Understanding Video Game Music

Author: Tim Summers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108107761
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Understanding Video Game Music develops a musicology of video game music by providing methods and concepts for understanding music in this medium. From the practicalities of investigating the video game as a musical source to the critical perspectives on game music - using examples including Final Fantasy VII, Monkey Island 2, SSX Tricky and Silent Hill - these explorations not only illuminate aspects of game music, but also provide conceptual ideas valuable for future analysis. Music is not a redundant echo of other textual levels of the game, but central to the experience of interacting with video games. As the author likes to describe it, this book is about music for racing a rally car, music for evading zombies, music for dancing, music for solving puzzles, music for saving the Earth from aliens, music for managing a city, music for being a hero; in short, it is about music for playing.

The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music

Author: Melanie Fritsch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108473024
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
A wide-ranging survey of video game music creation, practice, perception and analysis - clear, authoritative and up-to-date.

A Composer's Guide to Game Music

Author: Winifred Phillips
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262534495
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
A comprehensive, practical guide to composing video game music, from acquiring the necessary skills to finding work in the field. Music in video games is often a sophisticated, complex composition that serves to engage the player, set the pace of play, and aid interactivity. Composers of video game music must master an array of specialized skills not taught in the conservatory, including the creation of linear loops, music chunks for horizontal resequencing, and compositional fragments for use within a generative framework. In A Composer's Guide to Game Music, Winifred Phillips—herself an award-winning composer of video game music—provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, the most important qualification for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. Phillips offers detailed coverage of essential topics, including musicianship and composition experience; immersion; musical themes; music and game genres; workflow; working with a development team; linear music; interactive music, both rendered and generative; audio technology, from mixers and preamps to software; and running a business. A Composer's Guide to Game Music offers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music within the constraints of a new medium.

Understanding Video Game Music

Author: Tim Summers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107116872
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Music is a central component of video games. This book provides methods and concepts for understanding how game music works.

Ludomusicology

Author: Michiel Kamp
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781791974
Category : Video game music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music.

Understanding Video Games

Author: Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135868794
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
From Pong to PlayStation 3 and beyond, Understanding Video Games is the first general introduction to the exciting new field of video game studies. This textbook traces the history of video games, introduces the major theories used to analyze games such as ludology and narratology, reviews the economics of the game industry, examines the aesthetics of game design, surveys the broad range of game genres, explores player culture, and addresses the major debates surrounding the medium, from educational benefits to the effects of violence. Throughout the book, the authors ask readers to consider larger questions about the medium: what defines a video game? who plays games? why do we play games? how do games affect the player? Extensively illustrated, Understanding Video Games is an indispensable and comprehensive resource for those interested in the ways video games are reshaping entertainment and society. A Companion Website (www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415977210) features student resources including discussion questions for each chapter, a glossary of key terms, a video game timeline, and links to other video game studies resources for further study.

Understanding Game Scoring

Author: Mack Enns
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000473643
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
Understanding Game Scoring explores the unique collaboration between gameplay and composition that defines musical scoring for video games. Using an array of case studies reaching back into the canon of classic video games, this book illuminates the musical flexibility, user interactivity and sound programming that make game scoring so different from traditional modes of composition. Mack Enns explores the collaboration between game scorers and players to produce the final score for a game, through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic scores for Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986). This book is recommended reading for students and researchers interested in the composition and production of video game scores, as well as those interested in ludo-musicology.

Authenticity in the Music of Video Games

Author: Stephanie Lind
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793627134
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
From historical games to hyperrealism to retro gaming, Authenticity in the Music of Video Games explores, the shifting understanding of authenticity among players. What do gamers believe authenticity to be? How are their expectations structured by the soundtrack? And how do their actions impact the overall interaction of sound with narrative? Ranging from harmonic analysis to more multimedia approaches, the book links musical analysis to the practical experience of gamers.

Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music

Author: Michiel Kamp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197651224
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music offers a phenomenological approach to music in video games. Drawing on past phenomenological approaches to music as well as studies of music listening in a variety of disciplines such as aesthetics and ecological psychology, author Michiel Kamp explains four main ways of hearing the same piece of music--through background, aesthetic, ludic, and semiotic hearing.

The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound

Author: William Gibbons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197556167
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 977

Book Description
Bringing together dozens of leading scholars from across the world to address topics from pinball to the latest in virtual reality, The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound is the most comprehensive and multifaceted single-volume source in the rapidly expanding field of game audio research.