Sound and Music in Video Games: Relevant Issues

Abstract

The article examines the main current issues of sound and, in particular, soundtrack in the modern video games. The immense popularity of this new genre layer of modern musical culture deserves serious scholarly understanding. So the author names and highlights such important issues as the general characteristic features of sound image of video games, diverse sounds and original musical compositions. The music for the game is presently being written by such famous composers as Hans Zimmer, Jeremy Soul, Harry Gregson-Williams, Akira Yamaoka, and Jesper Kyd. Recently, music in video games has become more in demand by a wide audience than movie music, due to its artistic merit and capabilities. The observation of the functions of music in video games seems to be relevant to the author — their system with various links to well-known products is described in the article. Moreover, the most important issue of the theoretical, aesthetic characteristic features of composers’ original music, which is practically not
touched upon in modern literature in Russia and in other countries, is also posed and briefly highlighted. To illustrate such a formulation of the question, various opinions about the musical language, style and stylistic features are presented by the illustrative example of the American composer Paul Anthony Romero. Certain important positions have been made about
the entirely new format of composing technique — the use of special network libraries.