How do you incorporate music in your games?

[DRD1812]

I watch guys like Matt Mercer do it seamlessly. They've got appropriate music picked out, cues all ready to go, and there's zero, "Dang it. Sorry guys. Bear with me while I sort this out."

My go-to is to keep a little ambiance (comic for reference) going in the background, but that gets weird when we transition from "dungeon combat" to "in-town shenanigans." So I'm curious if anybody out there has a better system. When it comes to incorporating music at the table, how do you do it?

[Geddy2112]

For ambient background-Have a playlist of certain songs for "town" vs"dungeon" for ambient background. Go on youtube and just select a dozen or so for each and switch between as needed. Going from town to dungeon to forest will give you enough time as the DM to swap gears. Just have it ready.

That said, I rarely use music unless the monster/enemy is a music based creature. I had my party fight a danse macabre, which not only fights using music, but comes with its own theme music. When the party rolled up against it, I had the song Danse Macabre ready to roll. I also tend to base bards and many NPC's off real musicians, so I might use their actual songs if the players fight them.

[Thrudd]

Back in the days before mp3s, I'd have a CD in the player, queue it up to the track I wanted, and then wait until an appropriate moment to start it. If the music seemed inappropriate or distracting for the situation I'd just stop it, or skip to a better track (doesn't take long). Eventually I made a number of custom CDs with different themes, and I had a 5 CD changer to switch between them.

Now It's much easier, you can make mp3 playlists and have as many as you want ready to go on a laptop or phone. There are ready made collections of ambiance music of many themes. Just click a song when it's time, you can even rename them so you can identify them more quickly.

[DRD1812]

There are ready made collections of ambiance music of many themes.

Any tracks or links to share?

[Aneurin]

I don't use it as much as I'd like; but my group plays by text, so exchanges take quite a long time - long enough for music to get repetitive and annoying, quite often. I did try for a while, and it just... didn't work for us.

So, generally, I just use episode theme music - a song for the intro and a song for the outro. Oh, and any time anyone sings or plays music, I tend to link an actual piece of music and/or song so everyone knows roughly what it sounds like.

[Jama7301]

I found a neat little jingle/soundboard program a bit ago that I loaded up with some MP3s I had found from some open source websites for some thematic background noise or sound effects. Helpful to have the song I need at a single click, instead of rooting through a playlist.

[Hurske]

I use Airtime pro, it's an online radio station you can set up. I uploaded all my music to it for my players to listen too while we play, the quality is good, and I have multiple play lists, for fantasy, science fiction, star wars.

It works great for online play, as well as face games, I just set a session to play for how many hours I want, and leave it be.

I do have an issue with ambience, which I'm currently working to fix with Syranscape.

[Thrudd]

Any tracks or links to share?

https://tabletopaudio.com/

https://rpg.ambient-mixer.com/

are a couple places with stuff.

Midnight Syndicate is group that does nothing but gothic horror/fantasy themed ambient music. You can find their stuff on youtube. They actually have an album specifically made for D&D.

[Bohandas]

You could have different playlists (containg tracks of non-excessive length) for different locations and situations and switch between them as appropriate

[Darth Ultron]

Well, my standard Background Music for all my games is the Background Music from G1 Transformers and Robotech. And then plenty of nature sounds for when the game is set in such places.

Generally I keep a instrumental music going on throughout the whole game...often something generic. But when the game takes a turn I'll change the music.

As I'm a pop culture kind of person you can expect all the music from the last 100 years or so to pop up right when you'd expect it too:

Shark Attack: Jaws music
Werewolf Attack: Hungry like the Wolf
Ghost Attack: Ghostbusters instrumental
Zombie Bards: Thriller

[LordEntrails]

I recommend DOM Soundlink Library use with Syrinscape and the DOE Sound Extension on FG. Not sure how much if any of that can be used without FG, but given that in general it is controlling Syrinscape sounds, you should be able to do something similar just using Syrinscape.

[DRD1812]

As I'm a pop culture kind of person you can expect all the music from the last 100 years or so to pop up right when you'd expect it too:

Shark Attack: Jaws music
Werewolf Attack: Hungry like the Wolf
Ghost Attack: Ghostbusters instrumental
Zombie Bards: Thriller

Heh. I think Jaws music would be a good fit for every combat encounter. Eventually Pavlov's players figure out it means "roll initiative."

[creakyaccordion]

I personally craft playlists specifically for sessions, or if the vibe is really extensive I'll play an entire album from start to finish if the mood is right (for an excursion into an abandoned tunnel system I played Earth's album Earth 2 for instance). I generally put the playlists on shuffle and then pause it and put on more appropriate boss music/music for important story moments.

During a really typical "beach episode" session I crafted a playlist with a lot stuff like Mac DeMarco, Real Estate and Wavves but during the boss battle I played Antitaxi by La Femme.

There's also a few albums/YouTube compilations that serve really well as Generic RPG music. If I ever don't know what to put on I'll put on Odyssey by HOME since it's not very distracting but still active, or the Medieval Hardcore Party Mix on YouTube is fantastic Going About Town Music

(Sorry no links, I'm on my phone and just got very passionate about the post)