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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2021

By
Melanie Fritsch  and
Tim Summers
Edited by
Melanie Fritsch  and
Tim Summers
Melanie Fritsch
Affiliation:
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Tim Summers
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Summary

Video game music has been permeating popular culture for over forty years, at least since the titular aliens of Space Invaders arrived in 1978, accompanied by an ever-accelerating musical ostinato. Now, reaching hundreds of millions of listeners, game music has grown to encompass a diverse spectrum of musical materials and practices. Its instrumentation ranges from orchestras to rock bands, its contexts from bedroom televisions to concert halls, its materials from ‘art music’ to Top-40 pop, and its systems from generative music technologies to carefully handcrafted idiosyncratic musical structures.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music , pp. 1 - 4
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Introductory Reading

Collins, Karen. Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fritsch, Melanie. ‘History of Video Game Music’, in Music and Game: Perspectives on a Popular Alliance, ed. Moormann, Peter. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2013, 11–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimshaw, Mark. ‘Sound’, in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, ed. Perron, Bernard and Wolf, Mark J. P. (London: Routledge, 2016), 117–24.Google Scholar
Jørgensen, Kristine. ‘Left in the Dark: Playing Computer Games with the Sound Turned Off’, in From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media, ed. Collins, Karen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 163–76.Google Scholar
Whalen, Zach. ‘Play Along – An Approach to Videogame Music.’ Game Studies 4, no. 1 (2004).Google Scholar

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