Ludomusicology

Columbia, the primary site of Bioshock Infinite (2013), features a startling array of diegetic music. It is to the sound of congregants singing that Booker DeWitt, the game’s protagonist, is “baptized” into the floating city, and as the game progresses, he and Elizabeth, the woman he intends to rescue, encounter a significant amount of both “live” and “recorded” music in the city. At first, the musical hints that all is not well in Columbia are subtle, but they soon become obvious: hearing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” on a 1912 beach in a period-appropriate style is surprising and unmistakable. Just as this and other anachronistic works hint at the temporal inconsistencies of Columbia, Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 9, no. 2, highlights the moral conflict undergirding the supposedly utopian society. The capitalist baron Fink plays the nocturne, a piece which features rubato as an essential stylistic trait, as work music throughout Finkton—the unnatural rendition of Chopin’s music, accompanied by the image of workers scrubbing decks in perfect unison parallels the way Columbia’s social and economic system dehumanizes the African-American populace it keeps in near-slavery. To the knowledgeable gamer, the intent to show the inherent immorality of such a system is aurally unmistakable.

This paper presents the ludomusicological research associated with the development of a digital game: Otogarden (Oliva, 2021). If “making an actual game [...] is useful to materialize the design question [or] aesthetic issues [...] that are being addressed” (Khaled, Lessard, & Barr, 2018), Otogarden is intended as a playable support to research on musical participation with digital games. Specifically, this paper understands digital games as a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking (Borgo, 2007; 2013), potentially allowing access to forms of musical improvisation to a variety of users and players.
While digital games afford a remarkable variety of possible musicking (Oliva, 2017; 2019a; 2019b, 2019c), examples related to musical improvisation remain few and underexplored, with most games favoring score-based interactions, as made popular by titles such Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) or Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). In similar examples, music is presented as “a task to be achieved, a disciplinary activity in which the player should “play” again and again until the game (and thereby music) is mastered” (Kassabian & Jarman, 2016). Crucially, in these examples “music” is understood as pre-recorded compositions performed with the aid of simplified notation (Biamonte, 2011). Notable exceptions, such as the experimental music game Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005), have been criticized by reviewers specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities (Pilchmair, 2007), indicating an underlying set of expected qualities which constitute a barrier to the emergence of improvisatory musical practices in digital games.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of “music game”, by focusing on musical improvisation, "an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression” (Bailey, 1993, p. 83, 84). Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short phrases through the use of a “loop” mechanic, musicalizing potentially extra-musical (Kahn, 1999, p. 103) acoustic juxtapositions. While retaining the “intimate and reactive musical bond” (Grimshaw, Tan, & Lipscomb, 2013) typical of the music game genre, Otogarden does not feature canonic game characteristics, such as a winning condition, compatibly with recent understandings of game definitions (Juul, 2019, p. 224). The conclusions show that it is possible to deliberately stimulate the players’ perspective (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) on the game towards an improvisatory musical direction, rendering manifest the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement (Oliva, 2019c).

In this essay, I question and problematize the undertheorized notion of what it means to “beat” video games, as well as address the lack of ludomusicological attention paid to the post-Sakaguchi produced games in the Final Fantasy series. This paper seeks to rectify these disparities in scholarship, arguing that the music in Final Fantasy X (the first of the post-Sakaguchi Final Fantasy games) prophetically commented on and critiqued the very system it was to become a part of. The first two sections of this paper examine the significance of the diegetic “Hymn of the Fayth,” not only at the narrative level of Final Fantasy X, but also the cultural level of the “real world” as well. The third section returns to the ludophilosophical quandary of what it means to “beat” video games, framing the question in terms of the (covertly) antitheistic architecture of most video games. Drawing on sources from a wide range of disciplines (musicology, East Asian studies, religious studies, ludology, and philosophy), I place music at the center of this dialogue and argue that it is an integral component in the way we (re)experience video games—even if we’ve already beaten them.

This anthology includes contributions from scholars from the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom on music video games.

Tentative chapters include:
Introduction – “Taking Note of Music Games”
Michael Austin, Ph.D. (Howard University)

“Simon: The Precursor to Modern Music Video Games”
William M. Knoblauch, Ph.D. (Finlandia University)

“Mario Paint Composer and Musical (Re)Play on YouTube"
Dana M. Plank-Blasko (Case Western Reserve University)

“Thematic Associations and Musical Gameplay in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998)”
Stephanie Lind, Ph.D. (Queen’s University)

“Beat it! Playing the ‘King of Pop’ in Video Games”
Melanie Fritsch (University of Bayreuth)

“Sample, Cycle, Sync: The Music Sequencer and Its Influence on Music Video Games”
Michael Austin, Ph.D. (Howard University)

“Consumerism Hero: The ‘selling out’ of home console band rhythm video games”
Mario A. Dozal (University of New Mexico)

“Uncovering Implicit Music Theories in Rocksmith”
Daniel D. O’Meara (Princeton University)

“Virtual Jam: A critical analysis of virtual music game environments”
David Arditi, Ph.D. (University of Texas at Arlington)

“Invite to Connect: The Emerging Societal Impact of Collaborative Music Video Games”
Evan Combs (Connections Education & The Juilliard School)

“Music-Games and their Potential for Musical and Performative Creativity”
Gianna Cassidy, Ph.D.  (Glasgow Caledonian University) and
David Roesner, Ph.D. (Ludwig Maximilians Universität)

“FourPlay: Using a Collaborative Game to Teach Music Appreciation”
Monica Evans, Ph.D.; Kathryn Evans; and Robert Xavier Rodriguez, D.M.A. (University of Texas at Dallas)

“Music Composition and/as level design in Rhythm Heaven”
Peter Schultz (Whitman College/University of Chicago)

“Pitching the Rhythm: Music Games for the iPad”
Nathan Fleshner, Ph.D. (Stephen F. Austin State University)

This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen, 2016), this paper expands on the concept, including forms of musical participation such as live performances and oral traditions. The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg, 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami & Barbosa, 2015). However, the musical participation extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The conclusions show that game musical literacy is constructed not only on media literacy, but also on various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small, 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical culture associated with digital games is therefore expressed through a large variety of musical practices.

This is the *final* draft of the article for the anthology: Dangerous to Go Alone: Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda.

Reception of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (TP) hails it as a masterpiece, while also critiquing it as a mere rehashing of Ocarina of Time (OoT). Such divisiveness complicates TP’s nostalgic value, arguably its greatest strength. TP’s mode of storytelling summons Zelda’s past more than any other in the franchise, particularly its music. TP’s soundtrack can tap into our gaming history of Zelda writ large, as well as the developing mythology of Zelda, the game world itself. The music of TP thus primes it for investigation under J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythopoeic framework.

Time and nostalgia figure importantly into Tolkien work, namely “On Fairy Stories” and The Lord of the Rings, upon which scholars Verlyn Flieger and Paul Kocher have expounded. Ludo-scholarship also has treated both topics in such volumes as Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games by Whalen and Taylor and Music in Video Games: Studying Play by Donnely, Gibbons, and Lerner. Zelda provides a nexus for these two discussions on time and nostalgia, for it shares commonalities with Middle-earth. TP particularly stands out because reception has associated it with nostalgia since 2006, thus providing fertile ground for examination against a Tolkienesque backdrop.

TP’s music exemplifies Tolkien’s mythopoeia further by forging two-fold connection to the past. First, TP features leitmotifs from five previous Zelda titles, more than any other in the franchise. Therefore, its musical borrowings can tap into our gaming past, which correlates with Tolkien’s ‘Primary’ or “real” world. For example, the main Zelda leitmotif plays during TP’s opening cut scene, potentially summoning our experience of each Zelda game featuring that non-diegetic music. Second, TP also features diegetic music, which characters in the game hear, respond to, and perform. Given the chronology outlined in Hyrule Historia, the appearance of melodies like “Zelda’s Lullaby” included in multiple titles and played by characters in the game can suggest a distant past or shared memory of those in Hyrule. The music thus can connote nostalgia within the Zelda universe itself, an example of Tolkien’s Faërie or ‘Secondary World.’ I conclude by showing these parallels at work in a comparison between Tolkien’s “Lothlórien” chapters in Lord of the Rings and the Sacred Grove/Temple of Time sequence in TP.

TP perhaps uniquely codifies the myth of Zelda through music. Consequently, we can perceive music’s associative power of the past and of nostalgia most clearly through the lens of Tolkienian mythopoeia.

Videogames are interactive media that have developed into various genres since their creation in the second half of the 20th century. These genres differ both in the way their stories are told, and in the ways their in which narratives are developed. Role Playing Games (RPGs) are known for their extended hours of gameplay and their intricate stories or narratives. One narrative element that stands out is the cut‐scene, in which the interactive nature of games is inhibited, allowing for a guided, non‐interactive narrative to occur. Cut‐scenes are used to aid the narrative as they describe events that would otherwise be difficult to explain in interactive mode. Music plays an important role in the game narrative: it interprets and enhances the events displayed on the screen and also creates a setting which supports the illusion of being in another world.
Videogames, especially RPGs, require extensive amounts of gameplay time for the story to develop. During this time, music is reused and themes and motifs reappear in the game. As the narrative evolves, music too will evolve alongside it, adding to and transforming the connotations of the music in the context of the game.
This dissertation will focus on Final Fantasy X as a case study. Final Fantasy X is a well‐known RPG that contains many narrative elements that are now considered standard. The evolution cut‐scene music in this game will be investigated in order to demonstrate first, how music interacts and, secondly, how changes with the game narrative and how segments of the same musical theme can carry several connotations within the game narrative according to the context.

La empresa Naughty Dog desarrolló un videojuego llamado The Last Of Us para PlayStation®, lanzado en el año 2013. Desde su ingreso al mercado no ha dejado de estar presente en la industria como un proyecto paradigmático debido a su temática e innovación de sus mecánicas.
The Last Of Us (el cual a partir de este momento se representará por sus siglas TLOU) es un juego de género Survival Horror y Action-Adventure. El personaje principal (Joel) es controlado por el jugador a través de la perspectiva de tercera persona y esto permite trasladar cierto grado de empatía al usuario al mismo tiempo que vuelve la experiencia más inmersiva. El rasgo principal de la mecánica es la supervivencia, y a lo largo del juego, el personaje debe encontrar formas de reducir enemigos, esconderse e incluso improvisar armas. Dentro de las habilidades especiales de Joel se encuentra el modo de escucha (Listen Mode) que cambia el mundo a colores monocromáticos, figuras minimalistas y delinea el contorno de los terrenos, enemigos y objetos que se encuentran más allá de los obstáculos visibles. Esta forma de juego, permite al usuario anticipar medidas y tácticas para progresar a lo largo de la historia. El principal sentido que interviene es la escucha y la utilidad dentro de la mecánica se vuelve similar a la técnica sonar.
El enfoque del presente escrito se haya en los sonidos de TLOU y específicamente en aquellos que cumplen una función metonímica dentro del videojuego, llamados Sound Effect. La búsqueda en la composición de los efectos de sonido y el diseño general del audio, a cargo de Phillips Kovats, intentan registrar un cambio en la forma de ser percibidos. Anteriormente, el audio en los videojuegos era sometido a diversos procesos de compresión y limitación para obtener mayor presencia durante la jugada.
La primera expresión audiovisual en experimentar nuevas técnicas, contrarias a dichas compresiones, fue el cine. Comenzaron a trabajar en sonidos por capas y acercar la dinámica del audio al silencio y la sutileza. Pero la industria de los videojuegos no se hizo esperar, juegos como Silent Hill, God of War y Gears of War, entre otros, comenzaron a involucrarse directamente con esta nueva técnica y junto a ello comienza la primera etapa inmersiva en la historia de los videojuegos.
Para entender la función de los sonidos referenciales en TLOU, se toma la teoría de aprendizaje por conocimiento directo y conocimiento por descripción de Bertrand Russell. La cual ayuda a analizar los efectos logrados, desde una mirada epistemológica. A través de los sentidos, el jugador puede adquirir nueva información ligada al funcionamiento de las mecánicas del juego y le permite construir estrategias o incluso ahorrar tiempo en probar diversas prácticas para alcanzar un objetivo. Por otro lado, aquellos elementos que relaciona el jugador, mediante la escucha, son familiarizados durante el juego y le permite inferir el conocimiento sobre su mundo a través de las cosas que pueden ser reconocidas por él, pertenecientes al conocimiento directo.

El siglo XXI trajo consigo una auténtica revolución tecnológica y creativa en la industria de los videojuegos, que impulsó el nuevo formato de entretenimiento audiovisual hasta nuevos límites, permitiéndole competir con el cine y la televisión. Dentro del formato interactivo e interdisciplinar, la música siguió una evolución paralela hasta adquirir gran relevancia, despertando el interés académico, y resultando en el surgimiento de una nueva disciplina especializada: la ludomusicología. El objetivo del presente trabajo es mostrar, a través de una revisión bibliográfica y un análisis ludomusical, cómo la música se ha convertido en un elemento narrativo esencial en el formato de los videojuegos, estableciéndose como uno de los canales creativos más destacados para dicho arte en la actualidad. Para ello se analizará el caso concreto de la banda sonora musical del videojuego The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, como paradigma dentro del formato, indagando en la multiplicidad de sus tendencias compositivas, códigos narrativos, y funcionalidades, así como la relación de dichos elementos con su inserción en las situaciones de gameplay y escenas de cinemática del videojuego; desentrañando su vinculación con la literatura musical cultivada en títulos previos de la saga.


21st Century brought a great technological and creative revolution to the videogame industry, propelling the new audiovisual entertainment format to new limits, allowing it to compete against cinema and television. Within the interactive and interdisciplinary format, music followed a matching evolution to the point of reaching great relevance, conveying academic interest, resulting in the birth of a new study field: Ludomusicology. The goal of the present dissertation is to show, through a bibliographic revision and a ludomusical analysis, how music became an essential narrative element in the videogame format, setting itself as one of the most prominent creative channels for music at the present time. In order to achieve said goal, this work will analyze the original soundtrack of the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, paradigmatic within the format, examining its multiple compositional tendencies, narrative codes, and functions, as well as the relationship between them and its insertion in gameplay situations and cinematic cutscenes within the game; uncovering its connection to the musical literacy cultivated through the saga’s previous titles.

The focus of this article is to acquaint the reader with the rich history of video game music as well as the literature currently available for further research. For that purpose, the approach is to give a preferably broad overview and just highlight particular developments, which influenced video game music strongly or made remarkable progress possible.

While many strategy games (both real-time- and turn-based-) use a fictionalized Earth history as a backdrop for their ludic elements, few seek to faithfully represent the progression of music history via the use of pre-existing music. Soren Johnson’s Civilization IV stands alone as it presents a thorough retelling of music history, with representative works from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern Eras, including works by Josquin, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, and American minimalist composer, John Adams. The game’s lead designer and AI programmer, Soren Johnson, personally selected each track included in the underscoring playlists. Drawing heavily upon new interviews with the game designers, this paper explores Soren Johnson’s personal representation of music history, analyzing in particular his use of John Sheppard’s Media Vita, Saint-Säens’s Cello Concerto No.1,  Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and the works of John Adams. I also discuss the implications of Johnson’s personalized version of history and argue that we can identify him with auteur film directors. The paper also addresses the potential for Civilization IV to educate its players in genres they may have been unfamiliar with, helping them contextualize and appreciate previously unfamiliar musics.

Similar to other areas in game studies concepts such as immersion, involvement and interactivity are at the core of many ludomusicological debates. How can music contribute to immersing the player in a game? How can designers create meaningful ways of interaction with a game's music that usefully contribute to the gameplay experience rather than disturbing or even destroying the desired effect of immersion? And which opportunities do games offer to create musical experiences that go beyond what audiences know from other media forms such as movies or TV?
Following a brief overview on the field of Ludomusicology, these questions will be discussed by outlining an approach for analysis that builds on the work of scholars and practitioners from the fields of ludomusicology, game studies and game design. This approach will then be applied within the frame of two short case studies on digital games from different genres that fruitfully make use of the medium’s distinct opportunities to create an immersive experience.

Over the last few decades' videogames have increasingly grown to influence our lives in different fields. They are an important media, a tool for play and interaction, as well as a cultural phenomenon. So far only a few studies regarding music and games have been conducted, but not much when it come to the serious game domain. Research is lacking in the field of mental healthcare, in particular were gamification is being used in therapy and performance level do have a real-life consequence to treatment. The main purpose of this research was to investigate how music and sound may influence player performance while completing two gamified cognitive training tasks, where music is the core game mechanic. Participants played a demo version of the AddictionBeater Gamification, a gamification designed as a training intervention for alcohol addiction problems. All subjects in this study played the same baseline, before playing the different experiment conditions either with sound and rhythm, or without sound following the same rhythm aligned with the selected music. Performance was measured based on accuracy, by comparing their baseline accuracy to their accuracy levels in the experiment trials. Afterwards, this paper describes the societal relevance of this research in regards of creating serious games that can truly fulfill the need of expectations in individuals gaming performance in serious games and how music can benefit such purposes.

In video games, music must often change quickly from one piece to another due to player interaction, such as when moving between different areas. This quick change in music can often sound jarring if the two pieces are very different from each other. Several transition techniques have been used in industry such as the abrupt cut transition, crossfading, horizontal resequencing and vertical reorchestration among others. However, while several claims are made about their effectiveness (or lack thereof), none of these have been experimentally tested.

To investigate how effective each transition technique is, this dissertation empirically evaluates each technique in a study informed by music psychology. This is done based on several features identified as being important for successful transitions. The obtained results led to a novel approach to musical transitions in video games by investigating the use of a multiple viewpoint system, with viewpoints being modelled using Markov models. This algorithm allowed the seamless generation of music that could serve as a transition between two composed pieces of music. While transitions in games normally occur over a zone boundary, the algorithm presented in this dissertation takes place over a transition region, giving the generated music enough time to transition.

This novel approach was evaluated in a bespoke video game environment, where participants navigated through several pairs of different game environments and rated the resulting musical transitions. The results indicate that the generated transitions perform as well as crossfading, a technique commonly used in the industry. Since crossfading is not always appropriate, being able to use generated transitions gives composers another tool in their toolbox. Furthermore, the principled approach taken opens up avenues for further research.

This study seeks to present the motivators behind the consumption of videogame soundtracks outside of the gameplay environment. This dissertation proposes a three-part consumption model that describes these different motivators and the interactions between these imperatives. At the heart of this study is the intention to demonstrate that videogame music has become a very important part of a videogame’s concept, design, and marketing; it not only plays a significant role within the game, it has also transcended the medium and is enjoyed by audiences beyond the game. This media migration generates questions regarding its effects and the motivations why people listen to videogame music outside of the game, and the ramifications of this consumption at the personal, social, and game industry levels. Why are people listening to videogame music, one that is designed for an interactive medium, in a linear medium (such as a CD, an audio file, or a re-interpretation)? In what ways does the game experience and the music create associations that affect the audience at a personal level? How did game music become this consumable object and what is its value for consuming audiences? How does the consumption of OSTs affect future game music composition and what is the role of the audience in this? And what does this mean for the shelf-life and marketability of videogames?

Winner of the 2017 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society, recognizing a musicological book of exceptional merit by a scholar who is past the early stages of his or her career.

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.

“Keys to Play is full of novel ideas, provocative observations, and brilliant aperçus. Whether our interests lie in audiovisual media, aesthetics, performance, improvisation, compositional technique, notation, theory, or historiography, Moseley shows us how much the field at large has to gain from taking play seriously. In a word: stunning.” —ALEXANDER REHDING, Harvard University

“Moseley’s game-changing book puts a new and versatile set of tools at our disposal. Wonderfully allusive and erudite, Keys to Play will open new horizons for music scholars of all kinds.” —ELISABETH LE GUIN, University of California, Los Angeles

"A dazzling and daring book: an intellectual symphony, a virtuosic boss run, a vigorous expedition in media-musical archaeology, and an exquisite love letter to the vitality of interdisciplinary play.” —WILLIAM CHENG, author of Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination

“Keys to Play offers a new approach to central episodes in the narrative of European art music refracted through histories of the keyboard, digital games, and improvisation. It is at once provocative, bracing and, yes, profoundly playful.” —BENJAMIN WALTON, University of Cambridge

Through the multiplicity of the fast, ever-growing digital communication and information sharing during the first years of 2000 to the present date, millions of online users produce, transform, criticize and circulate between them an endless amount of materials and contents. Videogame music itself has its own networked culture with its cybercommunities that discuss, share and create, thus allowing an open space of creativity and artistic activities in a digital and constant flow. One of these activities is music composition and production for this medium, available on music sharing platforms such as Spotify or Soundcloud, on Youtube and specifically in the format of modification files2. This type of content is developed in a voluntary and free way through tools and softwares now available from video game companies and also on the internet with its due functions. While the areas of sociology, new media, game design, among others, already develop research on mods as a digital phenomenon of fan culture and its relationship with industries, concerning aspects of co-creative work and its surrounding cybercommunities, the field of musicology (both in the international and national academic worlds) is marked by the scarce research that contributes to the understanding and formulation of knowledge about musical mods that are created (or, in this case, composed) for videogames on which the creators of mods have bent over. This dissertation focuses on the musical mods present in the Nexus Mods website in two of the video games that are hosted and managed by it: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks 2006) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks 2011). Through research, sources and interviews conducted to the mods composers, I intend to demonstrate the existence of a new model of online musical production and circulation, reflective of participatory culture age in which it is inserted. It will be discussed the whole process of access, composition, availability, sharing and visibility of their compositions, their motivations, and personal discourses about the composition of music for video games. On the other hand, the perspectives on the concept of musical immersion, considered indispensable by composers and players, are particularly relevant: music in this medium and its compositional style is related to the idea of verisimilitude with a certain reality as a primary aspect in the player's involvement in the virtual universe with which he is interacting. The intersections between these components thus construct a new paradigm of musical composition and renegotiation, placing this dimension at a higher level of importance and meaning amid videogames and its cybercommunities.

This article deals with the philosophical idea of worldmaking pursued through techné, meaning the fusion of the technical means of artistic creation, theorizing, and analysis, but specifically occurring in a feedback loop involving introspection and computation (cybernetic phenomenology). The discussion ranges over a wide variety of topics, including (1) the history of music theory from Ancient Greece to the present (including a rebuttal to Daniel Chua’s (2001) account of music history); (2) emergent properties in music arising from self-organization (explored through the Ancient Chinese abstract strategy board game go); (3) the ontology of musical qualities (properties) and categories (including their relation to visual, tactile, and olfactory qualities and categories). 
Various repertoires, artists, and philosophies are referenced. The essay analyzes aspects of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, Carter’s String Quartet No. 5, and Lachenmann’s Kinderspiel.  Connections to the author’s own previous analytical and theoretical work are also discussed in relation to his interactive algorithmic audio-visual works (such as Fluxations and FluxNOISations). The techné of these is discussed in terms of logistics as well as aesthetic influences, including Wagner, Liszt, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Crawford, Babbitt, Carter, Xenakis, Parker, Reich, Ligeti, Truax, Oliveros, Kandinsky, Miro, Pollock, Pollock, Hofmann, Rothko, Louis, Frankenthaler, Moholy-Nagy, Newman, Richter, and Brakhage.  The essay touches on philosophical ideas of Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, Harman, and Bogost, and more fully engages the philosophies of Nelson Goodman and Hannah Arendt in connection with artistic creation as relating to the theorizing and analysis of artistic works.     

Contact the author at jmailman@alumni.uchicago.edu
Download the article through JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7757/persnewmusi.54.1.0005
or http://tinyurl.com/zdvkllr

In this brief essayistic afterword for the anthology "Digitale Spiele
Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven zu Diskursfeldern, Inszenierung und Musik" the origin of the neologism "Ludomusicology" is backtraced. In a second step, some approaches and ideas of this subfield are outlined and links to broader disciplines such as musicology, game studies and performance studies are highlighted.

Abstract
As with films, a thoughtfully composed video game soundtrack has the ability to dramatically enhance and elevate the experience for the audience or player. This article explores the potential issues and difficulties of composing for video game systems by studying the sound-producing hardware and music for two popular systems from one manufacturer. By comparing two of Nintendo’s Super Mario titles, which appeared on both 8-bit and 16-bit systems, through an analysis of the technology, audio, visual (audiovisual), music, and gameplay elements, it is shown that the musical composition was affected by the limitations of processing power. The discussion shows how the composer, Koji Kondo, overcame the issues of limited computing power by using layers of repetition while applying various functions of music for film to enhance player immersion.
Kondo composed theme music that has become engrained in popular culture and is synonymous with one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises (Greening, 2014). By attempting to understand the method or approach behind the composition for earlier systems, it is possible to investigate and discuss the evolution of video game music while acknowledging and contributing to the study of music for games. A musical analysis of the Castle and Underwater themes on each system allows for a direct comparison of the compositional approach, while an audiovisual analysis reveals the presence of existing cinematic tropes and identifies potential influences on the creation of effective musical soundtracks for video games.
Applying audiovisual theory to games will require the use of existing literature from Lissa (1965), Gorbman (1987), Chion (1994) and Tagg (2004), along with the work of Collins (2005; 2007a; 2007b; 2008a; 2008b), which adapts and applies audiovisual analysis to video games.
Key words: Nintendo; Super Mario; Video games; Game sound; Audiovisual; Cinematic tropes; Technology.

The increase of technological capability for household games consoles allows for a larger soundtrack including larger musical forces to be put to videogames as opposed to the MIDI sounds that accompanied earlier games. With the increased quality of sound available to game composers, they are able to use sounds which were recognisable to the game player as different instruments. My research covers the harp’s use in video games, what place it has in the game soundtrack and what it signifies, if anything at all.
The general history of the instrument is a fascinating one and an area which must be covered in order to decipher any meaning it has now. My research looks briefly at the history of the instrument, evaluating the connotations it has had with different cultures through different periods of time; for example the renaissance period saw the connection of the harp with angels and figures of biblical lore. The research focuses on the harp as both an accompaniment and solo instrument in a video game context, and analysing its relationship to the purposes it has had throughout history. After having analysed a number of games, my intention is to discover any links that may be present between the use of the harp in different periods and the modern videogames.

With the growing centrality of female characters in video games on an international level and the expansion of gender studies in this medium, one may notice the lack of academic literature that addresses musicology and gender representations in interactive audiovisual products. This article analyzes the physical and psychological constructions of three main female characters in video games, examining the musical imagery that accompanies them as vehicle of representation of their integration and role in the narratives in which they operate: Quiet from Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain (Konami, 2015), Aveline de Grandpré from Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation (Ubisoft, 2012) and GLaDOS from Portal and Portal 2 (Valve, 2007 and 2011).

The basic tool for analysis is a subject-specific concept of performance that is developed on the basis of interrogating various research traditions (speech act theory, generative grammar, anthropology / ritual research, performance studies, theater science), and the historical genesis of the terms Performativität, Performanz and Performance. Instead of a radical concept of performance, which operates with an emphatic idealization of the one performative level of presentation, this subject-specific concept emphasizes the relationship between the two dimensions of performance: “ausführen” and “aufführen”. This customized concept of performance is used as the initial step for developing an extended vocabulary on games and computer games, rooted in the relevant discourse of Game Studies. On that basis, a game performance theory is developed that allows to analyze gameplaying as a form of performance.

In the next section an introduction to the theorization about "Music as Performance", as conducted by researchers such as Nicholas Cook, Carolyn Abbate, Philip Auslander and Christopher Small, is provided. Building on an understanding of music as a performative and playful process a terminological framework is developed that allows to analyze both games and music as playful performative practices, including questions of embodiment and socio-cultural aspects.

The final section of the thesis applies the theoretical constructs to specific case studies to demonstrate how music in games, music games, and participatory musical practices in computer game culture can be fruitfully analyzed with the terminology developed in this thesis.
Available via: https://www.verlag-koenigshausen-neumann.de/product_info.php/info/p9039_Performing-Bytes--Musikperformances-der-Performing-Bytes--Musikperformances-der-Computerspielkultur---br--Thurnauer-Schriften-zum-Musiktheater--Band-35-.html

I focus on how peritexts (opening cutscenes) within a video game reveal narratives of broader peritexts related to but outside a game, namely its reception history and developing mythology. The installments comprising The Legend of Zelda series present strong cases to investigate. The reception history and mythology of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess clue us into the complex, causal relationship both games have, which comes into sharp focus upon analyzing the music of select peritexts, "The Legendary Hero" of the former and the title screen of the latter.

In fact, analysis of the visual, narrative, and musical content within the opening narrative peritext of WW and the title-screen peritext of TP reveal microcosms of their reception history and contextualization within the Zelda mythology.

The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present.  The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.

On the basis of works devoted to the topic of sound studies and video games, the author
presents ways of processing and using sounds in order to create virtual phonic spaces. He examines
the means by which contemporary game developers influence immersivity, i.e., the process of
immersing the gamer in virtual environments, as well as indicating the mutual influences of audial
and visual spheres. Analysig the video game Grand Theft Auto IV from the perspective of the sound
which accompanies the action, he compares in this respect three areas of the game’s Liberty City with
their equivalents in New York on which the virtual city is modelled. The similarities and differences
between the digital and virtual spaces are identified, and the reasons for them explained. This makes
it possible to show how the use of the tools (explained earlier) employed by the developers of the
game enable them to create a credible sounding virtual metropolis.

My research will attempt to determine how award academies choose their nominations through the analysis of select musical aesthetics. As a trained musician (pianist) and avid gamer, I will bring my two passions together, contributing to the field of ludomusicology (the study of video game music). My research consists of an overview of video game scores spanning a decade (2004 – 2013) with a select sample of three soundtracks per year (a total of thirty soundtracks). The samples will be taken from the BAFTA(British Academy of Film and Television Arts), VGX(formerly known as Spike), and D.I.C.E. awards (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain). Through engaging a music theory macro analysis, I will discuss melodic themes used in each soundtrack, the setting of the score (instrumental or electronic), and whether the soundtrack samples contain the epic musical idiom. At the end of my dissertation my research reveals what kind of music these award academy panels favour. If the award aca...

In this talk, a teaching experiment is introduced that has been conducted by media archaeologist Stefan Höltgen and myself at the Humboldt-University Berlin during the Winter semester 2019/2020, in which we not only combine our diverse perspectives on the phenomenon of chipmusic, but try out a very hands on approach by letting students re-enact chipmusic.
The talk will serve as a basis for a full report to be published after the end of the seminar in mid-February 2020.

Musical apps, interfaces, and installations have opened real-time music composition to non-experts through the use of game-like interactions. Few of these systems harness competitive game elements, reflecting an assumption that the aesthetic experience and mechanical demands of competitive gameplay are incongruous with musical creativity. Limited research or practice has explored this interplay, revealing a gap for new understandings of musical games and interactive composition. My research aims to address this gap through a body of original works – EvoMusic, Chase, and Idea – that explore the potential for competitive human-computer dialogues to support accessible, creatively stimulating composition experiences.

Each work takes a divergent approach to competitive gameplay. In EvoMusic, players cannot win or lose, but contest the inexorable growth of an evolving musical population to curate and defend a desired sonic output. Chase introduces notions of danger and defeat, assigning musical outcomes to the player’s attempts to evade a pursuing hostile agent. Idea then adds elements of progression and victory; players manipulate musical motifs to navigate mazes, defeat enemies, and earn new creative resources. The games were evaluated in two mixed-methods comparative user studies to investigate how these divergent approaches influence the compositional experience.

Players did not reflect the literature’s aesthetic opposition to the synthesis of composing and competing, but noted that sufficiently strong game incentives could overpower musical decision-making. The traditional game structures of Chase and Idea were viewed as more engaging overall, yet only EvoMusic engendered interaction that was at once creatively and competitively stimulating. These findings reveal a more complex interplay between accessible music-making and competitive gameplay than previously assumed, unearthing new challenges and potentials for interactive composition that I explore herein.

This dissertation applies the concept of ‘musicking’, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games. According to Small, “to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practising, by providing material for performance (composing) or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p. 9). If that is the case, in what capacity players of digital games take part in musical performances? This dissertation provides a detailed answer to this question, situating it within the discipline of Game Studies. Digital games are considered for their cybernetic qualities (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) as objects that can be traversed and reconfigured by means of ergodic effort. (Aarseth, 1997). The intersection of ergodic effort and musicking practices manifested in digital games generates a new musicking form : ergodic musicking. Ergodic musicking is identified as a modern form of musicking, capable of deconstructing established musical roles such as composing, improvising, or dancing. Ergodic musicking, however, is not just a mixture of previous forms: it is instead a unique musicking, only available to digital games. Thanks to their cybernetic qualities, digital games have provided music with an unprecedented platform, actualising a new form of musical participation. The subject matter of musicology of digital games is therefore to be understood as the study of musical forms of participation in digital games. Musicking is debated as a new paradigm for musicological enquire of digital games, challenging critical perspectives that have predominantly focused on the study of musical contents. Ostensibly musical digital games such as ‘Guitar Hero’ (Harmonix/RedOctane, 2005) or ‘Taiko no Tatsujin’ (Namco, 2001) are analysed for their musicking potential. These examples are then contrasted with musical games that do not remediate known musical situations, like ‘Thumper’ (Drool, 2016) or ‘BIT.TRIP RUNNER’ (Gaijin Games, 2010). This dissertation includes a detailed case study of the digital games designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai, understood as a pioneer of musicking. Ergodic musicking is presented as a modality also available in digital games that feature sparse and occasional musical content, detailing an ‘experimental’ modality drawn from theories of indeterminate works. Finally, ergodic musicking is situated within the larger frame of technological musicking defined by Borgo as transmusicking (2007 ; 2013), realising the futuristic possibilities of digital and networked technologies.

As long as video games have been studied academically, the representation of gender in video games has been a particularly important topic of inquiry. However, research on the representation of gender in video games has also been almost exclusively ocularcentric, focusing solely on visual depictions of gender within games and most often ignoring the aural domain. Taking various games from the fantasy genre as case studies, this chapter investigates the ways in which gender—and masculinity in particular—is represented in and through video game music. I argue that compositional conventions, especially orchestration or instrumentation, are used to represent gender in a game’s score. I also discuss various ways that music confirms or undermines gendered expectations and stereotypes associated with a video game.

Winner of the 2017 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society, recognizing a musicological book of exceptional merit by a scholar who is past the early stages of his or her career.


How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.


“Keys to Play is full of novel ideas, provocative observations, and brilliant aperçus. Whether our interests lie in audiovisual media, aesthetics, performance, improvisation, compositional technique, notation, theory, or historiography, Moseley shows us how much the field at large has to gain from taking play seriously. In a word: stunning.” —ALEXANDER REHDING, Harvard University


“Moseley’s game-changing book puts a new and versatile set of tools at our disposal. Wonderfully allusive and erudite, Keys to Play will open new horizons for music scholars of all kinds.” —ELISABETH LE GUIN, University of California, Los Angeles


"A dazzling and daring book: an intellectual symphony, a virtuosic boss run, a vigorous expedition in media-musical archaeology, and an exquisite love letter to the vitality of interdisciplinary play.” —WILLIAM CHENG, author of Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination


“Keys to Play offers a new approach to central episodes in the narrative of European art music refracted through histories of the keyboard, digital games, and improvisation. It is at once provocative, bracing and, yes, profoundly playful.” —BENJAMIN WALTON, University of Cambridge

Co-edited with Tim Summers (Royal Holloway)
Video game music has been permeating popular culture for over forty years. Now, reaching billions of listeners, game music encompasses a diverse spectrum of musical materials and practices. This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of video game music by a diverse group of scholars and industry professionals. The chapters and summaries consolidate existing knowledge and present tools for readers to engage with the music in new ways. Many popular games are analysed, including Super Mario Galaxy, Bastion, The Last of Us, Kentucky Route Zero and the Katamari, Gran Turismo and Tales series. Topics include chiptunes, compositional processes, localization, history and game music concerts. The book also engages with other disciplines such as psychology, music analysis, business strategy and critical theory, and will prove an equally valuable resource for readers active in the industry, composers or designers, and music students and scholars.

This paper introduces the concept of ergodic musicking, defined as a form of ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) in which the non-trivial act of traversing a cybermedium involves degrees of musicking. At the same time, ergodic musicking is also considered as a form of musicking (Small, 1998), in which participation in a musical performance involves the exertion of ergodic efforts.