Cybertronian Database

balloonarcade:

cybertronianstuff:

Okay so I have no idea how to start this little blog of mine but I might as well start here.

Our first post shall be on Cybertronian music.

I have five headcanons on what Cybertronian music would sound like, how it would be created and what purpose it served.

1)      Artificially created.

Okay so this is probably the most human sounding one on the list, but it still sounds pretty mechanical. This idea was one of the last I thought up but definitely the most unique.

Cybertronians don’t ‘sing’ sure they can pitch their vocalisers but that’s not singing for them that’s just talking with a musical tone, huge difference. Because of this no Cybertronian really has a talent for singing apart from the ones who were specially created for it, so ‘pure from the Cybertronian’ music would be a rare thing to hear, especially midway through and after the war. The A.I system needed to pitch the music, pitch the lyrics, know how to put both together and make it sound pleasant was really complex and really big.

Songs would be created through a specific computer module that had no other purpose that to basically remix voice clips of Cybertronians. It would drastically pitch and mix these voice clips together to create words, sentences, and lyrics. Sometimes the lyrics would mean something, but often they wouldn’t and they’d just be random clips pitched right to flow together. It would also create music or tones that were complimentary to the pitched lyrics.

So, what was created wouldn’t really be music it would be complimentary tones and pitches with words melded in. This would be where culturally different and personally different music opinions came from in Cybertronian society. Seeker’s whose language is much higher pitched would find lower tones ‘not nice’ to listen to, so their complimentary tones would be much higher and clipped than that of Polyhex music that used much wider pitches.

Personal preferences would be different because many Cybertronians auditory systems are hooked up differently for different jobs. Because of this personal preference could easily be predicted if you knew what the auditory systems were for each job. So, Praxian officers had a much lower pitch range so they could access the enforcer ‘radio’ sort of thing, so in turn, lower pitches would be preferred and Vosvian level ones would hurt.

What would sound ‘nice’ and ‘pleasant’ to a Cybertronian though would not sound like anything bearable to a human. Luckily most of the song would be above and below the human sound range, doesn’t mean what can be heard doesn’t sound bloody eerie though. Look up a song called ‘Mr Shadow: a song composed by Artificial Intelligence’ on YouTube and this is sort of what I imagine for this type of music. (Warning, creepy, especially the last twenty seconds.)

2)      Quick beat, quick step.

Next would be the much more robotic sounding (???) seriously I have no idea. Its human counterpart would be Extratone by the way. (It’s an incredibly acquired taste, so don’t look it up if don’t want a headache.) Look up ‘Diabarha – Crazy Beauties’ , ‘Diabarha – Uranoid (Extratone)’ or ‘7!cHO – Murder EXTRATONE’ to see what I mean. This would be the slowest their songs would go since Vosvian ones would speed up so fast it would just sound like one long high pitched or pulsating tone to a human.

This one, in all honesty, sounds a lot more mechanical and sequenced, with the beats fast and the lyrics are far and few in-between. Since the Cybertronian language (or at least my version of it) is quick, harsh and computerized the music would be equal to this. Like the artificially created music, it would be easiest and most reasonable to create it with a whole system, not just one installed on a Cybertronian.

But unlike the other music type, it would be much easier to perform with installed frame tech, it’s not running hundreds of algorithms to get pitching and timing just right the Cybertronian in question would just need to know how to create a beat and mix it with light background music. It wouldn’t be that hard and wouldn’t take up ‘cpu’ space.

The music is mainly hard and quick beats with most songs not even having music behind it. The pitches would go up and down and once again follow to pitch rules of the above type. With Vosvian pitches reaching incredibly high but Kaon incredibly low. Vosvian song would generally be faster too as they had the processing power to keep up with the 5000+ beats their songs often used.

There was the synthetic beat music, and the Cybertronian made music. Synthetic would be made from a specialised computer that wouldn’t burn out and was created only for creating the synthetic beat songs. Cybertronian made songs were forced to be slower since they had to manually input commands to hit a beat in the sound system they had installed for this. Each beat had to be pre-coded with the backing sound and a CPU could only take so much.

The Cybertronian society that used this music would’ve used it for much at all and had little cultural meaning or ‘words’ behind any of it. It was mostly made for fun by mecha that had the time to pitch code and had the systems to support the harsh sounds. Teenagers would sometimes have these sound systems installed in them and would create these songs on the go up against one another on stage. They would see who could get the fastest and coherent beat without burning out something important from exertion.

3)      Scare

This once less its own idea and more of an extension to quick beat, quick step and would be the only type of music here to require an instrument. This music would be constant wavering tones normally with shrieks or cutting metal in the background, it wasn’t really a music for anything and was supposed to be sat down and listened to.

Most of the music would be made personally and with an original touch on each one. It was designed to ‘twang’ certain audio cords of very specific mecha so there were ones attuned to maybe one or two different types of frame and sub-frame, but the tones couldn’t be enjoyed by any other frame as it would hit the wrong personal pitches and ‘hurt.’

It could be played live if one collected enough mecha of the chosen chord, the song itself would mix the musical instruments sound and personal sounds made by the composer up on stage. It wasn’t a thing ‘just anybody’ could do either, the spark had to be able to ‘attune’ certain pitches and sounds through the E.M field and it was an incredibly rare skill.

‘Merzbow-Requiem’ Just turn the audio down as low as it can go, it’s an even more required taste than Extracore and in all honesty, I can’t listen to it for that long. But it’s an incredibly interesting feat in human music so, yea…

4)      Tonal

Seriously this would be the most alien one on here and is personally my favorite one and the one I think would be most plausible. I’m not even going to explain what this is but look up the song called ‘Maxwell’s Demon [Lowercase/Field Recording/Drone] ~ Gen Thalz’ and listen to all of it, it will be a weird experience, I promise.

It would truly be an alien concept of music and Cybertronians would dig this sh!t. The music would be created personally by recording the world around them and once again messing with the pitches. It would never have any sort of lyrics to it as Cybertronians weren’t designed to be ‘singers.’ The more odd and indecipherable the sound the more ‘out there’ and ‘cool’ the song would be.

Vosvians would have recordings of engines and morphed beyond reason sounds of the wind and acidic rain. Polyhexian’s would have the least morphed sound usually consisting of clangs of metal and skidding wheels. Praxians would just have morphed sound of cogs and mechanics turning and clashing.

All of these would be smooshed together with complimentary higher and lower tones, once again going from the tone preferences above. Warbles, harsh buzzes, and screeches would occasionally accompany the ‘music’ too, but that was for the younger generation. Old mecha like Ratchet would just prefer to listen to music when the music was ‘normal’ and low tones were accompanied with only things like smashing glass and breaking cogs. Like it should be.

5)      Silence

No, no, honestly, I’m being serious here. When I say that silence to a Cybertronian *is*, in fact, their music I mean it. I doubt you need an example.

A Cybertronians life would’ve been consumed with regular city sounds or building and the constant sound of cars. In ships, it would’ve been the constant hum of engines and everywhere else on Cybertron there would have been constant sound, constant loud, unbearable sound. Even in ‘silence’ the hum of their own engines and workings would accompany them.

True silence would have been bliss and literal music to their ears. True silence would be enjoyed by a mecha alone, preferably in their quarters with their entire audio systems down, in this time they truly ‘listen’ to the world around them.

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Anyway, hope you liked this, even though I kind of expect you to have only skimmed it. Culture and stuff seem to only interest me and a few others nowadays. Anyway, expect sort of regular updates. xxx

“What would sound ‘nice’ and ‘pleasant’ to a Cybertronian though would not sound like anything bearable to a human. Luckily most of the song would be above and below the human sound range, doesn’t mean what can be heard doesn’t sound bloody eerie though.”

THIS! This so much!

Tonal: Your example of Maxwell’s Demon [Lowercase/Field Recording/Drone] ~ Gen Thalz is now solidly on a writing playlist now.

And your fifth point on Silence I adore! 

Quality Cybertronian cultural world building right here!