Music Book Review: Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music edited by Michael Kamp, Tim Summers and Mark Sweeney

Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music
edited by Michael Kamp, Tim Summers and Mark Sweeney (Music 781.54 Lud)

 

Can you hum the theme music to Super Mario Bros from memory? Do you remember the short musical moments in old arcade games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong? These simple melodies have proven to be incredibly memorable, and a wide age range has internalized this music as deeply as the biggest popular music hits in the modern era. As technology has advanced, allowing video games to become even more realistic and immersive, the music for these games has become just as integral to the video game experience, taking on a cinematic depth.

 

Now that music for video games has developed quite a history and methodology, a new branch of musicology has sprung up to study it, which is called ludomusicology. As this discipline is still in its infancy, much debate remains about how best to study, categorize, and otherwise endeavor to understand this musical field. The Polley Music Library has a few of the early books written on this subject, and a great book for starting your journey into video game music is Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music, edited by Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney.

 

The book is a collection of essays that explore the world of video game music from different perspectives. Some chapters address the formal challenges of analyzing the music: there are unique circumstances presented by video game music in context, such as functional repetition within gameplay being potentially different than what might be presented in a recorded soundtrack separate from the game. The kinds of gameplay triggers that can start, stop, or loop musical cues become part of the music. Much of video game musical repertoire is modular by design, and another essay compares these structures to those of the classical avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 60s. The final essay discusses how classical music has been incorporated into video game sound design, while perhaps the most interesting essay looks at pop musician Bjork’s Biophilia album, itself released as a sort of mobile device game, to analyze how it absorbed influences from video game play toward the creation of a new kind of experience.

 

It’s interesting to learn more about video game music, and it’s also important to note that if you’re a musician yourself, this is a growing professional field, and perhaps you could become a video game soundtrack composer yourself! We have a few books in the Polley Music Library to help you get started on that path, so if you read this one and you’re excited for more, we can help!

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Understanding Video Game Music by Tim Summers, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music by Winifred Phillips, or Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music by William Gibbons.]

[ www.ludomusicology.org ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

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