whole game and its 89 characters… Thoughts for development: To continue exploring this concept, I would try to make the musical representations of each character undeniably clear. Perhaps limiting it to only one instrument per character, to make each character’s sound memorable and quickly identifiable. To go a different direction, perhaps adaptive instrumentation is not the most effective way to musically represent the winning character... I could instead try a truly dynamic composition which pivots at musically quantized moments to include (in the melody or accompaniment) a melodic theme synonymous with the dominating player.