North American Conference on Video Game Music 7 (NACVGM) Call for Papers

We're just under one month out from the call for papers deadline for the 7th annual North American Conference on Video Game Music.  This year, there will be a concert as part of the conference as well.  The conference will be at Ithaca this year and I'm very excited to travel to a place I've heard so much about, but not yet been.

Here is a link to the conference call for papers and concert information.

This year, after having hosted the conference at U-M in 2018, I'm program chair, meaning I'm collecting and anonymizing the entries for us to read and select.  It's a fun task so far (though there's not been much work yet), and not one I've done before.  You can read more about the conference or feel free to ask me either in a comment below or an email if you have any questions.

Behind the scenes: NACVGM 6

I wanted to take a few moments to reflect about my experience at the 6th annual North American Conference on Video Game Music, which I’m flying back from right now.  NACVGM 6 was held at the University of Hartford, Hartt School, in their beautiful Millard Auditorium.  

One of my main takeaways after seeing four NACVGMs (1, 4, 5, and 6) now is how the quality of presentations has grown.  To me that showcases the importance of a conference like this: by seeing and hearing other scholars’ work, there is a general elevation of the research and knowledge.  The conference has also grown physically as well.  I’d guess that keynotes at the first NACVGM had about 70 in attendance and that keynotes in the last two broke 100 attendees.  

Some of my favorite papers included the very first one, by Elizabeth Medina-Gray, analyzing the talking sound from the first Dragon Warrior/Quest.  Really interesting to consider this short sound that I’d only thought of as noise in relation to the key of the game, and as a musical entity.  I’ve often asked my students what the sound in the first Legend of Zelda is meant to represent— typing? talking?— so this was right up my alley.  Elizabeth's presentation really set a standard for the conference.  Two other highlights for me were Steven Reale and Isaac Hraga’s joint presentation about their work over the last year having composition and implementation lessons at Youngstown State.  Very inspiring and I’m hoping to implement some aspects of that work at U-M in the coming year.  Also, William Ayers had a paper that I found very fascinating about echolocation in video games.  While he started talking about games where players play as dolphins, most interesting to me was when he turned to the matter of horror games where the player’s in-game sight is restricted.  I show Lurking often in Video Game Music class if the students want to do horror games and I love how this sort of game design ties in the importance of sound to the gameplay mechanics.  Really awesome. 

Steve Reale and Isaac Hraga presenting

Of course the Wilbert Roget II’s keynote address was really amazing.  He presented on a history of using middleware in his game experience.  I loved this because the technology is relatively new, has changed a lot through time, and also no one has really focused on that before in a talk that I’ve heard.  Instead, usually the compositional process is the focus or how that process has changed through time more than the implementation aspect.  

Will Roget's keynote

This NACVGM was definitely memorable in another way: a lockdown on campus during lunch on the second day, related with a stabbing incident in the dorms.  Sadly, many of us are familiar with lockdowns from instances at our own institutions, so we were able to handle it fairly gracefully.  The lockdown lasted a couple of hours, and after a bit of frantic texting and communication, Elizabeth Medina-Gray and I were still in the auditorium— we never left for lunch— and as members of the conference committee, were able to restart the conference a bit late and catch up by the end of the day, still ending on time.  Ryan Thompson was a huge help too, coordinating many matters and even allowing the other members of the NACVGM committee to watch over Skype.  One issue that presenters worried about was the topic of the afternoon presentations, which had to do with first person shooters and other violence and horror in games.  However, we persevered and gave appropriate content warnings ahead of these presentations.  The lockdown was soon lifted and folks were able to return to campus, get their luggage and belongings, and rejoin us in person.  While luckily none of the NACVGM participants or attendees were hurt, our thoughts went out to the students who were injured in this incident.  

When I return to GameSoundCon in the fall to co-chair their academic branch with colleague, Dr. Dana Plank, we hope to continue to spread the word about NACVGM there and drum up more interest.  It’s clear that the conference’s future is looking strong.  Next year, NACVGM 7 will be held at Ithaca, hosted by Elizabeth Medina-Gray.  Hope you might attend!  I find NACVGM to be inspiring and motivating, making me want to move toward some publication goals I have upcoming.  Beyond that, it’s simply fun to dork out with a community that loves video games and game audio.  

Let me know if you have any questions about NACVGM.  NACVGM 5 was live streamed and many portions of it are hosted on YouTube.  A few of the virtual talks from NACVGM 6 are available as well, and were excellent: both Kaitlin Saari’s video on Breath of the Wild (she really set a new standard for these!) and Ryan Thompson's video’s on Esports were stand outs that you might be interested in checking out.  

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.

NACVGM at UM

I don't actually know that I've written this out on the blog, which is crazy, but the North American Conference on Video Game Music will be at the University of Michigan this January 13-14.  There are still some details that I'm finalizing, but I will be sure to update on here as the process continues.

Of most importance for today is that proposals for either virtual lightning talks and/or in-person papers are due one week from today.  I would love for the panel committee to have a terribly difficult time choosing among a wealth of amazing possibilities.  So please, if you're thinking of applying or know someone who might, share this information with them.


More information and the call for papers is available at the conference website:

http://smtd.umich.edu/nacvgm