Sources

Videogame Music

Books

Nathan Altice. I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform. MIT Press, 2015.

Cheng, William. Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Collins, Karen. Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. MIT Press, 2008.

Collins, Karen. Playing with Sound: A Theory of Interacting with Sound and Music in Video Games. MIT Press, 2013.

Collins, Karen, ed. From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media. Ashgate, 2008.

Donnelly, K.J., William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, eds. Music in Video Games: Studying Play. Routledge, 2014.

Fritsch, Melanie and Tim Summers, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Gibbons, William. Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Holmes, Thom, and Terence M. Pender. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Kamp, Michiel, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney, eds. Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music. Equinox Publishing, 2016.

Miller, Kiri. Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Moormann, Peter, ed. Music and Game: Perspectives on a Popular Alliance. Springer VS, 2013.

Moseley, Roger. Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo. University of California Press, 2016.

Nova, Nicolas. 8-Bit Reggae: Collision and Creolization. Paris: Volumique, 2017.

Phillips, Winifred. A Composer’s Guide to Game Music. MIT Press, 2014.

Schartmann, Andrew. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack (33⅓). Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

Summers, Tim. Understanding Video Game Music. Cambridge University Press, 2016. —. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: A Game Music Companion. Intellect Books, 2021.

Sweet, Michael. Writing Interactive Music for Video Games: A Composer’s Guide. Addison-Wesley, 2015.

Szczepaniak, S.M.G. 2014. The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Gold. Self-published: SMG Szczepaniak.

Tobin, Samuel. Portable Play in Everyday Life: The Nintendo DS. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Articles

Aoyagi, Hiroshi. “Real-Time Procedural Music Generation from the Periphery: Reconsidering the Role of Game Music in Video Games.” Computer Games Journal 6, no. 1-2 (2017): 61-73.

Arsenault, Dominic. “Dynamic Range: When Game Studies Meet Software Studies and Platform Studies.” Game Studies 17, no. 1 (2017).

Atkinson, Sean E. “Soaring Through the Sky: Topics and Tropes in Video Game Music.” Music Theory Online 25, no. 2 (2019).

Berndt, Axel and Knut Hartmann. “The Functions of Music in Interactive Media.” In Interactive Storytelling, edited by Ulrike Spierling and Nicolas Szilas, 126-131. Springer, 2008.

Carlsson, Anders. “Chip Music: Low-Tech Data Music Sharing”. In Karen Collins, From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008: 153-62.

Cheng, William. “Role-Playing toward a Virtual Musical Democracy in The Lord of the Rings Online.” Ethnomusicology 56, no. 1 (2012): 31-62.

Collins, Karen. “‘Loops and Bloops’: Music of the Commodore 64 Games”. Soundscapes 8 (2006).

Collins, Karen. “An Introduction to Procedural Music in Video Games.” Contemporary Music Review 28, no. 1 (2009): 5-15.

Cook, Karen M. “Music, History, and Progress in Sid Meier’s Civilization IV.” In Music in Video Games: Studying Play, edited by K.J. Donnelly, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, 166-182. Routledge, 2014.

Collins, Nick, and Alex McLean. “Algorave: Live Performance of Algorithmic Electronic Dance Music.” Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

Driscoll, Kevin, and Joshua Diaz. “Endless Loop: A Brief History of Chiptunes.” Transformative Works and Cultures 2 (2009).

Gibbons, William. “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams: Popular Music, Narrative, and Dystopia in Bioshock.” Game Studies 11, no. 3 (2011).

Grasso, Julianne. “Music in the Time of Video Games: Spelunking Final Fantasy IV.” In Music in the Time of Video Games, special issue, Music and the Moving Image 13, no. 3 (2020): 41-72.

Huiberts, Sander. “Captivating Sound: The Role of Audio for Immersion in Computer Games.” PhD diss., University of Portsmouth, 2010.

Jørgensen, Kristine. “On the Functional Aspects of Computer Game Audio.” In Proceedings of the Audio Mostly Conference, 48-52. ACM, 2006.

Kamp, Michiel. “Suture and Peritexts: Music Beyond Gameplay and Diegesis.” In Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music, edited by Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney, 73-91. Equinox Publishing, 2016.

Le, Linh K. “Examining the Rise of Hatsune Miku: The First International Virtual Idol.” The UCI Undergraduate Research Journal, vol. XVI (2013), pp. 1–12. UCI Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, 2013.

Márquez, Israel. “Playing new music with old games: the chiptune subculture.” GAME 3 (2014): 67-79.

McLaren, Malcolm. “8-bit Punk.” Wired 11 (2003).

Medina-Gray, Elizabeth. “Meaningful Modular Combinations: Simultaneous Harp and Environmental Music in Two Legend of Zelda Games.” Music Theory Online 20, no. 3 (2014).

Moseley, Roger, and Aya Saiki, “Nintendo’s Art of Musical Play”. In K.J. Donnelly et al., Music in Videogames: Studying Play. New York: Routledge, 2014: 51-76.

Munday, Rod. “Music in Video Games.” In Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual, edited by Jamie Sexton, 51-67. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

Neely, Daniel T. “Ding, Ding! The Commodity Aesthetic of Ice In Sumanth Gopinath and Jason Stanyek, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press:, 2014: 1Cream Truck Music”. 46-71.

Payne, Matthew Thomas. “Playing the Déjà-New: ‘Plug it in and Play TV Games’ and the Cultural Politics of Classic Gaming.” In Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games, edited by Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor, 51-68. Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.

Reale, Steven. “Transcribing Musical Worlds; or, Is L.A. Noire a Music Game?” In Music in Video Games: Studying Play, edited by K.J. Donnelly, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, 77-103. Routledge, 2014.

Summers, Tim. “Epic Texturing in the First-Person Shooter: The Aesthetics of Video Game Music.” The Soundtrack 5, no. 2 (2012): 131-151.

Tasajärvi, Lassi. “A Brief History of the Demoscene.” In Demoscene: The Art of Real-Time. Finland: Even Lake Studios.

Tonelli, Chris. “The Chiptuning of the World: Game Boys, Imagined Travel, and Musical Meaning”. In Samantha Gopinath and Jason Stanyek, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014: 402-26.

Van Elferen, Isabella. “¡Un Forastero! Issues of Virtuality and Diegesis in Videogame Music.” Music and the Moving Image 4, no. 2 (2011): 30-39.

Whalen, Zach. “Play Along: An Approach to Videogame Music.” Game Studies 4, no. 1 (2004).

Web

Connor, Michael. “The Impossible Music of Black MIDI.” Rhizome, 23 September 2013.

Kirn, Peter. “MIDI Piano Roll Turned Into Platformer: Adventures of General MIDI” (Create Digital Music, 27 May 2014)
—. “With Japan’s latest Vocaloid characters, another song from the future” (Create Digital Music, 14 July 2017). —. “Inside the livecoding algorave movement, and what it says about music.” Create Digital Music (blog), 29 May 2018.