Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance

by Kiri Miller

Why don't Guitar Hero players just pick up real guitars? What happens when millions of people play the role of a young black gang member in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? How are YouTube-based music lessons changing the nature of amateur musicianship? This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. Miller shows how video games and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by "playing along" with popular culture. Playing Along reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar's ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how a beginning guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through a series of engaging ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.

Genres: Ethnography, Music

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 26, 2011

Reviews

[Henna-Juulia · Rating 4 out of 5]

All in all a great study about many different ways people interact with music in the digital sphere. The only real criticism I have about the book is that the part regarding astanga yoga felt separate and needed to be tied more to the overall theme of the book. However the other case studies were good examples of musica practica. I would recommend the book for those interested in the subject.

[Enoch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars may be unfair. I don't mean that rating to reflect the quality of the writing or the relevance of what Miller has to say, only that it didn't hit the spot I was hoping for. She takes an ethnomusicological approach which will, no doubt, appeal to those so inclined. I am not, in particular, even if I did find some of that interesting.

On the whole, I found the book passively interesting, but it just didn't scratch the particular itch I have in regard to video game music. It's also not entirely cohesive as a volume. I understand the book is borne out of several earlier articles, and that shows. The last third of the book doesn't have much to do with the first two thirds, in that it focuses on musical activity via YouTube and Internet interaction, not on games, per se.

Still, it's an excellent resource in the relatively barren wasteland that is video-game music scholarship, especially if you are an ethnomusicologist, sociologist, or anthropologist.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miller makes a compelling argument about the way that virtuality is changing the experience of music, practice, and community formation. Although one could lump the book into the burgeoning field of video game music studies, that classification doesn't really work. This book is actually engaging with much larger questions about identity and music as a social practice. Since Kiri Miller is an ethnomusicologist (as am I), the book focuses on questions more relevant to social theory than the kind of music theory you would get as a first year music major. I had read two of the chapters as articles, and I have to say that I was surprised by how it all hangs together. I appreciate the way that the book takes seriously practices that are normally regarded as spurious: games and amateur musical practices. Impressive book! I wish I had read it earlier.