http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INkXVvi-7XQ

Came this way through the VGC. Read this post, am already hooked. What a brilliant observation, I love it. I’ll be back for more, I’m sure!

Out of scholoarly interest, do you have a blog or any way for me to read that draft of your first chapter? I’m working on a slightly different Thesis, but I’d still love to read anything you’ve written so far.

Feel free to check out what I’m working on via my blog, clickable name link above. In short I’m only doing an undergraduate degree honours thesis, but I’m looking at the music of Halo 2 and trying to find cool things about how Marty O’Donnel, et al. use music in that game.

Cheers,

The most similar sound in Mario to the 1-up is the “pause” sound. It’s another high-pitched chime that I think has the same “system sound” character.

I’ll have a look at the article you’ve referred to when I get a chance, but based on your nutshell summary I think that’s right.

In any case, I’m hooked — that sounds like it’s going to be fascinating. I look forward to hearing more as you progress.

I completely agree, Dan — diegesis in games is tricky, probably even more so than in film. Not only do you have the game’s world and the “system sounds” area, but it’s also worth considering the sounds created by the controller, the game system, and the player. (If this seems like pointless academicization, think about an analysis of Guitar Hero or DDR that ignored the sounds of the strum bar or the pad.)

The dissertation is trying to cover lots of interactions between death and music in games, the most obvious of which is the sort of “death jingle” you hear in Mario. Certainly conveying information is only a small part of its role, as you said. I think it’s more interesting for how it frames that information — the way Mario games have a sort of “Better luck next time!” lightness, and something like Resident Evil really lays it on thick: “YOU ARE DEAD.” One of the fundamental aspects of games is their replayability, and when player failure is represented as death, that creates interesting musical situations. And I think it’s fascinating that death jingles are so easily overlooked, when they’re right at the heart of what makes game music unusual. Part of the problem is that nobody wants to hear them: if you’re playing the game, you’re trying to avoid them! I think another part of the problem is that they come right at the moment when the player’s immersion in the game world breaks off, and (I suspect) at a moment of high emotional arousal. So they’re easily ignored.

So that’s the gist of the opening chapter (the written version has a lot more academic gibberish — I mean, rich context). Another chapter deals with what I’m provisionally calling “narrative death” in games, when a character dies as part of the story. Games have to try very hard to distinguish this kind of death from regular, reversible death, and I think this comes through in the musical strategies as well as the stories. I’m also going to talk about death of enemies and death in multiplayer games, but those parts are barely even sketched out at this point.

It may be tough to sell this to a crowd of music theorists, since it leans so much on interpretation. But I’ll back it up with analysis as much as possible, and at the very least, it will be an interesting read.

The question for me then becomes: where should we draw the line? Are we to believe, for example, that grabbing a coin or descending a pipe actually makes a sound in the Mario universe, or are those noises also just to alert the player?

If you’ve got some free time, I recommend looking at Zach Whalen’s “Play Along — An Approach to Videogame Music” (thanks, Ben, for that link). Whalen talks about how video games employ “mickeymousing,” a synchronization between sound effects and actions/objects to emphasize kinesthetic motion and make the world feel more “alive.” Maybe a better way to understand your distinction is that the Sonic 1-up fanfare is not a mickeymoused sound effect, whereas the other sounds in the game are.

Thanks for the comments!

Most of the sounds in Mario sound like they are part of the game world. This includes things like the background music, jumping, collecting a coin, or going down a tube. But the 1-up noise is a system sound. It signifies that an administrative change has been made that does not directly affect the game world.

This fits the distinction you’ve drawn between Mario and Sonic. In Mario, getting an extra life is a routine matter, whereas in Sonic it’s an achievement that deserves fanfare — but it’s still not part of the game world, which is why the other sounds are paused while the player is congratulated.