Music for a Boss Fight: Creating for the Context of Video Game Worlds

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-51
Author(s):  
Emily Hatch
Keyword(s):  
Student Engagement ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Fourth Graders ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Previous Knowledge ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Game World ◽  
Challenging Students

Creating music increases student engagement, and drawing on students’ background knowledge is a respectful way to value students’ lived experiences. By challenging students to create music for the context of a video game world, teachers can build on students’ previous knowledge and bridge that knowledge to the elements of music and creating music for specific contexts and purposes. This column outlines a project for fourth graders to create video game music for specific contexts within the game.

Canon Anxiety?

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-99
Author(s):  
Karen M. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Music History ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Original Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
The People

Canons—of music, video games, or people—can provide a shared pool of resources for scholars, practitioners, and fans; but the formation of canons can also lead to an obscuring or devaluing of materials and people outside of a canon. The four authors in this colloquy interrogate issues of canons relating to video game music and sound from a variety of perspectives. Each author considers an aspect of canonization and argues for a wider purview. In “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History,” William Gibbons examines the ways in which concerts of video game music may create canons and reinforce particular historical narratives. In “On Canons as Music and Muse,” Julianne Grasso views the music originally presented in a video game as itself a type of canon and argues that official and fan arrangements of original game music may provide windows into lived experiences of play. In “The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies,” Hyeonjin Park highlights issues of diversity and representation in the field of video game music and sound studies, with respect to the people and music that make up the subjects of the field, the people who produce scholarship in the field, and the people who engage with game music and sound. In “Canon Anxiety?” Karen Cook pulls together various issues of academic canons to question the scope, focus, and diversity of the growing field in which the Journal of Sound and Music in Games exists.

The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94
Author(s):  
Hyeonjin Park
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Music History ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Original Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
The People

Canons—of music, video games, or people—can provide a shared pool of resources for scholars, practitioners, and fans; but the formation of canons can also lead to an obscuring or devaluing of materials and people outside of a canon. The four authors in this colloquy interrogate issues of canons relating to video game music and sound from a variety of perspectives. Each author considers an aspect of canonization and argues for a wider purview. In “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History,” William Gibbons examines the ways in which concerts of video game music may create canons and reinforce particular historical narratives. In “On Canons as Music and Muse,” Julianne Grasso views the music originally presented in a video game as itself a type of canon and argues that official and fan arrangements of original game music may provide windows into lived experiences of play. In “The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies,” Hyeonjin Park highlights issues of diversity and representation in the field of video game music and sound studies, with respect to the people and music that make up the subjects of the field, the people who produce scholarship in the field, and the people who engage with game music and sound. In “Canon Anxiety?” Karen Cook pulls together various issues of academic canons to question the scope, focus, and diversity of the growing field in which the Journal of Sound and Music in Games exists.

On Canons as Music and Muse

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-86
Author(s):  
Julianne Grasso
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Music History ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Original Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
The People

Canons—of music, video games, or people—can provide a shared pool of resources for scholars, practitioners, and fans; but the formation of canons can also lead to an obscuring or devaluing of materials and people outside of a canon. The four authors in this colloquy interrogate issues of canons relating to video game music and sound from a variety of perspectives. Each author considers an aspect of canonization and argues for a wider purview. In “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History,” William Gibbons examines the ways in which concerts of video game music may create canons and reinforce particular historical narratives. In “On Canons as Music and Muse,” Julianne Grasso views the music originally presented in a video game as itself a type of canon and argues that official and fan arrangements of original game music may provide windows into lived experiences of play. In “The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies,” Hyeonjin Park highlights issues of diversity and representation in the field of video game music and sound studies, with respect to the people and music that make up the subjects of the field, the people who produce scholarship in the field, and the people who engage with game music and sound. In “Canon Anxiety?” Karen Cook pulls together various issues of academic canons to question the scope, focus, and diversity of the growing field in which the Journal of Sound and Music in Games exists.

Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-81
Author(s):  
William Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Music History ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Original Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
The People

Canons—of music, video games, or people—can provide a shared pool of resources for scholars, practitioners, and fans; but the formation of canons can also lead to an obscuring or devaluing of materials and people outside of a canon. The four authors in this colloquy interrogate issues of canons relating to video game music and sound from a variety of perspectives. Each author considers an aspect of canonization and argues for a wider purview. In “Rewritable Memory: Concerts, Canons, and Game Music History,” William Gibbons examines the ways in which concerts of video game music may create canons and reinforce particular historical narratives. In “On Canons as Music and Muse,” Julianne Grasso views the music originally presented in a video game as itself a type of canon and argues that official and fan arrangements of original game music may provide windows into lived experiences of play. In “The Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Imperative Conversations Needed in Game Music and Sound Studies,” Hyeonjin Park highlights issues of diversity and representation in the field of video game music and sound studies, with respect to the people and music that make up the subjects of the field, the people who produce scholarship in the field, and the people who engage with game music and sound. In “Canon Anxiety?” Karen Cook pulls together various issues of academic canons to question the scope, focus, and diversity of the growing field in which the Journal of Sound and Music in Games exists.

Game Sound

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-102
Author(s):  
Karen Collins
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Video Game Music

Karen Collins reflects on her seminal volume Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design, a little over a decade after its publication.

History of Video Game Music

2012 ◽  
pp. 11-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Fritsch
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
History Of

The Game Music Handbook

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Kellman
Keyword(s):  
Programming Languages ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Visual Programming ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Compositional Field ◽  
Game State ◽  
Advanced Readers ◽  
The Relationship

Writing music for games is an art that requires conceptual forethought, specialized technical skill, and a deep understanding of how players interact with games and game audio. The Game Music Handbook embarks on a journey through numerous soundscapes throughout video game history, exploring a series of concepts and techniques that are key to being a successful game music composer. This book organizes key game music scoring concepts into an applicable methodology, describing them with memorable distinctions that leave readers with a clear picture of how to apply them to creating music and sound. Any music composer or musician who wishes to begin a career in game composition can pick up this text and quickly gain a solid understanding of the core techniques for composing video game music, as well as the conceptual differences that separate it from any other compositional field. Some of these topics include designing emotional arcs for nonlinear timelines, the relationship between music and sound design, discussion of the player’s interaction with audio, and more. There is also much to be gained by advanced readers or game audio professionals, who will find detailed discussion of game state and its effect on player interaction, a composer-centric lesson on programming, how to work with version control, information on visual programming languages, emergent audio, music for virtual reality (VR), procedural audio, and other indispensable knowledge about advanced reactive music concepts. The text often explores the effect that music has on a player’s interaction with a game. It discusses the practical application of this interaction through the examination of various techniques employed in games throughout video game history to enhance immersion, emphasize emotion, and create compelling interactive experiences.

Ludomusicology

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Fernández-Cortés
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Video Game Music

In the past two decades, the study of video game music has come into its own and gained acceptance in the academic community. This subdiscipline, now commonly referred as ludomusicology, is still attempting basic questions concerning how it can be researched. This article aims to present the current situation and to reflect about some of the main lines of research related to the music of video games and their culture, a field of ongoing research that has received little attention in Hispanophone academia up to the present time. This article was originally published in Anuario Musical 75 (2020): 181–99 and has been translated for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games. https://doi.org/10.3989/anuariomusical.2020.75.09

Coelacanth History: Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse and the Cybertext of Things

Traversals ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Moulthrop
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Authoring System ◽  
Game World

This chapter reflects on John McDaid’s author traversal of his 1993 hypermedia novel, Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a groundbreaking work not just for its comprehensive exploration of Apple’s HyperCard authoring system, but also because of its principle of “modally appropriate” presentation, involving non-digital artifacts as well. Built around the science-fictional notion of time travel and multiverses, the Funhouse thus invites consideration of his own curious history, in which it figures as a kind of broken time machine. Comparing McDaid’s work with later, similar projects from the video game world, the chapter argues for an understanding of digital culture that moves beyond the harsh binaries of obsolescence. As McDaid says: “We win by losing.”

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document