Hello all, I was wondering what music gets played at your table (if any) when your runners show up at the local dive bar/nightclub/esports bar/shopping mall/no tell motel. What I'm trying to do here is put together futuristic genres and put them in places where they'd fit into the Sixth World.

As far as electronica goes, I'd say vaporwave is to go to genre. It tends to be very obscure (at least Stateside, I think it's popular in East Asia) And it sounds futuristic without it sounding like you googled "Cyberpunk soundtrack." Here's an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rerKBM5-Nc8

As for rock and pop, I'm stumped. Finding obscure pop isn't easy, and rock tends towards the mainstream enough that finding an unheard of subgenre is difficult. Thoughts?

Now, I'm not a musicologist, but I know one. And, y'know, we talk...

I think you have an idea for a great question, and a valuable one, but you're going about it the wrong way. What you should ask is: who will listen to what?

Now, I could go off on a tangent discussing the ins and outs of psychoacoustics and the way that people respond to music, and how different metahuman types are likely to experience it, but that's probably a little deeper than you want to go, so let's brush the surface.

First: a lot of music has vast staying power over the years. Even if someone does a cover version, the basic song sticks around. I'd bet you money you'd hear a cover version of The House of the Rising Sun at some point. You'll hear lots of classical, depending on where you are. Elevator music, and just general muzak, is bound to stick around. If you want to depress your players (or have a good laugh) have a muzak version of Whole Lotta Love, or Judas is Rising, or Love Bites, or Beds are Burning.

Second: Goblin Rock is already pretty well canon. So, picture something between Jerry Lee Lewis and the Sex Pistols, but without all the subtle delicacy and good taste.

Third: Most subgenres vanish with barely a ripple in a couple of years and nobody cares. Look at broad brushstrokes, and remember that genres with real staying power appeal to the broad mass of people who are not musically sophisticated, who like a good beat and good harmonies, and that for generations the three basic songs have been: "I love you!" "Don't leave me!" "She ... she's really gone ..." It affords you countless opportunities for in-game musical snobbery.

Fourth: if you're looking for something that the music fans, the cognoscenti would go for, then what you'd be looking at would be something near the current edge of music. Lots of people want to talk about how their favourite genre is totally fresh! New! And comes in seven designer colours! ... but I can't think of a genre that wasn't a progression on what came before. At most there are one or two new ideas on a previous stage. There are reasons for this, but what usually happens is that a "new genre" is just a commercially viable take on some experimentation that came before.

So, if you're looking fifty years in the future, don't expect radical departures. Expect lots of very familiar stuff. Jazz will be around. Rock will be around. Pop is like roaches, it will be around. What you're looking for is where the weirder bits of creativity are now, and try to project the successful genres based on that. You'll get it wrong, but what the hell it's your game.

Vaporwave - maybe. Honestly, I doubt it. I'd look at where New Age and Ambient are, and try to develop on that. Maybe Dub Techno.

In the Hiphop/beat world, your basic beats and rhymes are here to stay (as they've been for about four decades now) but maybe a swing to the more melodic, or even harmonic approach? Two rappers rapping in major thirds or fifths?

Also, what about something that breaks people's stride? Maybe dwarves are really into barbershop quartet and polka, ragtime and plainsong? Why not, if trogs can like the goblin rock?

There are a lot of places to take this, but I would also suggest that you consider what a guitar adept would sound like shredding in elven warmetal. Of course, there are runs around this ...

^That's a much more detailed reply than I was expecting, and while it's certainly interesting, I'm more looking for obscure, futuristic sounding genres to pepper a game with than what would actually be playing in 2075. That said, you're making me think here.

Of course, it's very hard for me to work this stuff in, because obscurity is important. Recognizing a musician's voice, or worse the song, breaks the immersion the music is meant to provide. It's even hard because I've got crazy age ranges going, as the youngest in my group is 14 and the oldest in his forties. So while Steely Dan might be obscure to the youngsters, the older guy will know them, and so forth.

So I guess what I'm saying is just share some obscure rock and pop sub- or even microgenres. Something that'll sound distinct, in the way even A-Ha stopped sounding 80's by the 00's. It's gotta have a decade vibe all its own.

If you're looking for something that really exists, that you can play on your sound system while the game runs as game mood music, I can offer a few ideas depending on how musically sophisticated your players are.

First, check out the german komische/kosmische musik scene. They spawned some big names like Kraftwerk, but weird and obscure is the key idea here. There is some abyssally obscure stuff that came out of the sense of dislocation of the german youth fifteen to thirty years after the second world war.

Second, look for genres that defy easy listening as a concept. If you want something club-oriented, start with gabba and move on up. If you're looking for something mroe intellectual, try IDM, breakcore and glitch.

Alternatively, if you're trying to project future genres or microgenres, here are some ideas:

AI/expert system continuous generative ambience
AI/expert system continuous generation, adaptive ambience
Whispercore (somewhere between triphop, glitch and whispered spoken word)
Elven warmetal - they shred faster, cleaner, and in just intonation to minimise disharmony that offends their delicate elven senses
Dwarven metamorphic rock - uses complex odd-numbered crossrhythms. A development on mathrock.

Hope this helps you a bit.

It's also important to remember Or'zet rap is still a huge genera in the sixth world as far as I remember. Think of it like gangster rap but partially or completely sung in Or'zet. Likewise, music in tribal languages is going to be huge. Songs in Algonquin, Lakota, Iroquois and all the other Amerindian languages are going to have much wider mass market appeal. Your also likely to hear more music coming from Japan or at least partially in Japanese due to the ubiquity of the Japanacorps.

I've written some stuff on Music in Style Over Substance

But if you're looking for some music available today that could pass as Sixth World Music, you could look at:
- Glitchcore/trip-hop and the likes for the "they're listening to weird stuff in the future"
- J-Pop for the "it's weird and has strong Japanese influence" though J-Pop has gone quite mainstream in some places, so you could get something less recognizable with C-Pop or K-Pop
- New Retro Wave, if you want a strong 80s cyberpunk vibe with "the music of the future of the 80s".

Just in general, look to the internal scenes of other countries. Changing a language makes it seem more exotic, more theme fitting.

Think about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk1JXc9ifRQ

That's basically just a bunch of African dudes in the 70's trying to be James Brown, but it sounds entirely different based on their take.

Bands: I play some E Nomine and Tyr for combat scenes sometimes. Pertubator is as cyberpunk as it gets (since that's the theme of the band), Protomen sing about dystopian megaman, X Dream is still a bit of a old crush, on occasion, I'll do the Drive soundtrack, some of glitch mobs stuff, infected mushroom, or archive. I dont know if you listen to them but Laserhawke is pretty great. The soundtracks to hotline Miami or far cry: blood dragon would be good too.

Best of luck!

Give a try to "A tribe called red.". Native American meets hip hop, sort of (but not really). Then follow links from there to other native groups. Should be something of related sounding SR.

Probably Spinal Tap's Stonehenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETOEhMXEkdI

I've got about 11 gigs of multi-genre music categorized by circumstance. Send me an e-mail, I'll send you a link.

eric@chinagreenelvis.com

I don't do specific music for specific locations but have 3 albums on shuffled repeat:

Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moRzhrYLu5E

Portishead - Dummy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NacRB6uOcGs

Massive Attack - Mezzanine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26CtZlhdJvs

Triphop has a good atmosphere and isn't so aggressive that is prevents people from having a conversation around the table.

/A.