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Hi, I'm a long term lurker bur now, still flashed from visiting Revision, I'll start to ask questions. :)

So what is scene music or better, what makes music 'scene music'?

It is music released in a demoscene context.

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It's just music made by demosceners. Generally to be part of some scene-related production.

Not exactly a definite musical genre.

I once wrote about it on the Demozoo forum. I'm not sure if I agree today, but at least it's a lot of text.
https://demozoo.org/forums/22/
Don't reply before you've read that.

it has a nice beat and you can dance to it

There's two way to approach this question.

"Scene music" as a definition is pretty much what CCE says - music released in a demoscene context, in a demo, or in a competition, musicdisk, etc.

Musically, however, I think "demoscene music" tends to have certain defining characteristics: (which it of course can stray from, but still)
- Instrumental, electronic
- Around 3-5 minutes
- Has some well-defined "intensity" points (especially if it's a soundtrack), but doesn't usually adhere to the verse-chorus or the intro-theme-break-repeat-outro ("clubby") structure
- A large portion of the scene music is influenced by the scene music that came before it, i.e. has an 80s retro computer feel to it.
(- Usually underproduced as shit. Heheh.)

lol

Don't try to measure it with frequency analyzers. It's all about the people and the context. People, damnit. Not machines.

And in turn, is a lot influenced by 80s mainstream pop.

brb imma train a neural network to determine if a track is scene music or not

Nice piece yzi.
So the definition is by culture and not (or mostly not) by style?

See Gargaj's post for an answer.

^ Reading is hard. I swear a lot of peeps only read their own posts (and those of their "idols"/friends)


Used to be a hallmark in the tracker age. But since the advent of DAWs-for-all, things go more in the opposite direction. Good mixing is a different matter though. ;)

Most of the characteristics that Gargaj mentioned are determined by necessary constraints. For instance, if you made a soundtrack for a demo, you will do it in a way that fits the visuals (perhaps putting a crescendo in the best parts, etc) and the duration will be determined by the demo itself (being a looped tune in the case of a cracktro o a 3-5 minute piece for a demo).

The most relevant feature is that is music made with computers.
And that is it free. In the sense of free distribution (like demos are). Not to mean free to be timbalanded!

See Saga Musix' post for another answer.

Scene music is something between "cocio & finsprit" and "rob_is_jarig.s3m".

anything that isn't country rock or ghetto rap.

Over the years, high-end demo music style evolved, but I would say mostly under external influences (90s techno, DnB, goa, trance, modern club music, even hip-hop i.e.Still, you name it).

But what is really interesting to me is intro music that is composed by non-musicians. It has usually this naive approach with lots of bass, almost random non-sense cheap sci-fi tune, pretty much ad hoc "drums" and great amount of suspense/drama to fit cheesy crowd-pleasing visuals. That is the definition of the demoscene music to me;P

Not a genre.
But there are some genres of music that are popular in demoscene.

No. If we sing Jugi's Onward at a party, that's scene music. No computers involved.

Disco Och Synth Kombinerad Pop

Overcompressed drum and bass.

@yzi: OK. You're right. Then music made by demosceners and usually, but not always, made with computers.

@jco: :-)