Dr Brent Ferguson
Lecturer in Games Sound and Music
- Digital Arts - Games
Summary
Brent is a Lecturer in Games Sound and Music. They are also a performer, composer, and scholar of videogame music.
Brent's research interest are in music and multimedia, the weaponization of music, and arranging videogame music for the guitar. Their co-written research has appeared in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy (2020), the Journal of Sound and Music in Games (2021), and the edited collections Nostalgia and Videogame Music (2022, edited by Can Askoy, Vincent Rone, and Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey) and The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music (2023, edited by Lisa Scoggin and Dana Plank). Brent has also presented at conferences such as the American Musicological Society (2017), the North American Conference on Video Game Music (2020, 2021) and the Ludomusicology Research Group Conference (2020, 2021).
Brent also performs on the classical and electric guitars, as well as keyboard instruments. They have performed with American groups Mothership: A Led Zeppelin Experience and Q: The Music of Queen for over a decade. Brent also performs with Dr. Michael Averett as the MIENT Duo, and they released their first album, ...souls like birds, under the Centaur record label. They had the privelege of performing Eric Roth's RPG National Anthem Variations at Naka-Kon in Overland Park, Kansas in 2022. Brent has also performed with various jazz groups including the River City Jazz Band, the Solid Brass Jazz Ensemble and the Randy Runyon Project on piano/keys.
Brent's compositions have appeared in a variety of independent videogames, as well as the concert stage. To find out more, please visit their website .
Qualifications
- Bachelor's in Music (Composition) from the University of Texas at San Antonio (2007)
- Master's in Music (Theory) from Texas State University (2011)
- Doctorate of Philosophy (Music Theory and Composition) from the University of Kansas (2020)
Responsibility
Lecturer in Games Sound and Music
Newest selected publications
Laws-Nicola, TJ. and Ferguson, B. (2023) 'Who on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?', in Scoggin, L. and Plank, D. (eds.) The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music. London : Routledge. pp. 92 - 103. ISBN 10: 1-032-17223-1. ISBN 13: 978-1-032-17222-4.
Ferguson, B. and Laws-Nicola, TJ. (2022) 'Playing Music Videos: Three Case Studies of Interaction between Performing Videogames and Remembering Music Videos', in Rone, VE., Aksoy, C. and Pozderac-Chenevey, S. (eds.) Nostalgia and Videogame Music: A Primer of Case Studies, Theories, and Analyses for the Player-Academic. London : Intellect Books. pp. 186 - 205. ISBN 10: 1-78938-552-0. ISBN 13: 978-1-78938-551-9.
Laws-Nicola, TJ. and Ferguson, B. (2021) ''. Journal of Sound and Music in Games, 2 (4). pp. 1 - 12.
Ferguson, B. (2020) 'Music Theory Examples in Video Game Music'. Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, 34 (1). pp. 1 - 36. ISSN: 0891-7639