'Sentimentality' in Volume Alpha
by
Sky Phisuthikul
In our increasingly globalised and technologically advanced society, it is important to highlight the growing importance of the arts in a virtual sense. Music in video games has often been something that has been dismissed and overlooked despite its significance in many of our lives.
I am not typically the sort of person who cries during sad moments in movies or when reading similar parts in books. I’m more of the ‘oh that’s sad… but it’s just fiction (most of the time)’ kind of person. However, with music, I feel more exposed much through sound than I think I do through sight. Original sound tracks within select video games in particular, often make me feel feelings that I can’t articulate.
I have been playing Minecraft since it first came out in 2009. The music would accompany me all throughout primary school, yet it was only really when I arrived at Wycombe that I began to appreciate it a lot more.
For example, ‘Sweden’ was the first piece I learned the name of — a very simple and easy piece to play on the piano as it is primarily made of simple chords. People in my house may have also heard my muddled attempts at other pieces such as ‘Subwoofer Lullaby’ and ‘Haggstrom’.
The music is all very familiar to me now and I find that it brings back memories spent playing with the carefree nature of childhood. I often think of these very tenderly; there is just something in the subtle, minimalistic music that fills me with so much wonder and appreciation of the past. Each song has its own colour and feel to it, its own thought inducing melodies, its own unique inflections of notes. All the little inclusions of motifs bring all the songs together, bridging them all to one another so that they really do seem to tell a sort of story, especially if you listen to them in order.
I do hope that my attempts at illustrating the music replicates of some of the sentiment and nostalgia that Volume Alpha brings to those listening. I believe that music is a universal language with which anything can be expressed by. Music and art through music, is undoubtedly a beautiful and universal experience after all.
