Music from a lore perspective

bossbrigand

B
I got to thinking about music. Not what I listen to on Pandora as I cruise around the galaxy blasting space pirates and conquering the nethers of alien lifeforms (sentient and otherwise).

What do people in 3301 listen to? The only 'canon' piece of music we've heard is Blue Danube, composed in the year 1866 on some pale blue dot in Federation space by a man belonging to a faction wiped out long ago by a bloody community goal and discovered etched into a black plastic frisbee in an ancient artifact canister picked up by a wayward commander in a USS.

But what about new music? What's popular in the galaxy? I can't help but imagine music like future funk playing in seedy bars all across civilized space:

[video=youtube;DNMWdRQr0Oo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNMWdRQr0Oo[/video]

Maybe something like synthwave found on pocket devices popular with "youths" in their 40s:

[video=youtube;TKG4lRFTRJA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKG4lRFTRJA[/video]

Music is extremely culturally significant, and it's a great tool for defining societies in fiction. For instance, you can readily express decadence in clubs and bars (easy examples) with music like this:

[video=youtube;uz-JqyIHlSw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz-JqyIHlSw[/video]

[video=youtube;M212A0NTrEc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M212A0NTrEc[/video]

We can see that music as heard by members of a fictional society is extremely effective at immersing the viewer - so what kind of music do people listen to? Elite's sound design is excellent, and its OST is excellent, but I feel like the two are grinding a little with each other. They don't feel connected in a way that makes me feel like the pilot - hearing the OST reminds me that I'm a dude puppeteering a virtual dude in a virtual spaceship. Could "in-universe" music be an effective enrichment to the overall aural experience?
 

Armour

A
Maybe Frontier should run a competition similar to this one:
[video=youtube;5DYGoN5r9rE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DYGoN5r9rE[/video]
[video=youtube;wRMFQxd7ye8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRMFQxd7ye8[/video]
[video=youtube;aR8qtxts1jY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR8qtxts1jY[/video]
 
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iain666

iain666
bossbrigand said:
Music is extremely culturally significant, and it's a great tool for defining societies in fiction.
Click to expand...

Because of the first, the music is always in a current style and used to define the fictional society in relation to the current cultural connotations of the music copied. The music of 3300 is likely to be as alien to us as drone metal would be to a 7th century European. It might be recognisable as music, or it could be so alien that the music can't even be recognised as such initially. There's no reason at all to expect that the music played in clubs of the distant future would be as instantly recognisable to us as the kind of music played in clubs as the soundtrack in Mass Effect.

In terms of playing the game, I mostly tend towards some sort of doom to listen to while I play.
 

Armour

A
If the music is too far removed from what we regard as "good" today, then it will just be distracting/annoying. If it's too similar to what we regard as "good" today, then it will sound dated like that bit when Buck Rogers throws some shapes at the space disco:

[video=youtube;gQm8MxgCGws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQm8MxgCGws[/video]
 

bossbrigand

B
iain666 said:
Because of the first, the music is always in a current style and used to define the fictional society in relation to the current cultural connotations of the music copied. The music of 3300 is likely to be as alien to us as drone metal would be to a 7th century European. It might be recognisable as music, or it could be so alien that the music can't even be recognised as such initially. There's no reason at all to expect that the music played in clubs of the distant future would be as instantly recognisable to us as the kind of music played in clubs as the soundtrack in Mass Effect.

In terms of playing the game, I mostly tend towards some sort of doom to listen to while I play.
Click to expand...

While that's a true statement, there are a lot of constants maintained. There's little reason to believe that society as a whole would be recognizable, let alone relatable, or that ships would be designed and painted in ways that are aesthetically pleasing to us. While Elite is set in the future, it's designed to be relatable, so I think relatable futuristic music could be dredged up as Mass Effect did.

Armour said:
If the music is too far removed from what we regard as "good" today, then it will just be distracting/annoying. If it's too similar to what we regard as "good" today, then it will sound dated like that bit when Buck Rogers throws some shapes at the space disco:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQm8MxgCGws
Click to expand...

I can't view the video due to copyright blockage, but I get your drift. Still, I think a balance can be struck, as evidenced by the examples I gave. I'm tempted to reference Bladerunner as well, but it wasn't as much of a 'far future' setting.
 
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iain666

iain666
bossbrigand said:
relatable futuristic music could be dredged up as Mass Effect did.
Click to expand...

Maybe you're more familiar with that style of music than me and so were able to hear it as futuristic. To my ear it was indistinguishable from the kind of thing I'd expect to hear if I was unfortunate enough to find myself in that kind of club today. It was, for me, wholly contemporary.
 

bossbrigand

B
That's fair enough, and it is true that Mass Effect is hardly far enough into the future that big name bands today would be completely forgotten. It is an interesting topic.
 
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Armour

A
I would guess that music tastes will continue to oscillate between complexity/simplicity, polished/rough, and vocal/instrumental. The instrumentation used might not change too much from what we have available to us now, and the cultural influences will largely consist of mixtures of what Earth's cultural history has thrown up. Let's not forget that encompasses a huge range of styles, scales, time signatures, and methods, so it's not like we'll be bumping between prog/folk/punk/dance/ambient/orchestal ad infinitum. And then there will be odd fads, political/religious/other influences, and plenty of other stuff we haven't thought of yet.

The old worlds, colonised pre-FSD, will likely have entrenched identities of their own. Recent colonies will probably be a bit more like McWorlds - nascent attempts to engender a cultural identity largely subsumed beneath the pervasive influence of the major factions and the increased connectivity that near-instant travel between worlds would provide.
 
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Twelvefield

Twelvefield
Look at it the other way. If ED is a thousand years into the future, then what was big a thousand years in the past? Court music for the rich folk, and peasant music for the rest of us. I figure it will continue to be the same in ED. Probably, the classical Chinese farm songs will be popular with the masses, foxtrot and swing with the cantina set (thank you John Williams!), and either Greensleeves-style court music for the elite, or else dissonant grindy stuff that sounds like Vangelis being attacked with an electric drill.

Two observations: shows about the future generally don't spend a lot on music. What we listen to is just cheap crap that gets thrown together. There are exceptions: the classic Star Trek (very cheap, but somehow inspired), Blade Runner, and Tron 2. Even so, the music budget was not big, but the performers somehow tapped into the right zeitgeist.

The second observation is that live music beats the crap out of recorded junk, and live music with a big band beats the crap out of small bands. I hope people in the future will learn that the most satisfying music is the one where you have a group of talented performers playing as a cohesive unit rather than some pretty-boy/girl puppet whose voice has to be massaged with engineering.
 

hologramix

hologramix
Would Listen to Brian Eno's Deep Blue Day on repeat I guess lol.

[video=youtube;0C-j8UguKjk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C-j8UguKjk[/video]

Or

[video=youtube;Yla9PJvTU6Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yla9PJvTU6Y[/video]
 
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CMDR Aden Majes

CMDR Aden Majes
Gonna throw my 2 cents in of what I like to listen to while playing. Celldweller has some great stuff imo.

[video=youtube;vwu79j3vyN4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwu79j3vyN4[/video]
 

bossbrigand

B
Armour said:
I would guess that music tastes will continue to oscillate between complexity/simplicity, polished/rough, and vocal/instrumental. The instrumentation used might not change too much from what we have available to us now, and the cultural influences will largely consist of mixtures of what Earth's cultural history has thrown up. Let's not forget that encompasses a huge range of styles, scales, time signatures, and methods, so it's not like we'll be bumping between prog/folk/punk/dance/ambient/orchestal ad infinitum. And then there will be odd fads, political/religious/other influences, and plenty of other stuff we haven't thought of yet.

The old worlds, colonised pre-FSD, will likely have entrenched identities of their own. Recent colonies will probably be a bit more like McWorlds - nascent attempts to engender a cultural identity largely subsumed beneath the pervasive influence of the major factions and the increased connectivity that near-instant travel between worlds would provide.
Click to expand...

Well - the docking computer plays Blue Danube. Whether that's intended as an easter egg reference to 2001/Elite '84 or a hint that classical music is still appreciated in 3301 is anybody's guess. I feel it's a little of both.
 
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Hellhawk666

Hellhawk666
People still listen to music (or at least a facsimile thereof) that was made in the 8th century, and some of the greatest music ever composed is 300-500 years old now.

The interesting thing is that until 100 years ago there was no way to capture an actual performance. We could only preserve composition by notation (for art music) or word-of-mouth (for folk music). In the future it's quite likely that music will have a much longer life-span than at the moment, as people will be able to directly listen to performances from hundreds of years ago.

Much will go out of fashion, but I bet some will come in and out of fashion in cycles, and will be a continuing influence on musical development.

So it's probably not at all unreasonable that some of the music I listen to today might still be alive and kicking, even if in a slightly altered form, in 1300 years.

If we keep subscribing, hopefully Soma FM and Bandcamp will still be thriving, too :D
 
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Armour

A
bossbrigand said:
Well - the docking computer plays Blue Danube. Whether that's intended as an easter egg reference to 2001 or a hint that classical music is still appreciated in 3301 is anybody's guess.
Click to expand...

I trust that "anybody's guess" was sarcasm:

[video=youtube;q3oHmVhviO8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3oHmVhviO8[/video]

see 10:27 on below video:

[video=youtube;ltsqeUbPuEM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltsqeUbPuEM&&t=612[/video]
 
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