music

As I'm trying to piece together my final project, I've run into a bit of a bump. See, for the paper (because I am at a lack of imagination for another medium otherwise - thank you, semester) I was hoping to see how language, image, and music mixed with interactivity creates or supports the narratives of different video games that either revolve around a musical premise or where the music itself aids in creating a narrative that it otherwise undefined.

The difficulty I'm having is that I forgot/underestimated the number of video games out there that "revolve around a musical premise." When I first drew this up, I had pretty much only Electroplankton, Lumines, Meteos, and probably Rez (though I haven't played it yet) in mind. But after reading through a few books, I realized I'd completely overlooked those games of Guitar Hero/Rock Band, the entire Beatmania (Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) series, those karaoke games and some other ones I'd never heard of before such as Buzz (some music quiz game), PaRappa the Rapper and so on.  read more »

Greetings all!

I like how our class has delved into video games and how we have examined how narrative works within the parameters of video games (of course their limits keep expanding daily as our collective imagination continues to stretch like a rubbery patty).

So here I sit on a laptop during this glorious wednesday afternoon, spinning a newly collected vinyl through my soundsystem. (I have quite a record collection...LPs have certainly drained some moolah out of my wallet). Anyway, this is a great album and I would recommend it to all of you...it's called "In Reverie" by Saves The Day. It's a blissful concoction of dreamlike harmonies lush with life and they are complimented nicely by layered instruments. It truly is good and quite a nice surprise from a band known for punk music to come out with such a mature release so distant of any recollection of their past.  read more »