An Introduction to Video Game Music
With a history going back decades, video game music has accompanied and even defined players’ favorite experiences with games. The genre has situated itself at the intersections of film, electronic, and minimalist music with tracks that loop back on themselves, demand the instrumentation of a symphony orchestra or just a handful of audio channels, and can adapt to the actions of the player as they play.
Many early video games had extremely limited sound capabilities, with no signs of true soundtracks in sight. But even as early as 1972’s Pong from Atari, a single tone can be heard at different octaves and timbres when either player scores, the ball hits the wall, or hits one of the paddles on either side of the screen. This makes Pong an early example of not just a video game soundtrack, but an aleatoric one at that! Since then, video game music has flourished over the decades to branch out into many styles and genres, evolving from computer chip-based music to CD audio, and eventually live recordings and adaptive sound. Video game music plays a crucial role in a sizable industry, with Statista.com estimating the market size of the US gaming industry at 85 billion dollars in 2021 and still growing. Opportunities exist for the performance, study, and composition of video game music, with more and more popping up with each new release.
General Books on Video Games
One Up by
What explains the massive worldwide success of video games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, and Pokémon Go? Game companies and their popularity are poorly understood and often ignored from the standpoint of traditional business strategy. Yet this industry generates billions in revenue by thinking creatively about digital distribution, free-to-play content, and phenomena like e-sports and live streaming. What lessons can we draw from its major successes and failures about the future of entertainment? One Up offers a pioneering empirical analysis of innovation and strategy in the video game industry to explain how it has evolved from a fringe activity to become a mainstream form of entertainment. Joost van Dreunen, a widely recognized industry expert with over twenty years of experience, analyzes how game makers, publishers, and platform holders have tackled strategic challenges to make the video game industry what it is today. Using more than three decades of rigorously compiled industry data, he demonstrates that video game companies flourish when they bring the same level of creativity to business strategy that they bring to game design. Filled with case studies of companies such as Activision Blizzard, Apple, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nexon, Sony, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, and Valve, this book forces us to rethink common misconceptions around the emergence of digital and mobile gaming. One Up is required reading for investors, creatives, managers, and anyone looking to learn about the major drivers of change and growth in contemporary entertainment.
Call Number: HD9993.E452 D748 2020
Playing the Past by
Playing the Past brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to examine the complementary notions of history and nostalgia as they are expressed through video games and in gaming culture. The scope of these related concepts moves from the personal to the cultural, and essays in this collection address video game nostalgia as both an individual and societal phenomenon, connecting the fond memories many of us have of classic gaming to contemporary representations of historical periods and events in video games. From Ms. Pac-Man and Space Invaders to Call of Duty and JFK: Reloaded, the games many of us have played since childhood inform how we see the world today, and the games we make and play today help us communicate ideas about real world history. By focusing on specific games, historical periods and media ecologies, these essays collectively take an in depth look at the related topics of nostalgia for classic gaming, gaming and histories of other media, and representations of real history in video games.
Call Number: GV1469.3 .P483 2008
Why Video Games are Good for Your Soul by Call Number: GV1469.3 .G443 2005
Connected Gaming by
How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity. Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming--coding, collaboration, and creativity--and the move from "computational thinking" toward "computational participation." Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industry's acceptance, and even promotion, of "modding" and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.
Call Number: LB1028.75 .K34 2016
The Psychology of Video Games by
What impact can video games have on us as players? How does psychology influence video game creation? Why do some games become cultural phenomena? The Psychology of Video Games introduces the curious reader to the relationship between psychology and video games from the perspective of both game makers and players. Assuming no specialist knowledge, this concise, approachable guide is a starter book for anyone intrigued by what makes video games engaging and what is their psychological impact on gamers. It digests the research exploring the benefits gaming can have on players in relation to education and healthcare, considers the concerns over potential negative impacts such as pathological gaming, and concludes with some ethics considerations. With gaming being one of the most popular forms of entertainment today, The Psychology of Video Games shows the importance of understanding the human brain and its mental processes to foster ethical and inclusive video games.
Call Number: E-Book
Gaming and Gender
Gaming Representation: race, gender, and sexuality in video games by
Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged far behind. Gaming Representation examines portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.
Call Number: GV1469.17.S63 G38 2017
Gaming Sexism by
Interviews with female gamers about structural sexism across the gaming landscape When the Nintendo Wii was released in 2006, it ushered forward a new era of casual gaming in which video games appealed to not just the stereotypical hardcore male gamer, but also to a much broader, more diverse audience. However, the GamerGate controversy six years later, and other similar public incidents since, laid bare the internalized misogyny and gender stereotypes in the gaming community. Today, even as women make up nearly half of all gamers, sexist assumptions about the what and how of women's gaming are more actively enforced. In Gaming Sexism, Amanda C. Cote explores the video game industry and its players to explain this contradiction, how it affects female gamers, and what it means in terms of power and gender equality. Across in-depth interviews with women-identified gamers, Cote delves into the conflict between diversification and resistance to understand their impact on gaming, both casual and "core" alike. From video game magazines to male reactions to female opponents, she explores the shifting expectations about who gamers are, perceived changes in gaming spaces, and the experiences of female gamers amidst this gendered turmoil. While Cote reveals extensive, persistent problems in gaming spaces, she also emphasizes the power of this motivated, marginalized audience, and draws on their experiences to explore how structural inequalities in gaming spaces can be overcome. Gaming Sexism is a well-timed investigation of equality, power, and control over the future of technology.
Call Number: GV1469.34.F46 .C672 2020
Children, Gender, Video Games by
Placing gender at the centre of the debate about young children and multimedia, particularly video games, the book develops a relational approach to game play using an account of affect. The book explores central issues of violence and parental regulation and argues that economic relations are not remote from the micro relations of playing.
Call Number: HQ784.V53 W35 2007
Games Girls Play by
Games Girls Play examines the role that video games play in girls' lives, including how games structure girls' leisure time, how playing video games constitutes different performances of femininity, and what influences girls to play or not play video games. Through interviews, focus groups, and qualitative content analyses, this book analyzes girls' involvement with video games. It also examines different contexts in which discourses of girls and video games occur, including girl-oriented video games, activist efforts to change the video game industry, and informal education programs that teach girls video game design.
Call Number: HQ784.V53 C86 2018
Books on Video Game Music and Sound
Sound Play by
Video games open portals into fantastical worlds where imaginative play prevails. The virtual medium seemingly provides us with ample opportunities to behave and act out with relative safety and impunity. Or does it? Sound Play explores the aesthetic, ethical, and sociopolitical stakes of ourengagements with gaming's audio phenomena - from sonic violence to synthesized operas, from democratic music-making to vocal sexual harassment. Author William Cheng shows how the simulated environments of games empower designers, composers, players, and scholars to test and tinker with music, noise,speech, and silence in ways that might not be prudent or possible in the real world.In negotiating utopian and alarmist stereotypes of video games, Sound Play synthesizes insights from across musicology, sociology, anthropology, communications, literary theory, and philosophy. With case studies that span Final Fantasy VI, Silent Hill, Fallout 3, The Lord of the Rings Online, andTeam Fortress 2, this book insists that what we do in there - in the safe, sound spaces of games - can ultimately teach us a great deal about who we are and what we value (musically, culturally, humanly) out here.
Call Number: GV1469.3 .C495 2014
The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music by
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.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .C178 2021
Music in Video Games by
From its earliest days as little more than a series of monophonic outbursts to its current-day scores that can rival major symphonic film scores, video game music has gone through its own particular set of stylistic and functional metamorphoses while both borrowing and recontextualizing the earlier models from which it borrows. With topics ranging from early classics like "Donkey Kong" and "Super Mario Bros." to more recent hits like "Plants vs. Zombies," the eleven essays in "Music in Video Games" draw on the scholarly fields of musicology and music theory, film theory, and game studies, to investigate the history, function, style, and conventions of video game music.
Call Number: E-Book
Music Video Games by
Music Video Games takes a look (and listen) at the popular genre of music games - video games in which music is at the forefront of player interaction and gameplay. With chapters on a wide variety of music games, ranging from well-known console games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band to new, emerging games for smartphones and tablets, scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds discuss the history, development, and cultural impact of music games. Each chapter investigates important themes surrounding the ways in which we play music and play with music in video games. Starting with the precursors to music games - including Simon, the hand-held electronic music game from the 1980s, Michael Austin's collection goes on to discuss issues in musicianship and performance, authenticity and "selling out," and composing, creating, and learning music with video games. Including a glossary and detailed indices, Austin and his team shine a much needed light on the often overlooked subject of music video games.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .M93 2016
Koji Kondo at 60
In August 2021, Japanese composer and sound designer Koji Kondo celebrated his 60th birthday. He has written some of the most iconic pieces of video game music to date. If you’ve heard music from the Super Mario or Legend of Zelda series, you’ve likely heard Kondo’s work. Some of his earliest acclaim was for Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986), and while the last games he was sole composer for were in the late 90’s with Super Mario 64 (1996) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), he has supervised and partially composed for Nintendo games up through Super Mario Maker 2 (2019) and Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020).
As a senior in the Art Planning Department at the Osaka University of Arts, Kondo interviewed for a sound design position at Nintendo in 1984. He told Wired magazine in 2007: “I graduated from university in 1984, and I found my way to Nintendo by looking at the school's job placement board. You're supposed to apply to many different companies, but I saw the Nintendo ad, and had a love of making synthesizers, and loved games, and thought -- that's the place for me. I interviewed with one company, Nintendo, and that's where I've been ever since.” Kondo began working in Nintendo’s Research & Development No. 4 Department (R&D4), which was renamed in 1989 to Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD). Nintendo EAD was the department responsible for creating many of Nintendo’s most popular franchises including Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, and the Wii series of games like Wii Sports (2006).
Kondo’s work with video game music is as much computer science and sound design as music composition, and cannot easily be categorized under one style. Many of his works draw upon jazz, ragtime, and bossa nova traditions as well as waltzes and ambient music.
Kondo (right) with Mario and Zelda creators Takashi Tezuka (2nd from left) and Shigeru Miyamoto (2nd from right) next to Mario (left) in 2015.
By Nico Hofmann - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48946974
Listen to the differences in timbre for the sound design of The Legend of Zelda (1986) between the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version and the Famicom Disk System (FDS) version through Clyde Mandalin’s project Legends of Localization here:
Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack by
Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. (1985) score redefined video game music. With under three minutes of music, Kondo put to rest an era of bleeps and bloops-the sterile products of a lab environment-replacing it with one in which game sounds constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression. Andrew Schartmann takes us through the various external factors (e.g., the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo's marketing tactics) that coalesced into a ripe environment in which Kondo's musical experiments could thrive. He then delves into the music itself, searching for reasons why our hearts still dance to the "primitive" 8-bit tunes of a bygone era. What musical features are responsible for Kondo's distinct "Mario sound"? How do the different themes underscore the vastness of Princess Peach's Mushroom Kingdom? And in what ways do the game's sound effects resonate with our physical experience of the world? These and other questions are explored within, through the lens of Kondo's compositional philosophy-one that would influence an entire generation of video game composers. As Kondo himself stated, "we [at Nintendo] were trying to do something that had never been done before." In this book, Schartmann shows his readers how Kondo and his team not just succeeded, but heralded in a new era of video games.
Call Number: ML410.K735355 S33 2015
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by
Critical analysis of the music of the iconic 1998 Nintendo 64 video game. More than twenty years after its creation, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still held in high critical regard as one of the finest examples of the video game medium. The same is true of the game's music, whose superlative reception continues to be evident, whether in the context of the game or in orchestral concerts and recordings of the game's music. Given music's well-established significance for the video game form, it is no coincidence that music is placed at the forefront of this most lauded and loved of games. In Ocarina of Time, music connects and unifies all aspects of the game, from the narrative conceit to the interactive mechanics, from the characters to the virtual worlds, and even into the activity of legions of fans and gamers, who play, replay, and reconfigure the music in an enduring cultural site that has Ocarina of Time at its center. As video game music studies begins to mature into a coherent field, it is now possible to take the theoretical apparatus and critical approaches that have been developed in antecedent scholarship and put these into practice in the context of an extended concrete game example. The most extensive investigation into the music of a single game yet undertaken, this book serves three important primary purposes: first, it provides a historical-critical account of the music of an important video game text; second, it uses this investigation to explore wider issues in music and media studies (including interactivity, fan cultures, and music and technology); and third, it serves as a model for future in-depth studies of video game music.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .S8554 2021
Super Mario by
Nintendo has continually set the standard for video game innovation, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape. The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the West. Lawsuits, Hollywood, die-hard fans and and stand-offs with Sony and Microsoft are all part of the drama. Even non-gamers will find this a fascinating story of ambition and redemption.
Call Number: HD9993.E454 N5767 2011
I Am Error: the Nintendo family computer/entertainment system platform by
The complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System platform, from code to silicon, focusing on its technical constraints and its expressive affordances. In the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System videogame Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a character famously declared: I AM ERROR. Puzzled players assumed that this cryptic mesage was a programming flaw, but it was actually a clumsy Japanese-English translation of "My Name is Error," a benign programmer's joke. In I AM ERROR Nathan Altice explores the complex material histories of the Nintendo Entertainment System (and its Japanese predecessor, the Family Computer), offering a detailed analysis of its programming and engineering, its expressive affordances, and its cultural significance. Nintendo games were rife with mistranslated texts, but, as Altice explains, Nintendo's translation challenges were not just linguistic but also material, with consequences beyond simple misinterpretation. Emphasizing the technical and material evolution of Nintendo's first cartridge-based platform, Altice describes the development of the Family Computer (or Famicom) and its computational architecture; the "translation" problems faced while adapting the Famicom for the U.S. videogame market as the redesigned Entertainment System; Nintendo's breakthrough console title Super Mario Bros. and its remarkable software innovations; the introduction of Nintendo's short-lived proprietary disk format and the design repercussions on The Legend of Zelda; Nintendo's efforts to extend their console's lifespan through cartridge augmentations; the Famicom's Audio Processing Unit (APU) and its importance for the chiptunes genre; and the emergence of software emulators and the new kinds of play they enabled.
Call Number: E-Book
Writing music for 8-bit games
How did sound designers like Koji Kondo make music for video games before CD-level audio quality was available, like for consoles in the 1980’s? The answer lies in the game console’s Audio Processing Unit (APU), such as the Ricoh 2A03 sound chip that was used in the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The Ricoh 2A03 has five sound channels with the following functions:
1. General Purpose Pulse Channel (Usually the melody, like the beginning of the title screen theme from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (1987))
2. General Purpose Pulse Channel
3. Triangle Wave Channel (Typically used for bass lines, such as in the track “Vampire Killer” from Castlevania (1986))
4. Noise Channel (Pitched static, usually used as percussion. An interesting example is in Quick Man’s Stage music from Mega Man 2 (1988))
5. DPCM Channel (Differential pulse-code modulation) for special samples and sounds. A few examples include a digitized voice saying “Cowabunga” on the title screen of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1992) and a timbali-like percussion in “Overworld Theme 1” from Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988))
Bits and Pieces: A History of Chiptunes by
Bits and Pieces tells the story of chiptune, a style of lo-fi electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through ingenuity and invention, musicians and programmers developed code that enabled the limitedhardware of those early 8-bit machines to perform musical feats that they were never designed to achieve. In time, that combination of hardware and creative code came to define a unique 8-bit sound that imprinted itself on a generation of gamers.For a new generation of musicians, this music has currency through the chipscene, a vibrant musical subculture that repurposes obsolete gaming hardware. It's performative: raw and edgy, loaded with authenticity and driven by a strong DIY ethic. It's more punk than Pac-Man, and yet, it's part of thatsame story of ingenuity and invention; 8-bit hardware is no longer a retired gaming console, but a quirky and characterful musical instrument. Taking these consoles to the stage, musicians fuse 8-bit sounds with other musical styles - drum'n'bass, jungle, techno and house - to create a uniquecontemporary sound.Analyzing musical structures and technological methods used with chiptune, Bits and Pieces traces the simple beeps of the earliest arcade games, through the murky shadows of the digital underground, to global festivals and movie soundtracks.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .M33 2019
Ludomusicology
Ludomusicology is the study of video game music. A combination of ludology (the study of games) and musicology, ludomusicology first appeared in the late 1990’s with articles like Matthew Belinkie’s “Video game music: not just kid’s stuff”, but has blossomed into its own subfield with organizations, conferences, published works, and journals. Just a few of the ways ludomusicology investigates video game music are through its relationships to other mediums like film, composition, technology, interactivity, and the utility of music based video games. Some active organizations and events include the Ludomusicology Society of Australia (LSA), the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM), the Ludomusicology Research Group, the Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games (SSSMG), and the Ludomusicology Study Group of the American Musicological Society.
Just earlier this year in March 2022, the University of North Texas hosted Press Start: A Video Game Music Symposium which featured paper and poster presentations on video game music, a ludomusicology dialogue panel, discussions on working in the video game music industry, and featured as keynote speaker Akash Thakkar, composer for the 2016 game Hyper Light Drifter who has worked on sound design and orchestration for Bungie’s Destiny and Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds among many other games.
Image source: UNT Libraries
Image source: Steam
Understanding Video Game Music by
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.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .S86 2016
Music in the Role-Playing Game by
Music in the Role-Playing Game: Heroes & Harmonies offers the first scholarly approach focusing on music in the broad class of video games known as role-playing games, or RPGs. Known for their narrative sophistication and long playtimes, RPGs have long been celebrated by players for the quality of their cinematic musical scores, which have taken on a life of their own, drawing large audiences to live orchestral performances. The chapters in this volume address the role of music in popular RPGs such as Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft, delving into how music interacts with the gaming environment to shape players' perceptions and engagement. The contributors apply a range of methodologies to the study of music in this genre, exploring topics such as genre conventions around music, differences between music in Japanese and Western role-playing games, cultural representation, nostalgia, and how music can shape deeply personal game experiences. Music in the Role-Playing Game expands the growing field of studies of music in video games, detailing the considerable role that music plays in this modern storytelling medium, and breaking new ground in considering the role of genre. Combining deep analysis with accessible personal accounts of authors' experiences as players, it will be of interest to students and scholars of music, gaming, and media studies.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .M876 2020
The Music of Celeste (2018)
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed by Extremely OK Games. Celeste follows its main character Madeline as she confronts the challenge of climbing the titular Celeste Mountain and the challenge of her own anxiety, characterized by a doppelgänger, known in-game as “Part of Me'' and as Badeline by fans. Celeste has seen both critical and community acclaim, being given a 10/10 rating from Destructoid, IGN, and Nintendo World Report, 10 stars from Nintendo Life, and receiving the award for Best Independent Game at the 2018 Game Awards alongside a nomination for overall Game of the Year. It has been praised both for its accessibility to new or more casual gamers as well as providing challenge and learning curve for more advanced players and speedrunners.
The soundtrack, composed by Lena Raine, is a mixture of piano, electronic, and lo-fi hip hop tracks and has received plenty of its own acclaim. Raine’s work was the 2018 Video Game Score of the Year at the ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards, winner of Best Audio at the 2019 Game Developers Choice Awards, and a nomination for Best Score/Music at the 2018 Game Awards. Beyond Celeste’s main levels are the B-Sides, which are remixed, more difficult versions of their main story counterparts. Each B-Side level is a remix by a different artist - including Ben Prunty (composer for the 2012 game Faster Than Light), lo-fi artist In Love With a Ghost, and Jukio Kallio, one of the composers for the soundtrack of Fall Guys (2020).
Image Source: By Matt Makes Games, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65943756
Read: Lena Raine's interview with Destructoid magazine
Listen: Celeste Original Soundtrack
Listen: Celeste B-Sides Soundtrack
Watch: Game Score Fanfare's video "The Anxiety of Celeste and its Music"
Composing for Hollow Knight (2017)
Image Source: Bandcamp
Hollow Knight is a 2017 Metroidvania* game created by Australian developer Team Cherry. Playing as a nameless character known only as The Knight, you explore the interconnected ruins of the kingdom of Hallownest. Hollow Knight has sold more than 2.8 million copies worldwide and won numerous awards upon its release, including the Australian Screen Sound Guild award for Best Sound in Interactive Media in 2017 and Independent Game of the Year at the 2018 Australian Game Awards. The soundtrack for Hollow Knight was composed by Christopher Larkin, and has received praise for its atmosphere as well as its use of leitmotif to enhance and advance the game’s narrative. While much of the game’s tracks are synthesized, there are live recordings used for viola throughout the soundtrack, played by Timothy Cheel, and a soprano solo in the track “City of Tears” sung by Amelia Jones. A sequel, Hollow Knight Silksong, is currently in the works with Larkin composing the soundtrack again. Two sample songs have been released as of December 2019 that feature a string quartet of players from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra based in Adelaide, Australia.
*Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games that typically feature interconnected worlds with a lock-and-key relationship between in-game obstacles and obtainable items and power-ups. The term Metroidvania is a Portmanteau of two game franchises, Metroid and Castlevania, that cemented the genre’s formula. Example games include Super Metroid (1994), Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997), Cave Story (2004), and Ori and the Blind Forest (2015).
Listen: Hollow Knight Original Soundtrack on Bandcamp
Listen: Hollow Knight Silksong Sample Tracks on Bandcamp
Watch: Interview with Christopher Larkin on the composition of Hollow Knight
Watch: 8-bit Music Theory's video "Leitmotif Use in Hollow Knight (Spoilers for the game!)
Composing Music for Games by
Composing Music for Games is a guidebook for launching and maintaining a successful career as a video game composer. It offers a pragmatic approach to learning, intensified through challenging project assignments and simulations. Author Chance Thomas begins with the foundation of scoring principles applicable to all media, and then progresses serially through core methodologies specific to video game music. This book offers a powerful blend of aesthetic, technique, technology and business, which are all necessary components for a successful career as a video game composer.
Call Number: E-Book
The relationship between video games and classical music
Video game music has impacted the concert hall as well as the stage. Concert seasons featuring video game music or ensembles and artists devoted to it have come up with the rising prevalence of the medium. Below are just a few examples of video game music ensembles:
Game ON!
The Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestra
Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy
A New World: Intimate Music from Final Fantasy
The 8-Bit Big Band
The Boston-based Video Game Orchestra
Video Games in Concert at Royal Albert Hall
The University of Maryland’s Gamer Symphony Orchestra
In 2020, the LA-based Pacific Opera Project put on a video-game themed production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. While keeping with an English production of the Mozart Singspiel, the characters were repurposed to mirror some of Nintendo’s most popular characters, with Prince Tamino as Link, Pamina as Princess Zelda, Papageno and Papagena as Mario and Princess Peach, and Sarastro as Donkey Kong. The music remains Mozartian, but the production is very much that of a video game.
The beginning of Act 2 of Pacific Opera Project's Super Flute, their 2020 Nintendo-themed production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.
Image Source: Opera-Online
Just like how video games have found their way into the concert hall, classical music has found its way creatively into video games, too. The silly antics of developer House House’s Untitled Goose Game took the internet by storm in 2019, with numerous memes about the humorous thievery committed by a single goose. (Or a pair of geese, if you played it in 2 player mode) Untitled Goose Game sold more than 1,000,000 copies in its first year across all systems. The goose’s mayhem is accompanied by snippets of piano, all excerpts from Debussy preludes.
Read this article from The Verge on how the game’s sound designer, Dan Golding, made its dynamic soundtrack.
The Goose (Left) and Claude Debussy (Right)
Image Source: The BBC
Unlimited Replays by
Classical music is everywhere in video games. Works by composers like Bach and Mozart fill the soundtracks of games ranging from arcade classics, to indie titles, to major franchises like BioShock, Civilization, and Fallout. Children can learn about classical works and their histories frominteractive iPad games. World-renowned classical orchestras frequently perform concerts of game music to sold-out audiences. But what do such combinations of art and entertainment reveal about the cultural value we place on these media? Can classical music ever be video game music, and can gamemusic ever be classical? Delving into the shifting and often contradictory cultural definitions that emerge when classical music meets video games, Replay Value offers a new perspective on the possibilities and challenges of trying to distinguish between art and pop culture in contemporarysociety.
Call Number: ML3540.7 .G53 2018
