Full Description
The music and sounds of video games have become an inescapable part of our world. Not only do these sonic elements profoundly shape the experiences of billions of players every day, but also the soundscapes of games have stretched out from our living rooms to encompass spaces as diverse as pinball arcades, concert halls, museums, and classrooms across the globe. Research on game music and sound is equally diverse-a vibrant, innovative, and multifaceted field that incorporates approaches from media studies, musicology, sound studies, music theory, psychology, and more.
Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars and practitioners from around the globe, The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound features nearly 50 chapters on topics ranging from the earliest pinball machines to the latest in virtual reality technology. The resulting volume provides both a comprehensive introduction to the study of game audio and an indispensable resource for experts.
Contents
Contributor Affiliations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
SECTION 1: DISCIPLINARY QUESTIONS
1. Video Game Musicology in Practice: Fifteen Awkward Questions
Tim Summers
2. Ode to Joysticks: Canonic Fantasies and the "Beethoven of Video Game Music"
William Gibbons
3. Crossing the Ludo-Cinematic Continuum: Music-Theoretical Approaches to Video Game Music
Sean Atkinson
4. Ludomusical Narrativity: Sound and Music as Structures of Play
Julianne Grasso
5. A Creative System in Action: Bringing Video Game Music and Sound into Being
Phillip McIntyre and J.T. Velikovsky
SECTION 2: HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY
6. A History of Early U.S. Pinball Sound, 1871-1939
Neil Lerner
7. Selling Play through Music and Sound: Audiovisual Promotion for Early Consoles, Home Computers, and Games to 1983
James Deaville
8. Hard Limitations and Soft Possibilities: A "Systematic" History of Early Video Game Sound Technology
Kevin R. Burke
9. Visualizing Music with Video Game Technologies
Jonathan Weinel
10. Onna no jidai: Women and Video Game Sound in 1980s Japan
Brooke McCorkle Okazaki
11. Surviving the Game: Published Soundtracks as Archives
Fanny Rebillard
12. Symbolic Music and Algorithmic Composing: Computer Archaeological Perspectives on BASIC Game Sounds
Stefan Höltgen
SECTION 3: PERCEPTION AND PSYCHOLOGY
13. Ambiguity and Vagueness in Video Game Sound
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
14. A Functional Approach to the Psychology of Video Game Sound
Tom A. Garner
15. How Video Game Music Plays Us: Musical Topics, Modularity, and Compulsion Loops
William R. Ayers
16. Auditory Hallucinations and Altered States of Consciousness in Video Games
Jonathan Weinel
SECTION 4: INTERACTING ACROSS MEDIA
17. Music and Sound in Early Film-to-Game Adaptations
William O'Hara
18. Sound, Extended Reality, and the Cinematic-Interactive Dichotomy
Tom A. Garner
19. Game Noir: The Functions of Jazz in the Detective Adventure Video Game
Jacob Collins
20. Synergy and Syncs: Record Labels, Video Games, and Unending Consumption
David Arditi
21. Playground Disco: Playing with Clubs and Aspects of Club Culture in Digital Games
Melanie Fritsch
SECTION 5: IDENTITY
22. Beyond Nerdcore: Hip-Hop, Race, and the Business of Gamer-Rap
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo
23. Press Start to (Fore)Play: Sex and Sexuality in Game Music
Michael L. Austin
24. Indigenous-Designed Pixels, Circuits, and Game Music and Sound
Kate Galloway
25. Listening to the Gerudo and the Desert in The Legend of Zelda Series
Hyeonjin Park
26. Ludomusical Autobiography and the Indie Composer-Developer
William Gibbons
SECTION 6: PRE-EXISTING MUSIC
27. Hearing the Renaissance in Video Games
Karen M. Cook
28. Claude Debussy's Piano Music and the Evocation of Atmosphere and Humor in Video Games
Gurminder Bhogal
29. Pop Shove-It, Pop Music: Tunes, Tricks, and Transmediality in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
James Millea
30. Playing with American Folk Music, Supernatural Encounters, and Perspectives on Death
Peter Smucker
31. Taking a Pop at Ludonarratology: Narrative Perspectives on Popular Music in Video Games
Andra Ivanescu
SECTION 7: MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
32. Video Games Alive: Ludic Liveness and (Re)playful Listenings in Video Game Music Concerts
Stefan Greenfield-Casas
33. Video Games Live and the Gamification of the Orchestral Concert Experience
Elizabeth Hunt
34. Unreal Performances: Playing in Games/Playing with Games
James Cook
35. Of Guitar Heroes and Rocksmiths: Guitars, Games, and Affordance Theory
Marc Duby
36. Musical Repetition and Predictive Gameplay in Rhythm Games
Stephanie Lind
37. How Musical are Game Players? Exploring Musical Situations in Video Games
Costantino Oliva
SECTION 8: ACOUSTIC ECOLOGIES
38. Analyzing Navigable Narratives through Multiple Lenses
Elizabeth Hambleton
39. Ambient Ecologies: Environmental Music in Video Games
Michiel Kamp
40. Semiotics and the Negotiation of Musical Communication in Video Game Music: An Imprecise and Beautiful Art
Iain Hart
41. Abstract Representations of Voices in Video Games
Elizabeth Medina-Gray
42. Simulating Sounds of Spectators: On the Structure, Function, and Realism of Spectator Sounds in a Sports Video Game
Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær
SECTION 9: VIRTUALITY/REALITY
43. Auditory Reality and Virtuality: Is Space the Final Audio Frontier for Games?
KC Collins and Bill Kapralos
44. Video Game Sound Design and the Fetish of Realism
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
45. Music and Motion in First-Person Virtual Reality Games
Kate Mancey
46. Intrinsically Unpleasant Sounds and Player Experience
Denis Zlobin
47. The Importance of Sound to the Formation of Presence
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Index
