Keys to play
Subtitle: music as a ludic medium from Apollo to Nintendo
By: Roger Moseley
Contributors: Luminos (University of California Press); Creative Commons (Organization)
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 452
ISBN-13: 9780520291249
Subjects: Video game music; History and critcism; Video games; Music; Keyboards (Music); Performance; Play (Philosophy); Psychological aspects; History
Description: How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Moseley covers Greek myth to contemporary Japanese digital games. The keyboard forms a field of play on which the book's diverse objects of inquiry--from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles--enter into analogical relations.
Notes: "A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more"--Back cover.

Licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prelude. Press any key to start; title: Fields and interfaces of musical play. Ludomusicality. Orders of play ;  Beyond work and play ; The sound of gunplay ; Bits and beats ; Playing undead; title: Digital analogies. Apollo 1, Marsyas 0 ; Notes on keys ; Interface values ; (Key)board games and temperamental tactics ; Tristan's chord, Schoenberg's voice; title: Play by play : improvisation, performance, recreation. The emergence of musical play. Unforeheard circumstances ; Pantomimes and partimenti ; From black box to glassy shell ; The case of Winkel's componium ; The invisible thumb on the scale; title: High scores : WAM vs. LVB. Unsettled scores ; Mozart's two-player games ; Concerted action ; Mozart and Mario play the field ; Beethoven's recursive feedback loops; title: Play again? Nintendo's brand of ludomusicality ; Analogous digitalities ; The ludomusical emergence of Toshio Iwai ; High scores: Nodame cantabile ; Replay : a cento.