Music for Your Games

[Grey Watcher]

Going to be DMing my first in-person campaign, and I'd like to use music to help establish mood and such. Now, in addition to finding content, I'm stuck with how to actually play the music. What have you, fellow DMs, used to play music at your sessions and have found worked well (ie no adds, you can get to the music you want quickly and easily without a whole lot of typing and searching)?

[Parvum]

I just... have playlists on my computer, honestly. It's the only thing I've found that I can make sure has no distracting words, mood appropriate music, and is just all around completely under my control.

[Slylizard]

There's also a handful of programs specifically designed for gaming music. Try Syrinscape you can download and try a few free soundsets before paying a cent.

https://syrinscape.com/

[Sam113097]

Just an iPod or computer works fine, just make a playlist and set it down. Pandora's good if you want to play songs from movies or video games- you just type in Howard Shore or John Williams and you can find some great orchestral scores. Anything fantasy-related has gotta have some Led Zeppelin! Over the Hills and Far Away, Ramble On, Misty Mountain Hop, Kashmir... all are great if you want to set the tone for an adventure with a little rock.

[Lacco]

Try softrope - it allows you to mix your own soundscapes and allows quite easy switching between tracks with a click and offers some neat things. It's downside is that it doesn't allow copying of content and is set to fixed file locations.

The disadvantage - it comes with zero content, so you have to build your own scenes/library.

I would also recommend finding ambient/ambiance music.