scholarly journals Analyzing Modular Smoothness in Video Game Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Medina-Gray
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
Modular System ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Detailed Method ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
The Many ◽  
Treat All

This article provides a detailed method for analyzing smoothness in the seams between musical modules in video games. Video game music is comprised of distinct modules that are triggered during gameplay to yield the real-time soundtracks that accompany players’ diverse experiences with a given game. Smoothness—a quality in which two convergent musical modules fit well together—as well as the opposite quality, disjunction, are integral products of modularity, and each quality can significantly contribute to a game. This article first highlights some modular music structures that are common in video games, and outlines the importance of smoothness and disjunction in video game music. Drawing from sources in the music theory, music perception, and video game music literature (including both scholarship and practical composition guides), this article then introduces a method for analyzing smoothness at modular seams through a particular focus on the musical aspects of meter, timbre, pitch, volume, and abruptness. The method allows for a comprehensive examination of smoothness in both sequential and simultaneous situations, and it includes a probabilistic approach so that an analyst can treat all of the many possible seams that might arise from a single modular system. Select analytical examples from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Portal 2 provide a sampling of the various interpretive gains available through this method.

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

Libraries and Video Games

2015 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Collection Development ◽  
The Many

Being able to integrate video games into a library is more easily said than done. There are many different ways to do it and many different behind-the-scenes activities that need to be thought of before embarking on a video game project. Collection development is of primary concern before any programs can be thought of because without a collection related to video games (or the games themselves) there can be no programs. There must also be good planning for how the video games are used because of the many varieties of games as well as the different ways in which they can be used and the different environments they can be used in. Plan well so that the video games can effectively help the library and audience that needs them. This chapter further explores libraries and video games.

scholarly journals How Color Properties Can Be Used to Elicit Emotions in Video Games

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Geslin ◽  
Laurent Jégou ◽  
Danny Beaudoin
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Circumplex Model ◽  
Strong Correlations ◽  
Color Spaces ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Game Environment ◽  
The Many ◽  
Development Methods

Classifying the many types of video games is difficult, as their genres and supports are different, but they all have in common that they seek the commitment of the player through exciting emotions and challenges. Since the income of the video game industry exceeds that of the film industry, the field of inducting emotions through video games and virtual environments is attracting more attention. Our theory, widely supported by substantial literature, is that the chromatic stimuli intensity, brightness, and saturation of a video game environment produce an emotional effect on players. We have observed a correlation between the RGB additives color spaces, HSV, HSL, and HSI components of video game images, presented ton=85participants, and the emotional statements expressed in terms of arousal and valence, recovered in a subjective semantic questionnaire. Our results show a significant correlation between luminance, saturation, lightness, and the emotions of joy, sadness, fear, and serenity experienced by participants viewing 24 video game images. We also show strong correlations between the colorimetric diversity, saliency volume, and stimuli conspicuity and the emotions expressed by the players. These results allow us to propose video game environment development methods in the form of a circumplex model. It is aimed at game designers for developing emotional color scripting.

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.

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.

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.

What Is “Game Music”?

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Noah Kellman
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Music History ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Musical Characteristics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Aesthetic Characteristics ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Musical Forms

Game music is an eclectic term, encompassing the many different musical genres that are used in video game scores. This chapter introduces readers to important game music history while seeking to define what musical characteristics are unique to game music. As composers found creative ways to work within the scope of this limited technology, unique challenges led to the conception of a new body of musical work that would later be referred to by the gaming world as “video game music,” or just “game music” for short. This chapter explores the history and development of game music as a genre. It focuses on analyzing how the limitations of previous gaming systems influenced composers to make specific musical choices, while also seeking to define what aesthetic characteristics are unique to video game music and how interactivity has led to new musical forms.

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.

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