scholarly journals Use of Progressive Rock in Donkey Kong Country (1994)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Background Music ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Progressive Rock ◽  
Oxford University Press

Whereas most of Nintendo’s music from the 1990s used basic looping structure and simple chiptune-reminiscent sounds, Donkey Kong Country (1994), composed by British composer David Wise rather than by Nintendo’s in-house composition team, featured texturally more complex music, including features characteristic of the 1970s/80s progressive rock style such as short repeated melodies and chord progressions with layering (Collins 44).  For example, in “Fear Factory” (Figure 1), we hear a repeated chord progression of (VI, iv, i) underneath a faster eighth-note melody. Very little harmonic movement occurs and the focus is more on the melodic layers that occur in this top voice. In addition, “Fear Factory” includes unconventional punk, “mechanic/industrial”, and “glitch” noises that emphasize melodic content (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18pEFQb3EM&t=45s). As William Cheng discusses in Sound Play, the use of such unconventional sounds often contribute to a feeling of dissociation and alienation in the player, and create a divide between diegetic (that is, music the characters are aware of) and non-diegetic (that is, “background” music) soundscapes (Cheng 98-9). While this is not a direct element of prog-rock, both industrial and prog-rock music styles feature a strong focus on texture. Collins speculates that this may have been an attempt by Nintendo to capitalize on the ‘edgier’ market of other game producers such as Sega (Collins 46). In this paper, an analysis of form, melodic structure, and instrumentation from Donkey Kong Country’s “Treetop Rock” and “Fear Factory” will demonstrate features atypical of Nintendo style, which normally features catchy tunes, simple instrumentation, and pop-inspired harmonies. Figure 1: e-:  VI               iv                      I                                       VI                    ivBibliography Cheng, William. Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. The Oxford Music/media Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Collins, Karen. Game Sound an Introduction to the History, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

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.

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

The Atari VCS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. McAlpine
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Hardware Design ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Home Video ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Sound Chip ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the Atari VCS, the machine that took video games out of the arcades and into the living room and established Atari as the dominant player in the home video games industry, at least for a time. It examines the context that surrounded the birth of the Atari VCS and how that influenced its hardware design, in turn shaping both the sound and people’s expectations of video game music. The Atari’s sound chip, the Television Interface Adaptor, gave the Atari VCS what might charitably be described as a ‘characterful’ voice. By reviewing the hardware, this chapter explores how and why the Atari VCS sounded just the way it did, and by exploring some of the games that were released for the platform the chapter shows how, while sound games did indeed sound dreadful, with a little musical ingenuity they could work wonderfully as game soundtracks.

scholarly journals Soaring Through the Sky

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Analytical Potential

In this article, I explore the analytical potential of musical topics and tropes in the study of video game music. Following Neumeyer (2015), Almén (2008), and Hatten (1994), I establish a methodology with which to approach musical topics in video game music. By way of a case study, I begin by defining the soaring topic through a historical and cultural examination of flying in cinema and video games. Flying, and more specifically soaring, has been a staple in film from the earliest days of cinema, and the music that accompanies it is also found in video games that prominently feature flying. I then engage the music of flying sequences in two specific video games, Final Fantasy IV (1991) and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011). The resulting analyses demonstrate that this approach helps to unpack the complex narratives found in video games.

Classifying Game Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Video Game Music

This final chapter considers the ways in which video game music has rapidly entered the concert repertoire, and what that change might mean for how listeners, critics, and musicians understand classical music. In the wake of successful long-running concert tours such as Video Games Live (which pairs local orchestras with a traveling multimedia show) and Final Symphony, many financially strapped orchestras have embraced game music as a way of reaching out to millennial audiences, much to the chagrin of some traditionally minded audience members. Moreover, some groups have begun to advocate for reclassifying game music as classical, thus breaking down persistent barriers between high and low arts.

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