Teaching with Technology

Teddy’s CTCH603 Reading Log 03.29.2010

For class session 03.31.2010

From Pac-man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media

(Ashgate’s Popular and Folk Music Series)

This book review should be read by all as an introduction to the genesis of the “Popular Musicology” field. I was totally fascinated by the in-depth insight concerning the real-time application of music to new media. This review is highly informative of the ties between the comparatively new gaming industry and the well established music industry. According to the article, gaming is presented in this book as a new vehicle for marketing music and music to market gaming units. Consumers have access to hand-held devices, console equipment and computerized online gaming environments. As we can see, format for gaming is not an issue. Music is employed in order for games to appeal to certain consumer groups.

Next the book addresses the issues regarding why mobile phone gaming has not kept up with console-based gaming. Also, it discusses the growth of the ringtone industry and the use of “adaptive music”. Adaptive music is a musical product as a result of either interaction with the user or as a context sensitive product that evolves based on the moment by moment evolution of the game. This innovative apparatus like many other technical inventions holds the attention of gamers as they are participants for hours at a time. I can only imagine the girth of musical exposure one receives during such an experience.

Following this initial event, participants are provided real-time interaction through the learning of music composition and improvisation techniques. Afterwards, students investigate the use of dynamics and dynamic processing. Dynamics deal with the levels at which one records an event, while dynamic processing involves the selected methodological means or device to record those levels. Some persons prefer to use compressors, limiters and gates. On the other hand, others desire to use tools of the digital domain such as plug-ins having noise reduction software, reverb, de-essers and noise eliminators. This part of the book ends after a brief discussion of grandular synthesis and a section called “Audio and audience” that addresses the sociological, psychological and soci-pyschological effects that gaming has on the gamer!

The book moves on to discuss the rationale behind the conception of Ashgate’s Popular and Folk Music Series. According to the author it is based on three key factors:

1. A need has risen.
2. The emergence of cross-overs (mixed and new genres)
3. To engage in debates and offer critiques of musical practice as the product of free & individual expression.

Gaming of the past is just that! No longer are we unable to not hear and participate interactively due to the absence advanced technological memory or power. Our need for more ram and everything imaginable has been met beyond our comprehension. The new day of Popular Musicology has arrived and is quickly closing the gap that once kept music of importance anchored outside of prior centuries. Our technical resources have greatly expanded and the sky is the limit as to what we can create. There is a need for a new genesis of a new discipline that draws from the disparate disciplines and meta-disciplines. Gaming and music are the seeds of “Popular Musicology”!

Retrieved from “Journal of Music: Technology and Education” http://web.ebscohost.com.mutex.gmu.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=4&hid=104&sid=c4d2b28a-f34c-45e5-b659-a0f67929d18c%40sessionmgr114