Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music

Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music offers a novel account of the ways in which video games invite us to hear and listen to their music. By taking a phenomenological approach to characterize music in video games, author Michiel Kamp asks what it is we hear in the music when we play a game. Drawing on past phenomenological approaches to music as well as studies of music listening in a variety of disciplines such as aesthetics and ecological psychology, Kamp explains four main ways of hearing the same piece of music--through background, aesthetic, ludic, and semiotic hearing. As a background, music is not attended to at all, but can still be described in terms of moods, affordances, or equipment. Aesthetic hearing is a reflective attitude that invites hermeneutic interpretation; ludic hearing on the other hand invites "playing along" to the music, either through embodied movement, or in response to the music's cinematic or theatrical connotations. Finally, in semiotic hearing, Kamp argues that we hear music as transparent symbols or signals that provide information about the state of a game. The book investigates these four categories through detailed case studies of video games from a variety of eras and genres accompanied by gameplay recordings and images on a companion website.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.