Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music

Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music is out now! Published by Equinox in July 2016 as part of their Genre, Music and Sound series, the chapters largely originated from our inaugural conference in Oxford.

The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues.

This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music. In the course of developing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing game music it explicitly considers other critical issues including the distinction between game play and music play, how notions of diegesis are complicated by video game interactivity, the importance of cinema aesthetics in game music, the technicalities of game music production and the relationships between game music and art music traditions.

This collection is accessible, yet theoretically substantial and complex. It draws upon a diverse array of perspectives and presents new research which will have a significant impact upon the way that game music is studied. The volume represents a major development in game musicology and will be indispensable for both academic researchers and students of game music.

Ludomusicology-Equinox2016Cover

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
    Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, Mark Sweeney
  2. Analyzing Video Game Music: Sources, Methods and a Case Study
    Tim Summers
  3. Analyzing Game Musical Immersion: The ALI Model
    Isabella van Elferen, Kingston University, London
  4. Modularity in Video Game Music
    Elizabeth Medina-Gray, Independent Scholar
  5. Suture and Peritexts: Music Beyond Gameplay and Diegesis
    Michiel Kamp
  6. “It’s a-me, Mario!” – Playing With Video Game Music
    Melanie Fritsch, Independent Scholar
  7. Game and Play in Music Video Games
    Anahid Kassabian, Independent Scholar, and Freya Jarman, University of Liverpool
  8. ‘Listening’ Through Digital Interaction in Björk’s Biophilia
    Samantha Blickhan, PhD Candidate
  9. Palimpsest, Pragmatism and the Aesthetics of Genre Transformation: Composing the Hybrid Score to Electronic Arts’s Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed
    Stephen Baysted, University of Chichester
  10. Isaac’s Silence Purposive Aesthetics in Dead Space
    Mark Sweeney, University of Oxford
  11. Remixed Metaphors: Manipulating Classical Music and Its Meanings in Video Games
    William Gibbons, Texas Christian University

Thank you to all of our fantastic chapter authors for your hard work in bringing this volume together.

Reviews

Justine Brasseur-Masse (2016) “Kamp, Michiel, Tim Summers et Mark Sweeney (éd.), Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music”, Intersections, 36:2 117-123, DOI: 10.7202/1051604ar

Claussen, J. (2017). Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play. Edited by Michael Austin . New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. 328 pp. ISBN 978-1-5013-0853-6 – Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music. Edited by Michiel Kamp , Tim Summers and Mark Sweeney . Sheffield: Equinox, 2016. 231 pp. ISBN 978-1-78179-198-1. Popular Music, 36(3), 450-453. doi: 10.1017/S0261143017000423

Sam Cleeve (2017) “REVIEW | Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music”, IASPM Journal 7:1 119-122, DOI: 10.5429/2079-3871(2017)v7i1.11en

Jesse Guessford (2017) “Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music”, Music Reference Services Quarterly, 20:3-4, 240-241, DOI: 10.1080/10588167.2017.1377544

Hillegonda C Rietveld (2017) “Double Review”, GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies 6, https://www.gamejournal.it/tim-summers-mark-sweeney-eds-ludomusicology-approaches-to-video-game-music-micheal-austin-music-video-games-performance-politics-and-play/.

Jacob Smith (2018) “I Can See Tomorrow in Your Ludomusicology”, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143:2, 483-488, DOI: 10.1080/02690403.2018.1507126

Supplementary Materials

Coming Soon!

Technical Details

hb ISBN 9781781791974
£60 / $100
pb ISBN 9781781791981
£19.99 / $29.95
Pub date: July 2016
Extent: 240pp 15 Figures
Format: 234 x 156mm (9.21 x 6.14 inches)
Readership: scholars and students
Subjects: Popular Music
Series: Genre, Music and Sound

Receive 25% off quoting the code Ludo when ordering from the Equinox book page. To find out more about the book and to order visit:

https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/ludomusicology/

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