Tag Archives: Whalen

Musical Recall

While reading the Whalen essay, I was intrigued when he came across the subject of “mickey mousing”.  Whalen uses the obvious example of Fantasia to describe how the term is used since the entire film is composed of animated characters moving to the rhythm and sounds of the music.  “Mickey mousing”, in this case, felt, to me, like one person’s opinion of what may be happening while this music is playing.  I, myself,did not imagine a pegasus teaching a baby pegasus how to fly when I first heard the first movement of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony.  And I most certainly did not imagine a scene full of centaurs dancing in and next to a lake when I first heard the second movement.  That aside, when I watched the film, the movements of the pegasi and centaurs matched so well with the choice of music that I did not think it at all out of place.  However, were I to watch the film multiple times, I might begin to start associating Tchaikovsky’s “Chinese Dance” from the Nutcracker Suite with dancing mushrooms.

With that said, repetition and distinctiveness of a melody can allow an association between the event and the music to form for the listener.  An example Whalen uses the example of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s mechanic of using the melody of the music played while within an area in order to unlock something related to that area.  This type of mechanic further reinforces the tendency to associate a specific area with a unique melody.  Not only will the player be hearing the theme, but the theme will also correlate to the related area.  Thinking of either the melody of an area or the area itself will cause one to think of the other automatically.

Psychology of Sound

Sound is an essential diegetic and non-diegetic aspect of video games that receives very little attention. Every game has a unique soundtrack that characterizes the game. Nothing can make a person remember their favorite childhood game like listening to its sound track. Many aspects of video games are borrowed from movies, but after reading the article by Whalen, it seems like sound originates from research in psychology more than film studies. For example, the reason players can automatically interpret the hero and villain of the game is the sound they make while moving. In another example, players understand the right move from the wrong move due to positive and negative reinforcements. Sound helps with positive reinforcement because designers in built happy (pentatonich) music when a character levels up or finishes a stage. Through a subconscious awareness of the music, players know when they have made the right moves.

In earlier games such as Doom, Thief, and Sims that Karen Collins described, the sound once again plays a narrative role. In Doom the locations of the Demons are understood based on a change in music. The player doesn’t have to think that there has been a change in music so there must be a zombie. The brain automatically registers this change and tells our mind to become be careful. In the Sims, the creators knew that the game was all about user control, so they gave the users choice of what music they wanted. It would be interesting to learn why our brains automatically associate certain sound with good or bad. Another curious aspect is what Whalen would think of games such as Tetris which have no sound or narrative but still appeal to a large audience.