Music Video Games

This book is a tremendous compilation, focusing on the interactive side of music through video games and providing fascinating insights for both gamer and musician. * Popular Music *
Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play is a fascinating and timely collection, the first devoted to exploring the complexity and variety of music-based games from the 1980s to the present. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in better understanding how music and gameplay interact. * William Gibbons, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Texas Christian University, USA *
Musical video games offer game players a unique glimpse into musicianship, inspire musical creativity, memory, dexterity and, for some players, spark a lifelong passion for sound. This important anthology brings together a diverse collection of essays on all aspects of music games, providing one of the first broad explorations of the genre, and serving as an important introduction to theoretical ideas and scholarship on music games. * Karen Collins, Canada Research Chair in Interactive Audio, the Games Institute, University of Waterloo, Canada *
This is a joyous collection of essays exploring the complex and multifaceted musicality of video games. From arcades in Amarillo Texas to school classrooms in Scotland, and from Michael Jackson to cartoon animated singing monsters, the book traces the intersections of video games and music, with a particular focus on ‘music games’. Like the games they investigate, the essays are both entertaining and rewarding. The chapters in this volume help us to make sense not only of the games themselves, but they tell us just as much about the wider musical cultures and practices in which the games sit. Accessible for the musician and non-musician, gamer and non-gamer, this represents an exciting development in video game music studies. * Tim Summers, Teaching Fellow, Royal Holloway University of London, UK and Co-Founder of the Ludomusicology Research Group UK *
From a deep history of Simon to a theory of playable musical personae in Michael Jackson games, this lively volume brims with interdisciplinary insight into the nature of interfaces, instruments, and interactive audio, illuminating the powerful affinities of musicking and gaming. * Kiri Miller, Associate Professor of Music, Brown University, USA *