Game Sound, An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design

Abstract

To start where so many reviews choose to end: this is an important book. At the same time, a pioneering history of the sonic dimension in video and computer gaming, and a guide to the contemporary processes of production, Game Sound will be of enormous importance to scholars, students and apprentice composer–practitioners of music for video and computer games alike. It is very clearly written and, as you might expect from an MIT Press product, the non-verbal information is very clearly presented, with a great deal of graphic assistance: waveforms, extracts from music scores, schematic diagrams and flow charts are called on as necessary. As video games become ubiquitous in contemporary culture—they are available on most mobile phones, for example—Game Sound may even be the first of a subgenre. And perhaps it should; as Karen Collins freely admits, her account is deliberately focused, as pioneering work must be, on...