Dissertations/theses
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This article combines reviews of "graduation works" on music gaming. We're going to consider here all levels of the academy, from bachelor's degree to habilitation.

This type of scholarly text is an interesting source of research. It is thoroughly reviewed (although technically not "peer" reviewed, at an early stage), and nowadays, it's very often freely available online, which is great for the spreading of knowledge and ensures the transparency of the academic process.

Other positive trends for dissertations and theses1 are to provide a broad and basic background for the topic, and to avoid overly technical language (wouldn't apply to habilitations, though). On the other hand, accessibility is usually lowered by the necessary time commitment, as such works are rarely concise.

The order of the 13 notes below is by year. The paragraph shows the basic relation of the work to our topic, a fuller version of the review shall be available for some.

📜 Flusser, Elisabeth. 1983. “Approche du Jeu Musical.” Thesis for the musician-animator diploma, Chalon/Saone.

Alas, this older work was not digitized and we don't have much information about it. It lives on the internet mainly as a position in bibliographies prepared by Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, whose early pieces were referred in the thesis. With ties to music therapy this is a very early instance of Caillois typology used for music.

This work of 75 pages is concerned mainly with video games and electronic-music. The author analyzes the topic of controllers and presents some of own work, including both audio controlled and inspired by Tetris. What is fully of interest to G4M are general remarks and case studies: match für drei spieler, Reunion, Cobra, and Duel & Stratégie.

Only a few of these 188 pages will relate to game in any capacity, either as a metaphor or in reference to Nyman. The main focus is titular "IEM", which is an introduced name for "free improv", but two places might be of higher interest to music gamers: graphic score usage (here as an analytic tool, "noting down" heard music, like occasionally in education), and, especially, close observation of workshops by Eddie Prevost, where the method could be classified as based on "constellation games" (on-off).

Should it make this list? It's almost impressive how 152 pages under that title may avoid anything non-electronic. But after all, Musikalisches Würfelspiel and Karlheinz Stockhausen have been brushed upon (in "Active Scores", p. 103). Still, a good read if your practice or research covers digital media.

Aptly titled, this text focuses on the singular work, Reunion. As for master's thesis, it is quite long, reaching 146 pages, plus appended illustrations. No way to do it justice in one paragraph, but the modern art angle is comparatively strong here, and the work itself is already quite often quoted in further research.

The 70 pages of this work are split between a few quite rare approaches to music games. The sketched background is mostly about historical games (Antique, Renaissance). Presented later, there are games by the author, who designed them to be cooperative. And these, maybe the most surprisingly, are formally analyzed with the usage of computer models. In general, an interest in video games and education fits well here.

This is a short work (62 pages) done in the Institute of Sonology. After introducing some game definitions and presenting the Caillois typology, it checks two game pieces (Cobra and Duet II) for the presence of "game elements" introduced earlier. The final part is a presentation of author's own work, 3x3, based on visual cues and with an electronic component.

This thesis is in Portuguese, together with all its bibliography. It focuses on publications of two Brazilian institutions: Associação Brasileira de Educação Musical and Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Música. Topical articles from their periodicals are gathered one by one, with a note, keywords and bibliography, in the appendix that takes 54 pages of the 124 total. Education is the most common context and electronic games also are included.

This medium-length work (118 pages) is done in the field of music composition, but has a strong focus on free improvisation and education. It's most creative input is providing a set of progressively organized music games for an ensemble setting (these should be reviewed here in detail). The main background is drawn from Maud Hickey and Susan Allen and closely analyzed previous games collections are by John Stevens, Tom Hall, and Jeffrey Agrell.

These are 62 pages dedicated to education (mainly K-12) and they start with an overview of current presence and the potential of improvisation in the curriculum and teacher's practice. Central part of the thesis is a proposed lesson plan of eight meetings, many of which are built around a music game sourced from Improvisation Games for Classical Musicians.

This longer work (193 pages) in the field of Musical Arts introduces the term "ludic pieces" and constructs their taxonomy around the Caillois typology. Other relevant research from game studies is presented too. On the music side, Gabrielle Chou analyzes a few interesting contemporary works, Cobra, For Whom Do We "Perform", and Foxconn Frequency in detailed case studies, but also I'm Just Making Stuff Up, Les Moutons de Panurge, Duet II, Scrawl Etude and others, in shorter notes. In the process… our wiki is mentioned (!), with a look at Dice Contract and Game Over in particular.

This unique 38-page work looks at game pieces through the lens of TTRPGs. After historical remarks, Duel and Cobra serve as case studies. Lesser known pieces mentioned are: Homo Ludens, 20 Questions, and things to do. After a brief history of tabletop role-playing, the iterative design process was characterized, and its fruit of three games analyzed and then directly presented.

For this text, the central reference is community music (also as capitalized — an organization); the background overview provides insights into a few uncommon works, and interviews are an important part of the method. A short read, the PDF has 22 pages, although a freely available version is in HTML (more readable, less citable as unpaginated). Abuntant supplementary material includes drawings, recording, and scores for ensembles ("games").

In addition

With Feeling! is described as a part of its author's Master's dissertation, but the work itself is not available.

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