ShadowRun Music Options

[Gerald Fitzgeral...]

As a musician, the coolest item in SR4 was the concept that musicians could jack themselves directly into their instruments/musical devices and play songs directly from their imagination.

I was going to make some music for ShadowRunners to use as background music for their runs and try to simulate this style of music.

I would like some imput on how you would envision this type of music sounding. I hear it as fairly ecclectic with a lot of haunting, mysterious, flowing sounds as if streaming directly from the persons subconcious. The actual vocals would not necessarily be the same as the musicians, as he/she could imagine any voice they can remember singing them instead.

Any other ideas?

[Straight Razor]

Mmm... i imagen an electric Native american flute.
if i had an EEG and a synthesizer, i might be able to rig up something in RL.

[Kyoto Kid]

Though I am classically trained, one of the predominant styles of music I frequently come across in Shadowrun is what is referred to as "Nukin Slam". By its name this would infer something akin to a fusion of the most ultra hardcore metal/punk played at the volume level of a Concorde SST with all four of its afterburners lit. As a matter of fact, in my campaign there actually is a popular UK slam band called "Concorde on Afterburners"

[Dog]

Damn, here I was all set to give you a hard time about starting another music thread. This is a fresh idea, though.

The only example I can think of right now is perhaps by Jane Siberry, from the album "When I was a Boy." There's a tune on there which, (if I'm remembering this right) was recorded live at a concert where they improvised it on the spot. Sorry I can't be more specific right now.

wait...

Also, there's a couple of tunes on the "Strange Days" soundtrack by Peter Gabriel and Deep Forest that have a good mix of primitive roots with a high-tech polish and lyrics that are either gibberish or a language I don't recognize. I don't know Deep Forest, but if they do more stuff like that....

no, wait....

Queensryche, "Promised Land" first track. Prelude to "I am I," I think it's called "9:28 AM" or something like that. That may be exactly what you're after.

[Gerald Fitzgeral...]

I like the electric natice american flute idea! I'll be sure to work it into some of the songs. I'll just need to spend a few moments figuring out how to play a wooden flute.

Also, I'm thinking I might play the melody backwards and then play it backwards so it sounds forwards, but was actually backwards so it will add another eerie element to it.

The delima I'm in is how to make the "nuke rock" sound like nuke rock and, yet, sound like it spilled right out of the brain instead of off the instruments.

I dunno, I've never tried to capture this type of sound before and I suppose that means I can't necessarily do it wrong, however I want it to sound just right.

[Talgian]

There's a great Cirque du Soleil song called "Battle" (or maybe it's Battlefield). It is kind of like an electric tribal song, but not obnoxiously so. It has a great crescendo if you can time the music to accent dropping the drek on the runners.

-Tal

[Straight Razor]

native flutes are easy to play, and normaly played free form.
As for electric... i think i would just record it straight into garage band and mess with it digitaly.

[Kyoto Kid]

One person to listen to for inspiration is Larry Fast (Synergy series of albums). I know most of his stuff is dated now (1980s), but a bit of it does manage to have a Shadowrun type feel. One album in particular - Metropolitan Suite - actually works quite well & I often put it on in the background when preparing urban adventures for my group.

[RunnerPaul]

[Gerald Fitzgeral...]

The coolest item in SR4. Of all the items in SR4, that was the coolest.

I know what I said.

[eidolon]

[Liper]

*cough* murcrial adventure

[StarDrifter]

I would figure that it would be terribly more fragmented than the state of music already is.

But as far as these uses go, it would probably unnerving. First I see the mentally ill and angry types channeling their rage through a datajack, "playing" it on various distortion and effect pedals at the same time. To me, this would likely sound like some sort of amateur powernoise music. Somehow, a performer screaming with his real voice as he beats his fist against the wah pedal would probably make it that much more "real". "Not like those fakes making dance music with their datajacks."

Then I see the art crowd doing all of these typical things. Long "ambient" pieces that show their control and calm and want for beauty, or whatever artful critique would be given to "eighty minutes of notes stretched out one at a time." Other art and talent types would no doubt build walls of sounds out whatever radical new sounds came about in 2024.

The pop music crowd probably wouldn't stand for too much of it. I'm not so sure how the SR4 electronics work, but it may not be unfeasible for one or two divas to shake it while jacked in. Other than that, teenagers shaking their butts while someone else programs the music will never go out of style.

I hear it as I guess I hear any other form of music. A few people will master it to make something musical, a lot more will develop niche markets doing indulgent, artful stuff, and an exponentially greater number will make all kinds of other things in their spare time.

So overall, I assume it would literally sound like whatever you wanted to hear by that point in time. Go nuts. If the players hate it then just say it's a college band.

[RunnerPaul]

[TheHappyAnarchis...]

I highly reccomend the Shadowrun Series on this website.

Harmony Steel

Absolutely amazing music. All right, maybe not that good, but I got some really good listening out of it.

[StarDrifter]

[Wounded Ronin]

Personally, I think that in terms of portraying Shadowrun and being very engaging, the Deus Ex 1 soundtrack blows everything (except for 80s music) out of the water.

In fact, does anyone know where I could get the Deus Ex soundtrack? Every time I play the game I'm amazed at how great the music is, but to the best of my knowledge it's not actually available as a soundtrack anywhere.

[Mr.Platinum]

I have added a touch of the 80's with Ambient / industrial and any form of Modern music i like.

[DestroyYouAlot]

[John_Wicker]

I like the idea of today's musical forms serving as the root of what might be going on in 2070. In the Fifth Element, the Diva's aria is an excellent example of how music might evolve in the future, but its basis is an aria from an opera that's considered old even today.

There's another point here, though. As a guitarist, I wish I could make my fingers do what I hear in my head. Having a synthlink would eliminate my lack of manual dexterity and allow me to make the music I hear in my gourd. HOWEVER, that music would still be rooted in and coming from what I've grown up with and what I listen to now.

Just because I could play something as fast as I wanted to doesn't mean everything I played would come out of the speakers at Mach 12. And the music of 2070 wouldn't be completely alien to us today, or at least not all of it would be. Not all of the time.

Truthfully, there are musicians out there today that can faithfully record what they hear in their head. Synthlinks would make the process faster for these artists, and open new doors for more people who aren't as technically gifted.

The music will be rich and variety will be the rule. Music in 2070 won't all have tribal rhythms or ambient noise any more than all of today's music has a drum machine or saxophone.

[BookWyrm]

There was a Shadowrun soundtrack (of sorts) put out a few years ago by Orion Design Studio & an artist named Alex Cremers. It's mostly a situational-track disc, you'd have to hear it to understand it.

Orion also did CDs for Chaosium's Call of Cthulu & White Wolf's Vampire The Masquerade.

[DestroyYouAlot]

I figure, to extrapolate the music forms of 50+ years from now (to what limited extent we can), you just apply two of the three things that have shaped it up until now: Re-texturizing/recombining existing styles and pushing them to their logical extremes. You can chalk up an awful lot of the musical progression of the past 50 years to those two things, in my estimation. Make it faster, make it slower, louder, softer, more basic, more complex. Add this instument/voice/structure/effect/convention, take it away again.

You can fake this with lots of the more extreme music styles, today - what's on the cutting edge, now, would be considered commonplace, even retro, in a near-future setting, but still convey the feel you're looking for. Neoclassical or industrial Black Metal, ambient, all kinds of hard electronic styles, even neofolk, all of these could give an impression of music in the future. J-pop stuff could stand in for Top 40 radio, if you want. Personally, I use Finntroll and viking metal to stand in for "Troll thrash metal."

Of course, there are styles that are old now that have survived in (more or less) their original form (folk, blues, all different kinds of national/ethnic music, etc.), and probably would continue to exist and influence new artists fifty years into the future.

As a matter of fact, one thing that seems to have been conspicuously absent from Shadowrun (not altogether unsurprisingly, given some of the musical tastes and predujices of a lot of role-players I've met) is hip-hop - it's been around for almost thirty years with no sign of slowing down now, it doesn't take a genius to realize it'll be here, in one form or another, 50 years from now.

And then there's what's left, the third force: Innovation. Which, unfortunately, you can't really fake. If you're able to come up with something truly new and original in music, even in concept, just for the sake of a Shadowrun game - you're spending your time on the wrong hobby. ;)

[Fix-it]

Doom Remix Project if you need something dark and heavy.

Instrumental guitar, like steve Vai and Joe Satriani is also good.

[mrobviousjosh]

If you need a site to host your music, I've got plenty of bandwidth every month and can do it. Just e-mail or PM me.

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Concerning Hip-Hop, which had no place in my live until recently. I´d allways imagined much of the Orxploitation wave since SOTA64 being Rap and Hip-Hop and the likes (I can´t destiguish those styles). Possibly thats because of the Gangster Image that´s prevalant in both todays Hip-Hop and SR´s Orxploitation Scene. Allso GTA San Andreas influenced my a big deal. I could not listen to that kind of music befor, it just got on my nerves, but since than, it allways reminds me of GTA and thus I can even appreciate it in small doses from time to time.

:ork