Understanding Video Game Music develops a musicology of video game music by providing methods and concepts for understanding music in this medium. From the practicalities of investigating the video game as a musical source to the critical perspectives on game music - using examples including Final Fantasy VII, Monkey Island 2, SSX Tricky and Silent Hill - these explorations not only illuminate aspects of game music, but also provide conceptual ideas valuable for future analysis. Music is not a redundant echo of other textual levels of the game, but central to the experience of interacting with video games. As the author likes to describe it, this book is about music for racing a rally car, music for evading zombies, music for dancing, music for solving puzzles, music for saving the Earth from aliens, music for managing a city, music for being a hero; in short, it is about music for playing.

Music videos play a critical role in our age of ubiquitous streaming digital media. They project the personas and visions of musical artists; they stand at the cutting edge of developments in popular culture; and they fuse and revise multiple frames of reference, from dance to high fashion to cult movies and television shows to Internet memes. Above all, music videos are laboratories for experimenting with new forms of audiovisual expression. The Rhythm Image explores all these dimensions. The book analyzes, in depth, recent music videos for artists ranging from pop superstar The Weeknd to independent women artists like FKA twigs and Dawn Richard. The music videos discussed in this book all treat the traditional themes of popular music: sex and romance, money and fame, and the lived experiences of race and gender. But they twist these themes in strange and unexpected ways, in order to reflect our entanglement with a digital world of social media, data gathering, and 24/7 demands upon our attention.

Owning the Masters provides the first in-depth history of sound recording copyright. It is this form of intellectual property that underpins the workings of the recording industry. Rather than being focused on the manufacture of goods, this industry is centred on the creation, exploitation and protection of rights. The development and control of these rights has not been straightforward. This book explores the lobbying activities of record companies: the principal creators, owners and defenders of sound recording copyright. It addresses the counter-activity of recording artists, in particular those who have fought against the legislative and contractual practices of record companies to claim these master rights for themselves. In addition, this book looks at the activities of the listening public, large numbers of whom have been labelled 'pirates' for trespassing on these rights. The public has played its own part in shaping copyright legislation. This is an essential subject for an understanding of the economic, artistic and political value of recorded sound.

This book is for musical makers and artists who want to gain knowledge and inspiration for your own amazing creations. "Grumpy Mike" Cook, co-author of several books on the Raspberry Pi and frequent answerer of questions of the Arduino forums, brings you a fun and instructive mix and simple and complex projects to help you understand how the Arduino can work with the MIDI system to create musical instruments and manipulate sound. In Part I you'll find a set of projects to show you the possibilities of MIDI plus Arduino, covering both the hardware and software aspects of creating musical instruments. In Part II, you learn how to directly synthesize a wave form to create your own sounds with Arduino and concludes with another instrument project: the SpoonDuino. Finally, in Part III, you'll learn about signal processing with the Arduino Uno and the Due - how to create effects like delay, echo, pitch changes, and realtime backwards audio output. If you want to learn more about how to create music, instruments, and sound effects with Arduino, then get on board for Grumpy Mike's grand tour with Arduino Music and Sound Projects.

For nearly 60 years, since the arrival of the long-playing record in 1948, the album has provided the soundtrack to our lives. Our record collections, even if they're on CD, or these days, an iPod, are personal treasure, revealing our loves, errors of jugdement and lapses in taste. Self-confessed music obsessive, Travis Elborough, explores the way in which particular albums are deeply embedded in cultural history, revered as works of art or so ubiqitous as to be almost invisible. But in the age of the iPod, when we can download an infinite number of single tracks and need never listen to a whole album ever again, does the concept of an album still mean anything? THE LONG-PLAYER GOODBYE is a brilliant piece of popular history and a celebration of the joy of records. If you've ever had a favourite album, you'll love Travis Elborough's warm and witty take on how vinyl changed our world.

Audio Production and Critical Listening: Technical Ear Training, Second Edition develops your critical and expert listening skills, enabling you to listen to audio like an award-winning engineer. Featuring an accessible writing style, this new edition includes information on objective measurements of sound, technical descriptions of signal processing, and their relationships to subjective impressions of sound. It also includes information on hearing conservation, ear plugs, and listening levels, as well as bias in the listening process. The interactive web browser-based "ear training" software practice modules provide experience identifying various types of signal processes and manipulations. Working alongside the clear and detailed explanations in the book, this software completes the learning package that will help you train you ears to listen and really "hear" your recordings. This all-new edition has been updated to include: Audio and psychoacoustic theories to inform and expand your critical listening practice. Access to integrated software that promotes listening skills development through audio examples found in actual recording and production work, listening exercises, and tests. Cutting-edge interactive practice modules created to increase your experience. More examples of sound recordings analysis. New outline for progressing through the EQ ear training software module with listening exercises and tips.

Recorded music is as different to live music as film is to theatre. In this book, Simon Zagorski-Thomas employs current theories from psychology and sociology to examine how recorded music is made and how we listen to it. Setting out a framework for the study of recorded music and record production, he explains how recorded music is fundamentally different to live performance, how record production influences our interpretation of musical meaning and how the various participants in the process interact with technology to produce recorded music. He combines ideas from the ecological approach to perception, embodied cognition and the social construction of technological systems to provide a summary of theoretical approaches that are applied to the sound of the music and the creative activity of production. A wide range of examples from Zagorski-Thomas's professional experience reveal these ideas in action.

The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies consolidates an area of scholarly inquiry that examines how electrical technologies and their corresponding economies of scale have rendered music and sound increasingly mobile - portable, fungible, and ubiquitous. At once a marketing term, a common mode of everyday-life performance, and an instigator of experimental aesthetics, "mobile music" opens up a space for studying the momentous transformations in the production, distribution, consumption, and experience of music and sound that took place from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. The second volume of the handbook examines the aesthetics of mobile music and its proliferating forms of performance, incorporating epistemologies and methodologies from a number of disciplines, including music studies, sound studies, mobility studies, communication studies, new media studies, performance studies, and more. The contributors draw on political economy and economic sociology, ethnography and autoethnography, musical and sonic transcription, analysis and hermeneutics, and historical and archival research. The chapters treat a significant number of devices, including the the flash drive, the field recorder, the mobile phone, the handheld video game, the laptop computer, the siren, and even a pair of shoes. The Handbook likewise investigates the sonification and musicalization of vehicles - boom cars, trains, and ice cream trucks - and the sonics and musics of walking, texting, and commuting. Its chapters cover a large swath of the world - the US, the UK, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Turkey, Mexico, France, China, Jamaica, Iraq, the Philippines, India - and a similarly broad array of musical styles and practices, from the recondite and subcultural to the mass-popular and global. The most comprehensive book of its kind, this handbook is a necessary reference for scholars in multiple fields.

This book puts sampling studies on the academic map by focusing on sampling as a logic of exchange between audio-visual media. While some recent scholarship has addressed sampling primarily in relation to copyright, this book is a first: a critical study of sampling and remixing across audio-visual media. Of special interest here are works that bring together both audio and visual sampling: music that samples film and television; underground dance and multimedia scenes that rely on sampling; Internet "memes" that repurpose music videos, trailers and news broadcasts; films and videos that incorporate a wide range of sampling aesthetics; and other provocative variations. Comprised of four sections titled "roots," "scenes," "cinema" and "web" this collection digs deep into and across sampling practices that intervene in popular culture from unconventional or subversive perspectives. To this end, Sampling Media extends the conceptual boundaries of sampling by emphasizing its inter-medial dimensions, exploring the politics of sampling practice beyond copyright law, and examining its more marginal applications. It likewise puts into conversation compelling instances of sampling from a wide variety of historical and contemporary, global and local contexts.

Unruly Media argues that we're on the crest of a new international, intermedial style in which sonic and visual parameters become heightened and accelerated. This audiovisual turn, driven by digital technologies and socioeconomic changes, calls for new forms of attention. Post-classical cinema, with its multi-plot narratives and flashy style, fragments under the influence of audiovisual numbers and music-video-like sync. Music video, after migrating to the web, becomes more than a way of selling songs. YouTube's brief and low-res clips encompass many forms, and foreground reiteration, graphic values and affective intensity. All three of these media are riven by one another: a trajectory from YouTube through music video to the new digital cinema reveals structural commonalities, especially in the realms of rhythm, texture and form. Music video, YouTube, and postclassical cinema remain undertheorized. This is the first book to account for the current audiovisual landscape across medium and platform-to try to characterize the audiovisual swirl. Unruly Media includes both new theoretical models and readings of numerous current multimedia works. It also includes several chapters devoted to the oeuvre of highly popular directors, their films, commercials and music videos. Unruly Media argues that attending equally to soundtrack and image can show how these media work, and the ways they both mirror and shape our modern experience.

Why don't Guitar Hero players just pick up real guitars? What happens when millions of people play the role of a young black gang member in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? How are YouTube-based music lessons changing the nature of amateur musicianship? This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. Miller shows how video games and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by "playing along" with popular culture. Playing Along reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar's ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how a beginning guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through a series of engaging ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.

Discover the exciting world of software-defined radio (SDR) through this hands-on, beginner-friendly introduction. Software-defined radio (SDR) is transforming wireless communications through flexible, inexpensive devices that can be programmed to receive AM and FM broadcasts, transmit signals over Wi-Fi, monitor GPS location data, communicate with the International Space Station, and more. This book provides a beginner-friendly introduction to this revolutionary technology. Its learn-by-doing approach will take you from total beginner to confident SDR practitioner, without confusing math or technical jargon. Working with intuitive, graphical software, you’ll explore how SDRs work, discover how to demodulate, filter, tune, and transmit analog radio signals—and get hooked on an exciting new hobby!

The new iOS 5-driveniPod touch devicesare much more than just music. These have all the features of a PDAincluding email, calendar, Google Maps, the App Store, and even phone capabilitiesas well as the ability to watch movies and play your favorite games, all packed into Apple's sleek design. With iPod touch Made Simple, iOS 5 Edition, you'll learn how to take advantage of all these features and more, now available using the new iOS 5. Packed with over 1,000 visuals and screenshots, this book will help you master all the functions of the iPod touch devices that run iOS 5and teach you time-saving techniques and tips along the way. What you'll learn Support for both Windows and Mac users Sync and manage all your music on the iPod touch or your computer Find the best App Store applications and games Save time with copy/paste & Spotlight search Play music, videos, TV shows, and podcasts Sync playlists, videos, contacts, calendar, and notes Fast email, phone, calendar, and browser tips Use Google Maps to find just about anything Bluetooth and Wi-Fi network setup & security All the best tips and tricks for the touch screen Who this book is for

This book is for those new to theiPod touch or the iPod touch devices running the new and latest iOS 5and even for seasoned users who want to learn new tips and techniques. Table of Contents Getting Started with iPod touch Typing Tips, Copy/Paste, and Search Sync Your iPod touch with iTunes Other Sync Methods Wi-Fi Connectivity Organize Your iPod touch Icons and Folders Personalize and Secure Your iPod touch Multitasking and Voice Control Playing Music Viewing Videos, TV Shows, and More iBooks and E-Books Surfing the Web with Safari FaceTime Video Messaging and Skype Email on Your iPod touch Working with Contacts Your Calendar iPod touch Photography Recording and Editing Videos iTunes on Your iPod touch The Amazing App Store Games and Fun Social Networking Eliminate Your Paper Notes Bluetooth on the iPod touch Utilities: Clock, Calculator, and Weather New Media: Reading Newspapers, Magazines, and More Find Your Way with Maps Troubleshooting Your iPod touch Your iTunes User Guide

Emphasising the creative aspect of music technology, this introduction sets out an overview of the field for music students in a non-scientific and straightforward way. Engaging and user-friendly, the book covers studio concepts: basic audio and the studio workflow, including audio and MIDI recording. It explores synthesisers, samplers and drum machines as well as basic concepts for electronic performance. In considering the role of the DJ, the book addresses remixing and production, drawing upon many examples from the popular music repertoire as well as looking at the studio as an experimental laboratory. The creative workflow involved in music for media is discussed, as well as controllers for performance and the basics of hacking electronics for music. The book as a whole reflects the many exciting areas found today in music technology and aims to set aspiring musicians off on a journey of discovery in electronic music.

To feel the emotional force of music, we experience it aurally. But how can we convey musical understanding visually? Visualizing Music explores the art of communicating about music through images. Drawing on principles from the fields of vision science and information visualization, Eric Isaacson describes how graphical images can help us understand music. By explaining the history of music visualizations through the lens of human perception and cognition, Isaacson offers a guide to understanding what makes musical images effective or ineffective and provides readers with extensive principles and strategies to create excellent images of their own. Illustrated with over 300 diagrams from both historical and modern sources, including examples and theories from Western art music, world music, and jazz, folk, and popular music, Visualizing Music explores the decisions made around image creation. Together with an extensive online supplement and dozens of redrawings that show the impact of effective techniques, Visualizing Music is a captivating guide to thinking differently about design that will help music scholars better understand the power of musical images, thereby shifting the ephemeral to material.

The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music offers a state-of-the-art cross-section of the most field-defining topics and debates in computer music today. A unique contribution to the field, it situates computer music in the broad context of its creation and performance across the range of issues - from music cognition to pedagogy to sociocultural topics - that shape contemporary discourse in the field.
Fifty years after musical tones were produced on a computer for the first time, developments in laptop computing have brought computer music within reach of all listeners and composers. Production and distribution of computer music have grown tremendously as a result, and the time is right for this survey of computer music in its cultural contexts. An impressive and international array of music creators and academics discuss computer music's history, present, and future with a wide perspective, including composition, improvisation, interactive performance, spatialization, sound synthesis, sonification, and modeling. Throughout, they merge practice with theory to offer a fascinating look into computer music's possibilities and enduring appeal.

The iPod touch is much more than just music. You have all of the features of a PDA-including email, calendar, Google Maps, the App Store, and even phone capabilities-as well as the ability to watch movies and play your favorite games, all packed into Apple's sleek design. With iPod touch Made Simple, you'll learn how to take advantage of all these features and more. Packed with over 1,000 visuals and screenshots, this book will help you master the all of the functions of the iPod touch and teach you time-saving techniques and tips along the way. Written by two successful smartphone trainers and authors, this is the go-to guide for the iPod touch.