Tag Archives: Sports and games

by | April 5, 2021 · 6:00 am

Journal of sound and music in games

In 2020 the University of California Press launched Journal of sound and music in games (eISSN 2578-3432), a peer-reviewed journal that presents high-quality research concerning all areas of music and/or sound in games.

The journal serves a diverse community of readers and authors, encompassing industry practitioners alongside scholars from disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, computer science, media/game studies, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, as well as musicology. JSMG is the only journal exclusively dedicated to this subject, and provides a meeting point for professionals and academics from any tradition to advance knowledge of music and sound in this important medium.

Below, the trailer for Xenoblade chronicles, a video game discussed in the inaugural issue.

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by | February 28, 2021 · 6:00 am

Capoeira’s hidden history

Capoeira, a Brazilian battle dance and national sport, was brought to Brazil by African slaves and first documented in the late 18th century. The genre has undergone many transformations as it has diffused throughout Brazilian society and beyond, taking on a multiplicity of meanings for those who participate in it and for the societies in which it is practiced.

Three major cultures inspired capoeira—the Congolese (the historic area known today as Congo-Angola), the Yoruban, and the Catholic Portuguese cultures. The evolution of capoeira through successive historical eras can be viewed with a dual perspective, depicting capoeira as it was experienced, observed, and understood by both Europeans and Africans, as well as by their descendants.

This dual perspective uncovers many covert aspects of capoeira that have been repressed by the dominant Brazilian culture. The African origins and meanings of capoeira can be reclaimed while also acknowledging the many ways in which Catholic-Christian culture has contributed to it.

This according to The hidden history of capoeira: A collision of cultures in the Brazilian battle dance by Maya Talmon-Chvaicer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2008-708).

Above, capoeira performers in São Paulo (photo by Fabio Cequinel licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0); below, capoeira performers in Salvador, Bahia.

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by | July 20, 2020 · 6:00 am

Slahal and individual expression

Slahal is an Indigenous team-oriented gambling game that involves skill, luck, strategy, supernatural assistance, and a specific song genre. As part of a long tradition of Indigenous gaming in the Pacific Northwest, it has become a popular form of intertribal competition throughout the region.

Song is integral to slahal; the songs, with their catchy melodies and driving frame drum accompaniment, are sung loudly and enthusiastically by the hiding team. Group singing provides opportunities for individual expression through variation of form and rhythmic accompaniment, as well as polyphony and antiphonal singing.

This according to Slahal: More than a game with a song by James Everett Cunningham, a dissertation accepted by the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1998 (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 1999-22855).

Below, an example from British Columbia.

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by | May 16, 2012 · 1:00 am

Scrabble™ music

Scrabble™-to-MIDI is a computer-emulated two-dimensional board game that generates MIDI music as the game is played.

The plug-in translator and its configuration parameters comprise a composition. Improvisation consists of playing a unique game and of making ongoing adjustments to mapping parameters during play.

Statistical distributions of letters and words provide a basis for mapping structures from word lists to notes, chords, and phrases. While pseudo-random tile selection provides a stochastic aspect to the instrument, players use knowledge of vocabulary to impose structure on this sequence of pseudo-random selections, and a conductor uses mapping parameters to variegate this structure in up to 16 instrument voices.

This according to “Algorithmic musical improvisation from 2D board games” by Dale E. Parson, an essay included in ICMC 2010: Research, education, discovery (San Francisco: International Computer Music Association, 2010). Above, a demonstration of Scrabble™-to-MIDI.

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