Guardians Of The Galaxy 3’s Score Used ‘Instruments’ From A Hardware Store

It started, John Murphy told The Flickering Myth, with getting UFO-shaped tongue drums from a man named Boris. From there, he tested them through a fuzz pedal, a process that he has used numerous times as a guitarist by trade. From there, he realized the sound he was getting was pretty incredible, and became one of the foundations of the score.

But that wasn’t enough for the Orgoscope sequence of the film, in which the Guardians infiltrate an enemy space station that is made up of living matter, a true mix of metallic and organic. While Murphy could have given the space station some obvious choices, with metal-sounding drums, he opted instead to use fuzz pedals again, only not with the tongue drum inputs. His producer, Tyler Barton, had the idea of going to a hardware store and picking up random pieces, hoping that maybe something would be able to help with the Orgoscope music.

“I think the best percussion sound in the whole movie was a metal immersion heater tray,” Murphy said, talking about how, once you hit it with metal and record it, you get an “incredible” sound. He also picked up a marvin, which he compared to a medieval torture instrument, just for the score.

James Gunn thinks that “Vol. 3” is the best of the series, and he might be right. The movie represents the artistic heights that Marvel movies can reach when storytellers are given freedom, and John Murphy’s brilliant, wild score is just one part of that.