Copyright Note
For this GDD, as for the rest of my stories, I have a soundtrack list made, but because I don’t want to infringe any copyright law I will not put it in here. I will try to explain to myself the best I can. Thanks.
Soundtrack
Like with the aesthetics, the music change with the pass of the time. Each faction has their type of music and rhythms. So in the game, the players will be able to listen to the same song (for example, the main song) but in different styles that will represent the factions, their lives and beliefs.
I based the main soundtrack in the Celtic rhythms mixed with military marches.
Gas Mask War have different types of factions that have different types of soundtracks:
- The Outskirts (the Morrigan’s people) have a base music military and powerful, based in the Dirty Art aesthetic. Instruments made with unusual materials like PVC, cutlery or crystal bottles, all recycled elements. It is street music, whit deep and dirty voices. The songs talk about the war, the “pirate’s life” (they are contrabandist), sex or drugs.
- The SPTS (Alfonso and Enrique soldier’s) have military rhythms but cleaner, changing the instruments to others made with metal and a lot of percussions. It is serious music without lyrics.
- Angela Vila has their own music, closer to the Rites music. Mystic, light and sensual, like her. Without lyrics, but using the women voices as an instrument.
- The Radicals (Appendix 3) have weird music, like a bad trip. They use metal instruments like gongs or calypsos mixed with heavy metal rhythms. It is crazy music like them.
- The Rites (Appendix 4) have mystic music. They use wood, shells, rocks, metal, water, sand… all-natural elements to create their songs and music. They have lyrics that are spiritual, praising their leaders, gods and goddesses. They use a lot the women voices to sing their songs and even sometimes, their songs only have a voice, without other instruments.
Sountrack Appendix 1
1960 – 1995
The Beautiful Days Music
In The Beautiful Days, music is something very important. This society lives fast. They love the parties so much that all their life is built around them.
These parties are based in the 1920 parties, with the Charleston and those funny dances, but with the touch of the technology. For this society, technology is the most important thing. Their clothes, houses, jobs, food… everything is touched with the technology. For example, they have fringes dresses but instead of fringes made of fabric, they have fringes made of optical fiber, that are controlled by them with their Diaries (like a smartphone) and allow to them change the color of the dress. For this reason, their music is also electronic and fast. I use as reference the Electro Swing.
The Underground Cities Music
In the Underground Cities live all the people that do not agree with society and governments behavior. They are rebels that want to live under their own law. They still have electricity, so they have light, music, pubs… They have their own aesthetic, more military and masculine than the normal Art and don’t have all that “cool” things like the optical fiber dresses, but they use recycled materials to recreate that beauty keeping their own aesthetic. Also, they separate even more with their music.
It is true that they still listen the old music, but they create their own style with traditional rhythms mixed with the electro. Songs that are more powerful that funny or cheerful.
Using military marches, cantigas, muñeiras and Celtic powerful music mixed with the electro.
The Hard War
During the Hard War, the people don’t have electricity in the most part of the cases, so they create the Music Boxes. Devices made with recycled materials and that works with a clock mechanism. Are based in our jukeboxes. That is all the music that they have.
Sountrack Appendix 2
1995 – Present
During this period, the music is really different. It is more “homemade”. The survivors use craft instruments made of debris that have a “dirty” and metallic sound. Even their voices are “dirty” and deep for having their throats burned with the acid air. Also, in some homes, is normal listen to the old music recorded in Music Boxes.
After the Hard War, the survivors didn’t have many things so the most part of them was crafted with other elements like trash or debris. That was the case of the instruments. When Clean Future won in 1995 and brought peace to the people, one of the first things that comeback was the music. But their voices were burned after pass years breathing dirty and acid air, also the most part of the instruments was destroyed to create things more useful or for heat the cold winter nights. For this reason, the survivors created instruments using everything that they could find, giving life to a new style of music.
Like in the rest, Clean Future is always the dissonant note. They love the logic and minimalist things, this is the reason why they don’t have pubs or party rooms in their Supercities. But they have street artists that represent without words tales and stories. They use the music and the sound effects to put the public in a situation.
I base this in the Japanese, Chinese and Thai artists and theaters.
The Supercities were unique places. Clean Future created them very fast using concrete and plastic structures and the debris of the old Capital Cities. These places were equal between them, with the same number of buildings, made in the same order and with the same structure. Each Supercity had:
- A Hospital
- A School, Library & College
- A City Hall
- A Clean Minds Quarter (they are the security/army of Clean Future)
- And then the main square surrounded by apartment blocks that form other small squares in their center. Each block had a restaurant, a recycling center and the bathrooms. So the apartments didn’t have a bathroom or kitchen on them, so this way Clean Future could control the resources and the wastes.
- The last building in the Supercities was the Spheres. These buildings were the home of the workers of the City Hall. The Elite of the Supercities.
Although these cities were for Clean Future the perfect idea for a perfect society (under control in every sense, equal, clean and separate from the natural life that they considered sacred), it wasn’t the idea of the normal people.
The Supercities was created by the survivors of the Hard War that wanted to recover their old comfortable life. When the first Supercities were finished, Clean Future imposed a Competency Test to choose the “best” from the survivors. These ones were the first to enter the Supercities. However, even when they were “the best”, they were normal people that miss the parties and the music. So they were the ones to give “soul” to the Supercities with their music and performances. Clean Future allowed it but under their rules. So the citizens were prohibited create any type of pub or consume in public any type of music, but they allowed to them created street performances and play some metal instruments that Clean Future had approved first. Also, the citizens used sound effects, light effects and special effects to bright life to their stories.
In the present, the Supercities was abandoned after the attack of GWFCE in 2011 and now are called Bones. However, some parts of them became in big Anarchies and this allowed this unique type of music to continue existing. The Radicals are different between them and some have other styles of music more close to the Rock or the Heavy Metal, but the most part of them continue using the Clean Future music, instruments and performances.
So in my mind, the Anarchies are a combination between Mad Max and Memoirs of a Geisha.
Rites’ music is unique. They use crafted instruments made whit wood, shells, crystal bottles, metal items, etc., to make their melodies but the use of the voice is the most important instrument for them.
I based their music and even the sounds in the folklore music from Galicia, the Cantigas and in the Muñeiras, and in the Celtic music.
The Rites have been existing since the first Dark Zone appeared in 1975. The Rites formed with the people that were abandoned by the governments. They lived in farms or villages and when the Energetic Crisis began they were the first to be left aside. There are many different types of Rites, some more crazy, some more violent, others are just normal people that decided to live isolated under their own law. But something that has in common is the music.
Even before of became into Rites, these people lived separated from the Capital Cities, so their music was always more traditional. It is true that they had TV and Radio, but the music that they sang, played and listened to every day was their own music.
The Scallops’ Sound
I recorded this in Galicia. In Galicia is normal use scallops shells to make ornaments like this, instruments or even to decorate the houses.
Bless Me, Father
I made this song one day thinking in the Rites. Do not judge my voice, please 😀 😀
Lyrics
Bless me, Father,
Let me fly away from here.
Bless me, Father,
and don’t let me fall.
Bless me, Father,
hears the pain in my tears.
Bless me, Father,
and don’t let me burn.