what music does your group get down to while playing?
we put on Pandora. two steps from h ell station.its epic music that can cover just about any mood. would like to hear about your groups. also good advice for new gms
music and gaming
I start games with some intro and the Star Wars Theme, but beyond that, I find that the music is as distracting as players going off on tangents. I don't mind some BSing amongst us all, but when everyone is talking over each other while the GM is trying to interact with a certain player, then it gets annoying. Music is the same... I've noticed that the people I game with will focus on the music and forget where we are in the game as they weren't listening, heheh.
For other campaigns, we've had sporadic music, sometimes appropriately themed, usually from YouTube playlists of video game and movie music.
For my Star Wars campaign, I have the original soundtracks and the Tabletop Audio site. I'm collecting the soundtrack music into a handful of playlists like: background, fights, chases, cantinas.
No music here. Too distracting
we use Spotify, I have some playlists for different moods, usually i forget to change the music though as I'm too wrapped up in the story... which i like. we airplay the music from my Mac or iPad to ceiling mounted speakers in the room.
always try to start with a Crawl (hence the Mac and iPad) and the Theme music, helps get in the mood!
volume is turned way down too, it can be distracting if its too loud.
What a coincidence you started this topic. I just got home from playing at the FLGS, and for some reason they were playing really cheesey 80's synth music...possibly from obscure soundtracks. During the game, one of my fellow players looked at me and said "Regi, can you fix the engines." and I said "Of course I can, because this is perfect droid montage music!"
Point of information: I play R3-G1 aka Regi, the astromech.
Edited by Domingo
I would love to see peoples playlists and what they are for
The 20th Century Fox fanfare always signals the start of our game. From there, I turn it down to a background level and it plays all three movies (the good ones) for the entire night. I'm going to try adding the prequel soundtracks to that, just for some variety. No matter how bad the prequels were, the music wasn't the issue; I have no quarrel with John Williams
People notice the music when it's either really appropriate, or really inappropriate, to the scene. Like, everyone gets a laugh when we're doing really serious roleplaying with the villain, and the cantina music starts playing
But generally, if the music is low enough, it's not distracting at all, and it gives ambiance to the game.
Very rarely I'll use some music, usually big boss battles, when they enter a cantina (using a mixer with background noise like clinking glasses and the low hum of talking), etc. Usually though I keep it very low if used at all so as not to distract to much from what's going on.
I've wanted to incorporate it a bit more, but it's usually more of a pain I find than a help despite how neat it sounds in my head it just doesn't play out as well for me in practice.
Considering how much time and money is spent on music mixing for movies, I would have to agree it's super hard to time it correctly during the middle of a game session.
Considering how much time and money is spent on music mixing for movies, I would have to agree it's super hard to time it correctly during the middle of a game session.
And it is one of the last things done to a movie as the composer has to have the near final edits to get the music right.
Not to Be "that guy", but oh well.
The search function works great on this forum. Music is a pretty common topic on this forum, and doing a quick search, one can find many great older threads with great info. Here is a post of mine from another music thread.
Man, this topics comes up at least once a month. Here is a link to another thread about music, I posted some links to some good Star Wars songs in it.
http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/112824-use-of-music-i-need-advice/
Hope this helps.
For my last session, I didn't play music, but I played two separate YouTube videos at the same time. One was jungle sounds, and the other was a creepy ambience thing. It played while they were trekking through Cholganna, and it really helped set the creepy mood.
Star Wars, Doctor Who, Mass Effect, Mega Man, Chrono Cross/Trigger, Korra/Avatar, Skyrim, Devil May Cry...
And some other ambient and epic musics
Star Wars, Doctor Who, Mass Effect, Mega Man, Chrono Cross/Trigger, Korra/Avatar, Skyrim, Devil May Cry...
And some other ambient and epic musics
I tried using Pandora with "Star Wars" as the channel name. Only maybe 10% of the music was Star Wars, and an oddly high percentage was from Pirates of the Caribbean (??). So, I just switched to my own Star Wars playlist
Star Wars, Doctor Who, Mass Effect, Mega Man, Chrono Cross/Trigger, Korra/Avatar, Skyrim, Devil May Cry...
And some other ambient and epic musics
I tried using Pandora with "Star Wars" as the channel name. Only maybe 10% of the music was Star Wars, and an oddly high percentage was from Pirates of the Caribbean (??). So, I just switched to my own Star Wars playlist
Pirates of the Caribbean makes sense... high adventure music to go along with the Space Opera (Pirates of the Penzance, Flash Gordon, etc...) type of feel that is Star Wars.
Considering how much time and money is spent on music mixing for movies, I would have to agree it's super hard to time it correctly during the middle of a game session.
I'm actually working really hard on making it easy for me to switch playlists/tracks. Unfortunately, software for that doesn't seem to be out there. Looked at my brother's iPad and DJ or music player apps, and they don't support switching between playlists (so you can't subdivide into types like: action, cantina, background). There are a couple music player apps for Windows that allow multiple playlists, but they're more difficult to switch (mouse and multiple clicks versus a touch and drag).
I'm tempted to find an iOS tutorial and figure out how to write my own app. How hard should it be to have 3-4 playlists at the bottom of the screen and the ability to drag one to the "current playing" spot or window and have the music cross-fade to the new track? Yet nothing out there seems to do that.
If I'm fully prepared, I like to add musical cues to enhance certain moments. The first time the heroes blasted out of a spaceport with TIE-Fighters in pursuit I'd throw in some Star Wars theme, like the Sail Barge Rescue track from Return of the Jedi . In tonight's session, I went on Spotify and found a random song from an Arabian playlist when the characters arrived on the planet Socorro. Later on when they entered a club that had live music, I plaid another song.
In each case, I didn't play the whole track, just the first couple seconds to establish the mood of the scene and then faded it out. I think too much or constant music could be a distraction for some groups--and mine has plenty of natural distractions--but the occasional dollop of theme music to set a scene or boost a moment tends to work for us.
Edited by DeadBothanSpy
Considering how much time and money is spent on music mixing for movies, I would have to agree it's super hard to time it correctly during the middle of a game session.
I'm actually working really hard on making it easy for me to switch playlists/tracks. Unfortunately, software for that doesn't seem to be out there. Looked at my brother's iPad and DJ or music player apps, and they don't support switching between playlists (so you can't subdivide into types like: action, cantina, background). There are a couple music player apps for Windows that allow multiple playlists, but they're more difficult to switch (mouse and multiple clicks versus a touch and drag).
I'm tempted to find an iOS tutorial and figure out how to write my own app. How hard should it be to have 3-4 playlists at the bottom of the screen and the ability to drag one to the "current playing" spot or window and have the music cross-fade to the new track? Yet nothing out there seems to do that.
The playlist thing is why i use Spotify, its very easy to create the playlists when you find the music your after. but I'm intrigued by the tabletop audio site mentioned earlier and will try it for my next session
That's... kind of a cool site
Heck, it's good ambiance just sitting at your computer
Stravinsky's Rites of Spring is very dramatic background music with plenty of tension. Lots of Shostakovich as well for same reason. Don't be afraid of Great Music. Obviously, Lucas was not
Stravinsky's Rites of Spring is very dramatic background music with plenty of tension. Lots of Shostakovich as well for same reason. Don't be afraid of Great Music. Obviously, Lucas was not
Wagner's Ring Cycle (especially "Götterdämmerung") is very epic as well. And while we're mentioning music from the soundtrack of "Excalibur"
Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" gets your adrenaline going, too.
Probably a few of Holst's "Planets" might be good too.
While it would take far too long to list all 600-ish songs on my iPod, here's a brief sampling of what I have in my Gaming Playlist
* E1-6 (plus Shadows of the Empire)
* Indy 1-4, plus some Young Indy
* Jaws
* All sorts of Spaghetti Western music ( Bullet for a Stranger , Have a Good Funeral amigo - Sartana will pay , and of course The Ecstasy of Gold )
* Many, many Godzilla films
* Lupin The 3rd (great heist music - this theme was made for knocking over a casino)
Just to name a very, very few. . . .
Just saying i love spotify premium... adding almost all the above suggestions to my playlists right now, and streaming them into our retail shop at the same time to get the vibe!