"Musical Thematic Unity Across a Video Game Series"
   Publication in Act. Zeitschrift für Musik & Performance Issue 2
   Click here for full article.

"Game Music Analysis: Creating and Analyzing Graphical Representations of Video Game Scores"
   Paper Presented at the Texas Society for Music Theory Conference, 2010
   Available upon request.

Examining Non-Linear Forms: Techniques for the Analysis of Scores Used in Video Games
   Masters Thesis, University of Texas Tech, December 2009
   Available upon request.  Published at Texas Tech's Online Thesis and Dissertation Database.

"Mussorgsky/Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition: Faithful to the Wrong Source"
   Journal of the Conductors Guild, Vol. 29/1-2 (2010)

The Performance of New Music in Major American Orchestras: 1980 – 2000.
   Senior Honors Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 2007.
   Available upon request.  Housed in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ABSTRACTS and FURTHER INFORMATION

"Musical Thematic Unity Across a Video Game Series"
Click here for full article.

Composer Koji Kondo's music for both Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1984) and The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, 1986) is among the most recognized video game music ever written. Through the use of motivic and prolongational analysis, this article demonstrates how Kondo created a unity across the entire Zelda franchise, while making each game's score unique by examining one musical element, the overworld theme, from each of the main entries in the Zelda series. Schenkerian analysis is used to identify structural and motivic relationships between the various themes. This article concludes with an examination of semiotic implications of this analysis and its impact on other aspects of the Zelda series and game music analysis as a whole.

"Game Music Analysis: Creating and Analyzing Graphical Representations of Video Game Scores"
Paper Presented at TSMT 2010

Video games are discussed in great detail among cultural, communications, and technology studies, but the scholarly study of video game music is only just beginning. However, the study of game music is almost exclusively in the realm of musicology, with much discussion on the subjects of game music in culture, history and development of game sound, and the aesthetics of video games. This paper explores a method of analyzing an entire video game score though the use of a game score graphing technique.

Using The Legend of Zelda as a case example, I explore the creation of two different types of game score graphs that are used to provide a complete analysis of the game itself. After showing how Real-Time Game Score Graphs and Music Object Relation Graphs work, I show how these graphs help us understand Zelda and how the music functions within the game. For this paper, I use the graphs to explore how analysis can yield a complete tonal understanding of the game, how motives in the games blend within various connected music objects, and how both of these help to reinforce the narrative of the game.

Examining Non-Linear Forms: Techniques for the Analysis of Scores Used in Video Games
86p (83p plus bibliography), includes figures and musical examples

This paper develops techniques for the analysis of video game music, with most of the focus on form and the analysis of entire video game scores. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis and goals of the paper. Chapter 2 gives an overview of video game music history, a survey of current work on video game music research, and terminology specific to video game pieces. Chapter 3 discusses some older musical concepts that are relevant to video game music, such as the dice music from eighteenth century and twentieth century ideas of moment form and non-linear time.

The formal elements that make up the analytical portion of this paper are explained in Chapter 4. This chapter goes methodically through two different types of graphs that are used in game score analysis. Chapter 5 takes these graphs and explores some common forms that have been identified. Three full video game scores are then analyzed in detail in Chapter 6, showing how these graphing techniques can be beneficial in analyzing video games. Lastly, Chapter 7 presents ideas on further research in the largely unexplored area of video game music.

"Mussorgsky/Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition: Faithful to the Wrong Source"
14p (13p plus bibliography), includes examples

Though Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition shows many errors when compared to the manuscript of the piano edition, it is likely that Ravel was working with a flawed edition of the piano score himself.  This paper compares the various piano editions of Mussorgsky's score with the manuscript to prove Ravel's intended faithfulness to the piano score, and advocate for minor revisions to Ravel's orchestration to align it closer with the autograph manuscript.

The Performance of New Music in Major American Orchestras: 1980 – 2000. 
87p (49p plus appendices and bibliography)

New music seems to be rarely played by professional American orchestras.  This project focuses on the works performed during the subscription concerts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Subscribers to a symphony are the financial core of the orchestras support.  They are the audience that an orchestra must consider when programming new works.  Overall, more than 5,500 pieces were performed between 1980 and 2000, but only 476 of those pieces are new works.  Various factors contribute to the choice of repertory and composers.  My thesis discusses the composers and their music, the conductors, the orchestras, and the pieces that received repeated performances.  Composers such as Witold Lutoslawski and Pierre Boulez obtained a high status as composers and were performed frequently, while 104 composers only received a single performance by these orchestras.  Conductors such as Daniel Barenboim and Leonard Slatkin frequently performed new music, yet Eric Leinsdorf, who conducted regularly, rarely programmed new music.  Frequent performances of a work help establish it in the repertory of an orchestra, and I investigate why works such as Boulez’s Notations and Corigliano’s First Symphony were performed more frequently than most of the others.  This thesis discusses all these aspects of new-music performance by exploring these three major American orchestras as case studies.

Appendices: New Works (listing of all works composed 1970-2000 performed during study); Sample Concert Programs (two years of concert programs from each orchestra); Data and Graphs; Repeated Works.