Behind the Scenes: A snapshot of some current research

I thought it'd be fun to give a little view of some research that I'm currently working on.

Just about a year ago, when I hosted the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM) at the University of Michigan, I made a presentation about video game piano transcriptions.  I titled the talk "There's no question you'll be popular after performing these in front of your friends: the pedagogy and performance of piano transcriptions of video game music."  The title is a line from the beginning of a Zelda collection and I thought that was perfect.  In this presentation, I discuss the variety of piano material and how the game audio is adapted to work well in a linear format for live performances.  In doing this presentation, I also became the first person to perform on a traditional instrument live at NACVGM, though others before me had made music on game systems.

As I say at the end of the talk, I was planning to have a studio of pianists to have lessons and study video game piano music with me in the coming year.  That's this academic year, and I'm in the midst of that research.  Although it's a lot of extra work to have five piano students and a studio class on top of my normal teaching schedule, I've learned a lot and am hoping in upcoming years to publish about my experience, my students' experience, and about the repertoire.  My hope is that if more teachers of piano knew about this material, they would incorporate it into their teaching.  One outcome that's already clear to me is that this sort of material will attract students who would not otherwise be interested in studying piano.

The year is going so well.  I have a variety of students to help explore the repertoire from a beginner who had never had piano lessons before (though he could read music as a violinist) to a student who could easily have been a piano major if he'd desired it to a doctoral student who helps me with researching the pedagogy of these collections and other aspects like how to program a piano recital of all video game music.  My studio had our first concert at the University of Michigan Museum of Art a few weeks ago as a midway project and Peter Smith took some great pictures from the event, including this one of the studio just after we finished.

As far as I know, this is the first collegiate studio of pianists working on video game music.  Pretty cool!  Although only one of them, the DMA student, is planning to go into the profession, I'm delighted to have inspired the others to revisit their piano playing and hope they'll stay with it through life.

There are some other upcoming events that are exciting too.  Video Game Pianist, Dr. Martin Leung, will be coming in about 10 days to give lessons to my students, and speak to the piano majors at U-M as well as other students about his career and how the internet has changed the modern musician's career.  He's also playing a concert and I'll be joining him for a few duets he's arranged-- they're hard!

This concert is free and open to the public if you're in the Michigan area.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2375425089412635/

https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/events/event/?id=12185

We have an end of semester recital planned as well, April 13th.  So it's a busy few months.  Meanwhile, my students are keeping journals about their practice and work and have formal interviews that I'll be able to study through as I'm working on publications I hope will come out of this year.

Since I started this project, I learned of another pianist who is doing research in this area, from Tarleton State University, Dr. Leslie Spotz.  She gave a recital after a sabbatical researching video game piano transcriptions the day after my studio recital at the UMMA.  So cool to realize you're not alone in interests and what you're researching!

That said, I bet there are more folks out there in a similar case.  Do you use video game music in your studio teaching?  I'd love to hear about it if so, and especially if you're a pianist.  What works well?  What doesn't?  How long have you done it?  I welcome any comments or chance to connect about this.

Behind the scenes: overdue update

Ok, so my New Year's resolution of blogging more regularly isn't exactly going well.  Clearly.  But, it's just the midpoint of the year, so there's still time to improve it.  (Like many, I could say the same of my weight loss goals, too, though I do love my lifting!)  I've been wanting to write about so many things here but the idea of getting started has been tough to overcome.  Plus, the fact that I have around 100 saved draft posts that I've never published.  Not exactly writer's block, but maybe writer's paralysis?  When I started this blog, it was a living document of my quest to learn all I could about game audio and become an expert in the field, beyond just my lifetime of playing games and knowing the material that way.  It was a way for me to keep track of what I was learning and access it anywhere, anytime-- before the "cloud" got so popular.

And then everything got real: instead of just writing whatever I felt and thought, I started to meet people whose work I'd written about.  The blog started getting a ton of page views and attention from folks both in my academic life and in the game audio world.  It became a part of my professional portfolio.  And that started to change everything.  I can still remember a conversation I had with my partner, Vince, about the blog a few years ago.  Should I really say what I thought about a book, an article, a conference, or a game sound, especially if it wasn't glowing?  Or should I just put on a smiley face about things since I was likely to encounter a lot of these folks in my career in person and wanted to foster relationships.  Luckily, Vince encouraged me to write my true thoughts and be real because that kind of work would make the writing more interesting for others and also keep it engaging for me, too.  But then, there are burned bridges.

Professionally there's become much more to juggle.  I'm writing grants, letters, petitions, to improve game audio research and equipment in my academic community.  I've Skyped and lectured at institutions talking about using game audio as a teaching tool.  I'm having meetings with people who have, or would like to, work in the field of game audio, be they scholars, sound designers, composers, or programmers.  (In fact, I'm headed to a happy hour now for one of these.)  I have former students working in all the major tech companies, some even in the field of game audio.  I was asked to contribute to an academic journal for the first time as well, something that left me unsure of how to balance writing here with writing other places.  I also started to meet people who love game audio and who had read different portions of my writing here.  Someone didn't like my review about his work.  Someone else was angry that I never reviewed her material but wrote about other people's.  Argh.  All of that made it seem even more difficult to come here, clear my mind, find myself, and continue to make time that I wanted to put in to this.  And, frankly, all the ways that game audio is now a part of my life take some of my early energy that I poured into here because it had no where else to go.

And yet, I know more than ever; I have more to say than ever.  Writing here can be both for me and of interest to others.  It can be separate from the work that I do during the academic year, when I'm really devoted to encountering my students' ideas and learning from their discussions.  Despite how much progress has been made in online game audio material, there is still a major lack of good online discussion about game audio.  So often it's mentioned very much in passing at the end of a review of a game.  Or an article about the music in a game will say "here are the 10 best songs from 'this' game or 'that' series," but no reasoning other than that the writer likes them.  (Not that I have anything against mentioning favorite sounds/tracks.)  But that's not the substantive discussion that people can learn from and that folks want.

All that said,  there is more great material than there's ever been.  I intend to chronicle it here and to continue the discussions.  So forgive my being away, and know that I plan to be putting something out here at least once a week for the rest of the year, maybe more, depending.  I'll make that commitment because this is going to be my best game audio year ever.

I know, not the most informative post ever, but I'm hopeful that simply acknowledging all this can help me feel like it's a tiny step in the direction of restarting a regular relationship with online writing.    I've got some great ideas in the works.  Hope you'll enjoy and follow along for the ride...  

Behind the scenes: Summertime.

I know it's been forever since I've written-- half a year.  Crazy how the time flies.  I've definitely been thinking and reading about game audio.  I've even written some blog posts, but for whatever reason, haven't deemed them "ready" to be published yet.  Some of the biggest game audio events for me in the last few months are that I applied for and won a grant to get some online FMOD 101 training, which I've been working on recently.  FMOD is a program that allows sound to be imbedded interactively in game audio environments.  Diablo III, BioShock 1 and 2, Forza 5, and World of Warcraft are just a few of the titles that have used it in recent years.  So I've been playing around with that and learning how it works.  Not only will I be able to incorporate it into my class this fall, but it also goes along with my mission to learn all I can about game audio.

I have some lofty goals this summer, one of which is to finish this FMOD training.  That's enough by itself, but I also want to get as much analysis done on the SNES games I played as possible so that I can start to incorporate that information into my course this fall as well.  I've been thinking as well about turning portions of the blog into a book and actually met someone who has an expertise in turning online materials into printed/published works... so, there are some exciting things happening for me with game audio.  Just not really showing up on the blog at this time.  What I can say is that I'll be updating more regularly for a bit before I travel for vacation and teaching in July and then I hope to really crank out some work in August before the semester starts up.

Behind the scenes: GameSoundCon 2014

I just registered today for GameSoundCon 2014.  Really looking forward to it!  I've been checking the website every week or so to see when the registration begins because the price is better the earlier one registers.  Since I won grant funding to attend, I want to make certain I can make the most of the money!  I'm particularly interested in some of the Wwise training sessions so that I can get a better idea of what kind of work is possible with audio integration software.

After traveling to an academic game music conference in January, I'm excited to see what an industry conference looks like in comparison.  I also recently noticed that the UK has a game music conference as well called Game Music Connect.  It looks to be fairly similar with composer discussions, panel sessions, and hands-on activities/training.  Awesome that this kind of game audio conference is springing up and is separate from something like GDC, although I'd love to do GDC sometime, particularly if they still have an audio track.

Although GameSoundCon is still months away, I'll definitely plan to be blogging from LA about the event.  Can't wait to dork out with all the game audio nerds!  Any of my readers planning to attend?

Behind the Scenes: Won a second grant.

A couple of weeks ago, I won another grant to do mainly with video game music studies.  The grant will allow for me to travel to GameSoundCon and get training in Wwise next November.  It'll also provide funding for travel to the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music where my paper, "Teaching Music Appreciation through the Lens of Video Game Music: a retrospect," was chosen as a presentation.  I'm excited for both conferences; a little nervous about the NACVGM as well....  I've never given a paper at an academic conference before, but I have attended a few.  It should be an interesting experience.

This Friday, I'm taking some of my students over to the Engineering school at UM to a class where Computer Science students are designing games.  Since my students have a final project of creating game audio and these CS students have to create a game as a final project, I'm hoping that we can work something out where the two work together.  UM is all about cross-discipline events these days, so this is an exciting chance for that.  Looking forward to it.

Behind the Scenes: Tomorrow starts my Game Music Course!

Well, I JUST finished my game music lecture.  It ROCKS!  Not usually a procrastinator, but I was up against two problems: 

1- I've been taking in as much data as possible before creating the course.   

2- I also ditched one of two textbooks in another course and had to create my own workbook to make up for it.  Had never done that before, and didn't know what was involved.  Made an incredible workbook, but that was days of solid work from waking to sleeping.  

Anyway, sorry to have been away for a few days, but the semester has kicked in.  I just did a massive amount of work, but September looks to be a very busy month.  I'll definitely update on the weekends and will probably drop in some ideas that arise in my game music class in short entries as well.  

Tomorrow is the first day of a dream come true-- teaching VIDEO GAME MUSIC!  Here we go!

VideoGameMusicNerd turns one!

It's hard to believe that I began this blog a year ago today.  The journey has been amazing; it's been reading, watching, listening, learning, writing, reflecting, growing.   I've encountered so many new ideas.  I've met people and interacted with game music lovers, creators, and scholars both on the blog and outside of it.  In a few weeks, I start teaching a class on Video Game Music, a long time dream of mine.  I've already proposed other levels of game music courses I'd like to create in the future.  After having learned so much this year, it's amazing to me that there's not an opportunity to study this music and business inside music schools.  Composers could benefit from it, sound designers, engineers....  This is a major way for musicians to make a living and it's only going to get more common in the future.  Maybe I can help open the doors for game music and academia to embrace a bit more.  I think I'm already helping!

I made this video in celebration of my blog turning one!  It's purely for fun, and completely embarrassing.  Yes, that is my (much thicker in childhood) southern accent saying "zoom in on the screen!"  Seriously though, I made this video because I sometimes feel people think my interest is random... for me, it's not!  There's a continuity and love of the music from a young age...

If you're new to the blog, or revisiting after a hiatus, I've recently changed the layout.  Now there's a search feature at the right (put in composers, game titles, musical topics, or anything you can think of!).  Below the search is a list of the most popular labels I use.  Here are some explanations of the most common threads:

Analysis:  Entries where I present indepth musical analysis of a certain game audio.  Often these entries are comparisons across games or systems.
Musings:  Can be quite long and rambling or very short.  Whatever is currently on my mind with game audio goes here.
My Gaming Audio History:  I'm progressing through the chronology of all the games I played growing up from a kid to today.  Re-listening and watching to gameplay, or in some cases, replaying them.  Thinking greatly about the music I heard that motivated me to want to get more involved in this field.
Playing Games: I find a game I've never played before.  I play it for a while and give my immediate reaction to the audio.
Surveying Literature:  If I've read it about game audio, I've made some notes about it here.  Read my reactions or peruse the titles and think of them as a bibliography on game audio.

Thanks to all who've visited, read, and commented over the last year!  I appreciate you!

Behind the scenes: Blog organization

I'm experimenting a bit with the organization/navigation of the blog.  I feel like there's enough material now that the date system I was using earlier isn't the best way to navigate through the blog.  It's still organized by date of publication, but I added a search feature and a labels list and removed the date search.  If you really used the date system to search for something, let me know and I'll put it back.  I'm just thinking it'll get more obsolete as I continue the blog.  Most hits I get come from people searching about a particular game's music, so...  trying something new.  Feedback is always welcome.

Behind the scenes: My Gaming Audio History

Inspired by my recent reading of Jorgensen's How Audio Affects Player Action, I thought I might share a bit about my methodology for the "My Gaming Audio History" section of the blog.  It's easy to read my writing about each game, but I wanted to explain what's involved behind creating an entry in the blog series.

A couple of months ago, when I first started getting the idea for writing about the music for games I'd played, I made a huge list of all the various games I could remember playing.  At first, I just listed things I could think of off the top of my head, but then I consulted lists of games online, like this wiki list of Nintendo games to see if I'd missed any.  Some games I haven't been able to identify or have had trouble deciding which version I knew.  For example, one PC game I played in 3rd grade a lot was a game where you were a fish and swam around trying to avoid larger fish and eating smaller fish.  Eventually you gained size.  I don't remember much about it, most importantly the title, and would be curious to find what it was so I could listen the audio.  I'm sure it'd come back to me, but I can't remember it well enough to find it now.  There are also games that exist in various versions and where I played multiple versions (Number Munchers is one of these) and I've had to discern which version I know the best from watching gameplay videos.  And then there are some games where I played them often and remember them well, but can't find any gameplay footage to hear what the audio was like, for instance, Chessmaster that ran on Win 95.

Once I had the master game list, which was initially organized by gameplay medium (Atari, Arcade, PC, NES, Gameboy, SNES, Playstation, etc) I added US release dates and organized them accordingly so that the blogging would be chronological and I could see/hear/re-experience the progression of audio development through my gaming life.  Of course, that's not to say that's the order I played them in, but it could be the order I played them in.  Also, it's a natural progression through game audio development for an average US gamer.  I've had a few games on the list that I've decided not to feature because I didn't play enough of them to remember very well.  Donkey Kong is one of these.  I probably played it once with friends, but most of my memories of it are from watching The King of Kong recently and doing research for this blog.  Likewise, some games I remember a bit from commercials, hearing friends talk about them, or reading about them in Nintendo Power, but I didn't really play myself.  These, I've decided not to feature.  I'm deciding as I go through the list and re-watch the gameplay as to if they were games I was actually invested in or not, though I'm eliminating very few.

I tried really hard not to miss anything, but I went into school to do some research one afternoon a few weeks ago and was browsing some Nintendo Power Magazines (yes, UM is awesome enough to have some issues of Nintendo Power in the library!) and found a few games that I definitely played or watched friends play and completely forgot.  Mickey Mousecapade is one of these, but I haven't decided yet whether or not to feature the audio because I only watched a friend beat it one time.... and don't remember it well.  So then it fits into the above category of, did I know this well enough to really be influenced by the audio?  Paperboy on the NES is another game that I played a bit with a friend and remember a few minutes of, but I didn't own it or play it often, and when I re-watched the gameplay, there's so little audio that I decided to simply leave it out.

Once I've decided to work on a particular game, I often play a bit of it, or even play it all the way through, if I have it on a console I can play.  Whether or not I have access to it now, I watch a video of gameplay online.  I particularly enjoy non-perfect gameplay as this allows me to hear the sounds of injury, death, and possibly even a game over.  I also listen through to the soundtracks and try to consider the lengths of the tracks versus the lengths that they're heard during gameplay.  How do sound effects come into the gameplay?  What roles do they play?  What happens to the music during sound effects?  At some point (sometimes separately from my listening/watching process, but perhaps during this watching/listening process which I can repeat multiple times) I search for information about the composers of the games, interviews with them, lists of games they worked on, who they worked for, when they were active, what they're doing now, if they have websites, etc.  Basically, what comes up on the internet when digging around for the game composers.  Does the composer appear in the credits of the game?  What sound job person does?  Is any music borrowed from another source?  If so, I give that a listen to and follow up on those paths.  In some cases I link to that information in the My Gaming Audio History entry; in others, I save the link for a new series I'm planning to start on game composers.  I also sometimes just find links to sites I want to study more thoroughly that'll be released under Game Music Online when I've combed them more carefully.

Once I've seen how the gameplay and audio work together, I get serious about the blogging aspect: I start a blog with my initial reaction to thinking about the game and write my (currently four) questions for each game: Who created the audio experience?  What is the audio experience?  How does the audio draw the player more deeply into the game?  and lastly make notes about the musical relationships of the tracks, their lengths, and my reactions to hearing to them.  As I do this, I have the audio playing through one device (often my computer, but I might airplay it through my surround sound system at home) and get out my iPad and put on GarageBand and play along on the keyboard with the music.  I used to play through the music at my piano, but the sound system is better in the other room and I more often study there.  Plus the iPad/computer method is mobile and I can do it anywhere, versus needing a piano around.  I play the melodies and bass lines, any inner voices that catch my attention, and think about the chords/ harmonic progression of the music.  If the game exists in multiple versions, I listen to several of these to get a feel for what the change in system did to the audio.  One reason I love these "Let's Compare" videos.  This will also get interesting when I get to games like Final Fantasy, where I played the original as well as the remake, which has vastly updated (improved?) audio.  While I'm doing this, I try to get into the mind of the composer.  What was s/he thinking as this music was written?  How is the music constructed?

This process can take 3-4 hours for just a short game with ten minutes of audio.  It's a huge time commitment, but it's eye opening to hear these pieces now after all my formal training and really apply my musical ear and mind to them.  At first I was thinking this would be a quick project that took a few weeks/months.  Now I'm realizing that this audio history is a multi-year long term project.  I'm all the more excited by it, but am just now taking in the scope.  And the games will only get more complex and take more time to digest as the audio gets more complicated.  So each entry will take more time to complete.  Of course, I'm also getting more efficient with the process as I work as well, but that'll be well outweighed by the increase in music from 7 minutes per game to several hours per game.  Hope you're enjoying, especially now that you know a little more about how I'm working!

Behind the scenes: Celebrating 100 published posts! (and introducing a new series: Musings)

I couldn't believe the counter when I saw 99 published posts this morning...  That makes this post number 100!  Yay!  

What a journey this has been!  I've never made a blog or tried to do anything like this before but it's been completely rewarding so far.  I've learned so much, but I have to say the best part has been connecting with other people who like this material.  I've been getting more comments and am starting to have a fair number of readers.  Thank you!  When I've had a crazy day where I think "what's the point of all this?" I come home and see that someone's excited to have found some information here and that's all the more motivation to keep going.  Game music deserves more attention than it's been given (or even, is being given) by scholars.  I'm not meaning to slam those working in the field as they're doing very important, very hard work; what I mean is that for such a huge study of music and culture, there needs to be more than a handful of people working on it.  

This blog is sort of a rebellion from the way I watched many of my scholar mentors work; they tend to keep their work quiet, hoping to get their insight out and published ahead of the next person (who, at least in music, probably isn't very interested in that same topic at all!).  Instead, right now at least, I'm trying to go the opposite way: I want to share all I'm learning as I do with the online community and engage with others who love this material.  Plus, this electronic format is amazing in that I can search through it very easily and find an idea I had earlier, as opposed to flipping back through a book and trying to figure out which dog-eared page is the one I'm looking for.  Maybe one day this will all coalesce into a book of sorts, or perhaps a publication into some form of media that doesn't even exist yet.  Picking up a book and reading about music without being able to hear the music...  bleh!  At best now in music scholarship, it seems we can access recordings online or off a CD, either of which are clunky.  The internet allows for the words and music to be almost seamlessly integrated, and that easy connection is the best way forward.  Several of my friends have suggested that I apply to present about game music at one of the big academic music conferences as the time is ripe.  The attitude at UM seems to be encouraging me and for this field of research.  Right now, though, I'm content: above all this electronic journey is just so appropriate considering that I'm examining game music, which exists in an electronic state.  

100 posts later, I'm reflecting: what am I doing and why?  In effect, I'm just chronicling my notes and thoughts online in this blog as I sift through all that is game music.  A lot of my work so far has been reading published scholarly information on game music to get my mind wrapped around what people are thinking and talking about in the field.  While there's not really an end to that, I can almost see the end of it now.  Let me explain what I mean.  I've either read or am reading nearly every book on the topic of game audio.  The stacks on my desk are diminishing.  This summer, I'll be able to turn my attention more toward individual journal articles.  Now, I've done enough digging now to see the scope of what's ahead-- in other words: I see trees instead of forest.  Of course, there's the old adage, "the more you learn the more you realize there is to learn."  Completely true-- and there's no real end to my surveying literature blog thread.  Even if I could conceivably read everything about game audio, one then finds filaments that point into other materials (film music/research, electronic music/research, etc) where there's ever more to learn.  I didn't even mention new publications, which seem to be on the upswing-- at least in game music, so I don't imagine any shortage of new ideas and readings to encounter.    

I just have to say also that it helps so much that all this material is online right now.  To do this kind of research even five or ten years ago would've meant needing to own or find someone who could let you borrow and play through these games.  Now I can watch gameplay videos online, hear soundtracks, remixes, and concerts easily at the click of a button.  Who knows if all this game music will be available on the internet in a few years with copyright and whatnot...  For me, that'd be a shame, but the relationship between rights and music and online right now might be best summed up with Facebook's iconic phrase, "it's complicated."  While I'm not a game music composer, as a pianist, I have performances and recordings available on the internet that no one's ask me to put up, I receive no payment for them being there, and there are even some I'd rather weren't public because that moment in time wasn't my best.  Welcome to music in the early 21st century.  The internet is changing every profession and quickly-- music is no exception.  I think one of the reasons music has been so dramatically changed by the internet is because nearly everyone loves music, encounters it, and grapples with it daily.  I hear people bemoan often that too much of the internet is devoted to something like pornography or celebrity... well then, let's make more of it devoted to music!  

I'm probably often too long winded for the general blogosphere, and here I've done it again.  So to wrap up, my 100th post is the perfect time for me to launch a new blog thread: Musings.  I've been thinking about this thread since I started the blog and I'm finally ready for it.  Unlike Surveying Literature, Analysis, or My Gaming Audio History, Musings will simply focus on whatever is on my mind with game music that day.  It could be quite long winded or as short as a sentence.  I've now taken in enough information to brainstorm my own thoughts and feel they're not as naive as they would've been many months ago when I started this journey.  So, if you want to hear my less censored, whatever's on my mind, hopefully insightful comments, watch for the thread "Musings" in the future of the blog.  

100 posts...  I might just deserve a drink!  After all, it's 5 o' clock somewhere!  

Behind the scenes: searching the web for game music

Tonight I've been sifting through a little of the mammoth amount of video game music online.  I just sifted through a ton of Google results when I searched "Video Game Music."  Here's one of the videos I found from the results that I really enjoyed!  (From penny-arcade.com)

Much of what comes up is discussion of the best and the worst game music, sites devoted to covers or remixes of game music, sites devoted to anything except covers/remixes, and websites that are most interested in a certain era of gaming music.  Whether game music is improving or headed down the tubes seems to be a question of regular debate.  I also encountered a little bit of academic info for video game courses.  Video game music has also made it into the mainstream news with discussions of its evolution and its performance in symphony halls.

What surprises me is that most of these first links that comes up aren't what I expected to find.  There are scholarly papers, websites that present information about how to learn more, interviews with composers, discussions of game music methods/theory, etc, but these aren't in the top hits of a google search.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm definitely excited about following up on many of the links I did find.

Looking at all this also reminded me of the focus of my own blog.  Unlike websites that have a narrow focus, I'm trying to keep a broad focus about a narrow genre.  Part of what I'm seeing is that the popularity of gaming and love of game music drive entire communities to discuss it-- which is awesome!   In fact, that interactive discussion is part of the reason why I created the blog-- to have the chance to interact with others who love game music.  That plus most of the information about game music is online, although there always new information coming out in print now too.  I feel the tide is growing for game music in almost every way.

Bearing in mind what I was looking for, these are the two sites I saw today that I'm planning to noodle around on quite a bit more in the future:

-GamesSound.com-- this is Karen Collins site, and as you know, I'm a huge fan!
-vgmusic.com-- I've found a numerous articles that are exactly what I'm looking for here in the past, and bookmarked even more today!

And, frankly, following up with some of the footnotes of wikipedia's entries about game music always takes me to interesting places.

What are your favorite sites for game music?  Let me know what I shouldn't miss!

Behind the Scenes: My Gaming Audio History

I'm launching a new series on the blog which I've been thinking about creating for a long time.  It'll be called My Gaming Audio History and will chronicle the game audio of games that I played growing up.  I'm really pumped and have made a huge list of games I remember playing.  I'm going to proceed through the games more or less chronologically, so that I get an understanding for the way that game audio developed over time as well as how my ear grew hearing it.  I'll also touch on the sound specifications of each console as I get to it.  Advertisements, popular music, the set up of the room... nothing is off limits for this audio discussion.  Should be a really cool project and I hope it'll help me understand how a little boy from the middle of nowhere NC got so interested in game music!

First up...  Atari's Combat.

Behind the Scenes: Video Game Music Class

Despite the fact that I've been working on this goal for over a year, I can hardly believe it's happening: I'm teaching a video game music course in the fall.  The course is going to be a sort of general music/music appreciation class, but through the lens of video game music instead of traditional classical or popular music slants.  (Is game music popular music?)  I'm really pleased with how I've set it up-- there's development of aural skills through listening, a historical aspect as we'll trace the evolution of game audio, and a composition component as well.  The best part is, with simple computer programs like GarageBand, etc, anyone can make their own music these days without even needing to read standard music notation.

Although I've spun the composition part as creating "game music" this lead me to think: what is game music?  Couldn't a person play acoustic guitar and sing, record themselves, and call this music "game music" for a certain scene in a game?  Sounds very similar to Red Dead Redemption to me.  And forget the singing along, how about guitar playing and some synthesized instruments supporting it?  Diablo Tristram theme.  At the most basic level, drop some garageband loops together and (perhaps) put a melody over it, and you've got something like quite a bit of FF XIII.  Or make something heady-- maybe something like granular synthesis??-- that might be similar to some moments in the Twilight realm of Twilight Princess.  More atonal/synthesized compositions?  We're far away from home, earth, normal.  More traditional audio sounds?  More life like, perhaps depicting concerts, sporting events, etc.  Basically, the composition of game music is just a chance to be creative.

In lieu of formal written papers, I'm going to create a listening blog for the students to post and react to game audio and class readings of their choice.  That's very 21st century music education!  One of the things I anticipate loving about teaching game music is that I can give students a wide latitude with their readings and still get good comprehension.  One thing I've already learned from working on this blog and reading game music literature is that it's less important that the reader of most scholarly articles is experienced with music and more important they've been exposed to the game music that the article is discussing.  I supposed the same is true in the classical area, but I think about it less because many of the examples I read about are so standard they come to mind immediately.  So while I was a little lost a few months ago reading about race in the radio of Grand Theft Auto, a person who's played that game and knows the audio wouldn't have much trouble digesting that reading.  So as long as I can present students with a wide variety of readings that deal with a wide variety of games, it'll be win-win.

This class is going to be a blast...  But for now, I'm watching the enrollment and hoping to get students hooked!    

On a blog related note, I'm going to be reviving the "Playing Games" heading that I used occasionally early on in the blog to represent quick snippets of thought I have when I'm currently playing a game-- as opposed to the more researched "Analysis" segments.  Also, Video Game Music Class will become a regular series where I muse about where I am in the process of creating the course.  

Behind the Scenes: Video Game Music Class

I've been considering developing a course for non-music majors about video game music. Weighing pace and progression through recent topics via Collins Game Sound organization and From PAC-Man to Pop Music.  Realizing what's missing from academic writings: audio. Perhaps an issue with the connection between the two mediums-- books and audio examples. Now beginning to understand the state of studies and know where I want to contribute.

Needed: an aural history of game music. Most difficult for me will be connecting the technical aspects.  Can you help me connect the aural progression with the technical?  What are your favorite websites explaining these topics?

Video Game aural aspects are quite lacking in description, specificity, players reaction to, and specific field study of interaction with the player. Thus, setting to record my reactions to various game play sessions. Currently playing FF7.

Behind the scenes: Game Music Online

Recently, I've been reading Karen Collins book, Game Sound. This is the kind of book I've been looking for. Looks like she also has an irregularly updated website.  Basically, this is the complete history of video game music from a music scholar. Of course, one of the other cool things about game music is that it attracts many followers who aren't classic musicians. Thus, I'm concurrently reading the video game entry on wiki. There are fantastic Internet resources or game music and art of this blog will chronicle getting familiar with them in a future series, Game Music Online.

Behind the Scenes: What is videogamemusicnerd blog all about?

Well, that's a tough question.  I'm not sure of the answer, yet. My earliest memories are of myself as an avid gamer. From my parents Atari, through Nintendo, Game Boy, SNES, Playstation, and to the DS, PS3, and Wii, and some PC games along the way.  My friends in school called me a nerd for playing so many hours of the games, but I can't help myself!  I've always loved gaming and loved the music, and I'm shocked by how slow scholars have been to pay attention to it and likewise how many musicians dismiss game music as lesser.

My goal at this point is like V'ger, to learn everything learnable-- and to add my own contributions to the musical analysis side of everything.  I'm trying to put my quest to learn about video game music into a format I can look back, follow through, remember, and understand.  Hopefully, someone who is either a game lover or a music lover can follow along and go from a lover of one of these things to a knowledgeable expert about both of them.  It's a bibliography, a progression of recordings, writings, and other reactions to video game music.

Why a blog?  In honor of the electronic genre-- all the music is available online and getting the rights to publish a book with musical examples would be a tremendous challenge.   Even more, this is an attempt to get a dialogue going with similarly minded individuals.  This blog is an attempt to reach out to you and get you listening to, thinking about, and deepening your enjoyment of video game music. It's likewise a project for me to further my own understanding of the genre by chronicling my own studies of it. It's a documentation of sources that one might consult and digest on the topic. It's a forum for us game music lovers to start a conversation.

Welcome!