Conference Agenda

Ludomusicological scholarship has dealt extensively with console game audio of the late 1980s and early 1990s while paying comparatively little attention to soundtracks of contemporaneous PC games. This gap owes its existence partly to the wide variety of consumer PC sound cards available during this period, each generating a different timbral realization of identical pitch & rhythm data. Such variability complicates study of computer game music composed prior to the widespread adoption of CD audio, as scholars must contend with "a variety of musical experiences for what was ostensibly the same music on the same platform" (Summers 2016, 26).

In this paper, I develop a comparative methodology for approaching synthesized PC game music using spectral analysis of sound card output. I argue that different sound cards produce distinct but related texts evincing individual relationships to musical genre. Devices which reproduce the timbral profile of live instruments with a high degree of fidelity can straightforwardly instantiate broad generic categories (Rock, cinematic orchestral scoring, etc.) by evoking typical instrumental combinations. Meanwhile, tracks rendered by devices with tighter technological constraints potentially afford multiple ecological interpretations.

Using excerpts from first-person shooters Doom (Id Software, 1993), Rise of the Triad (Apogee, 1995), and Blood (Monolith Productions, 1997), I illustrate the timbral and generic possibilities offered by three consumer sound devices: the Creative Sound Blaster (SB), the Roland Sound Canvas-55 (SC-55), and the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS). In Doom’s “E1M1”, while neither device accurately replicates the noise-saturated tone of maximally overdriven electric guitar, a “stock” groove underlying the track erases potential ambiguity in invoking heavy metal. In Rise of the Triad’s “Suck This,” SC-55 and GUS project the sound of 80s synth rock, while the SB’s pared-down FM synthesis suggests soundscapes of dance music or earlier VGM. In Blood’s “Infuscomus,” SC-55 and GUS specify harp and strings, while the SB’s voices display a distinctly organ-like spectral distribution. While all three versions invoke Gothic musical tropes (van Elferen 2012) to support the gameplay environment, they do so in contrasting ways. More broadly, I explore how ecological approaches to synthesized VGM clarify relationships to a notional instrumental ideal.

When players "main" someone in a competitive video game, they select characters whose personas and gameplay styles match their personal identities and inclinations. Characters can be associated with songs or music videos, aspects of which become personifiers that players internalize when “finding a main." Whereas traditional single-player experiences may explore a character’s narrative in a constructed world (Grasso 2020; Lind 2016), competitive games are often less story-driven. Such "extradiegetic" (Winters 2010) music, thus, is often divorced from the ludic environment (Summers 2016). This paper therefore contributes to scholarship on diegesis at large, exploring music as a homophilic feature that captivates players from beyond diegetic boundaries.

To examine this phenomenon, I analyze the songs of various "agents" in the tactical shooter VALORANT (2020), considering aspects of nationality, femininity (Sweet 2018; Gill 2007), gameplay, etc., which together create a sonic profile for each. I contend that such profiles are vital for “main” formation, thereby refining Kamp (2016), showing how music from outside diegetic and non-diegetic spaces still communicates ludic information even when story is trivial. For example, Fade, a Turkish agent, controls nightmares to stalk foes. Accordingly, her song "Karanlığın" features vocals far back in the soundbox (Duguay 2022), imitating her shadowy playstyle, spotlights a Turkish novelty layer (Lavengood 2020) to evoke her nationality, and has statistically powerful climaxes (Osborn 2021), emulating danger upon emerging. Players effectively embody (Cox 2016) Fade, their use of her abilities bolstered by their musically influenced perception of her.

I also investigate how VALORANT's choice of music targets its varied player base (Huron 1989), despite consensus that advertisement music is "subliminal" (Cook 1994). In this case, the product is not merely VALORANT, but characters within it; therefore, I hypothesize that forming a ludic bond between player and character necessitates that music serve a more conspicuous role than in other advertisements. As music "incorporate[s] the idea of a brand within a listener’s life experience" (Kupfer 2017; Kurpiers 2009), VALORANT constructs cultural, gameplay, and musical profiles for its agents, exploiting the uniquely ludic relationship between player and avatar that is typically unavailable to other forms of narrative media.

On March 1, 2020, the Grammy Award-winning 8-Bit Big Band performed a sold-out concert at Boston's Berklee Performance Center. The evening's program, however, did not include the music of Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, or Maria Schneider. It was a performance of a different repertoire altogether: video game music. In a 2020 JazzTimes interview, the band leader, Charlie Rosen, emphasized the significance of the "Great Video Game Songbook." His sentiment is the crux of this project. Artists, including the 8-Bit Big Band, Dom Palombi, Carlos Eiene (better known as insaneintherain), and The Consouls, are expanding the art form's canonical possibilities by bringing into conversation video game music and jazz performance practice. The relationship between video game music and jazz performance invites the following questions: how does the "Great Video Game Songbook" participate in these artists' performances? What video games do these artists use as sources to contribute to the development of the jazz performance canon? What are the musical parallels between jazz standards and video game compositions? I argue for situating these artists' practices and productions as continuations of jazz traditions that centralize ludomusical frameworks. This cross-disciplinary research draws from the work of scholars, including Roger Moseley, Ingrid Monson, Robert Faulkner, Elizabeth Medina-Gray, Julian Dodd, and Andrew Kania. The growing number of contemporary jazz musicians who use video game music as a springboard for extemporization and reimagination beckons the need for an inquiry into the cultural, historical, and musical significance of the emerging "Great Video Game Songbook."