The Common Cold: Using Computational Musicology to Define the Winter Topic in Video Game Music (RESUB)

Abstract

This paper models a new approach to theorizing topics via music informatics. We augment our traditional music-analytical understanding of the topic by employing algorithmic tools to demarcate relevant groupings of musical characteristics. Thus, while traditional listening-based conclusions remain important to us, we are not necessarily limited by our human capacity to create connections. Our case study is the winter topic as it appears in video game music. Like opera or oratorio, video game music leaves little ambiguity around what the music ought to signify. Video games commonly have an icy or snowy area, complete with cold-weather creatures, landscapes, game mechanics, and music for the player to encounter. Our dataset has over 160 examples of such music, representing games on all mainstream platforms (Nintendo, PlayStation, computer, etc.) and spanning the years 1987–2020. Each example is tagged with its musical features. We define five core characteristics of the winter topic: heavy reverb, arpeggiated textures, metallic percussion instruments, plucked string instruments, and omission of membranophones. We also relate winter as a topic to Christmas, ’80s music, and the waltz. Finally, we explore Nintendo’s idiosyncratic approach to winter music. Our study finds that instrumentation— particularly percussion—and audio technology are key considerations in establishing the winter topic in video game music. More broadly, we demonstrate the potential of computational musicology to augment and complement traditional approaches to topic theory, whether in relation to video game music or any other repertoire.