• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

Background Sounds (Music)

Chainsaw

Banned
Banned
So, I was thinking that I might like to have some background sounds and music playing during my game to help create the mood. I know that I'm not the first person to want this, so I did an ENworld search for threads with "music" in the title. Didn't really find what I was hoping for though (maybe I should have used 'sounds'?). Many of the posts seem to discuss inspiring battle music (metal, orchestral, techo), which is totally cool (I'm a big Danzig fan for anyone from THAT thread), but I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on tracks that are or could be reasonably construed as location specific.​

Ideally, each would be long (sixty minutes even?), so as not to require constant restarting, feature subtle, non-intrusive, non-vocal music that is periodically (every minute? two minutes? five minutes?) overshadowed by a location specific noise. Here are some examples:​

1. Dungeon - water dripping, doors creaking, footsteps, whispers, weird laughter, grunts, metal clinking, crying and so on. Presumably the background music would be somber, spooky, etc.​

2. Wilderness - wind rustling through trees, bird sounds, crickets and other "forest" sounds. A daytime and a nightime version would be awesome. Night music might be a little spookier and have wolves howling, etc. Seasonal variants would be awesome as well - the winter version might be marked by prominent howling winds, for example.​

3. City- perhaps the murmur of a crowd in the background, occasionally someone yelling about "Buy this fruit," or an "Excuse me," or "You there," or whatever. A tavern variant would be cool tool, I suppose.​

Anyway, maybe something like this has already been created by Paizo/WotC. If so, any links would be awesome. If not, then perhaps some enterprising reader might be inspired -​

Edit: Thinking that videogame tracks MAY be my best bet?
 

log in or register to remove this ad


Hi both!

Hi,

This is Benjamin the creator of Syrinscape... :)

This is pretty funny to read these two posts... I don't think Chainsaw could have more accurately described Syrinscape... don't think I could have done a better job myself...

And Protagonist's response is so brief and to the point! :)

It looks highly suspicious that I am actually all three of these posters... including me obviously...

:D

Thanks for recommending my little program Protagonist.. and Chainsaw it has been great to discover that there a lots of players out there who were looking for exactly what I was really wanting... except for me... it didn't exsist yet... so I had to build it myself!

I hope you enjoy it.

BTW I'd love to get some feedback of people using Syrinscape in actual game sessions... I'd love to hear how it went...

And wots more...

...keep on playing all!!!

:)

Ben
 

So, I was thinking that I might like to have some background sounds and music playing during my game to help create the mood. I know that I'm not the first person to want this, so I did an ENworld search for threads with "music" in the title. Didn't really find what I was hoping for though <snip>​


I don't have a link at the moment (thanks Work Internets for sucking!), but the Planescape: Torment soundtrack is awesome for this kind of thing. Also Arcanum, the Hobbit (the videogame that came out for PS2 in the early 2000s) and Summoner.

Also check out early material by Delerium (Bill Leeb/Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly)...especially Spiritual Archives. Later stuff is good too, but usually has more vocal than instrumental stuff.

Shadow of the Colossus Soundtrack is great...but pricey if you can't find it online (it's Japanese).

All or most of these have some ambient noise in addition to the music, so it's pretty much what you're looking for, methinks.​
 

I second benjamin's Syrinscape. It is a really easy-to-use mixer that really maximize the effectiveness of having sound effects and music added into the gaming atmosphere. ;)

Once you set it up, loops, pacing and the shuffling of the tracks gets taken care of and only requires almost one click to stop them or restarting them again. It's absolutely handy!

But first you're going to need a good collection of sounds and music which you can get more if you are a VIP in the Syrinscape site. ;)
 


So, I was thinking that I might like to have some background sounds and music playing during my game to help create the mood. I know that I'm not the first person to want this, so I did an ENworld search for threads with "music" in the title. Didn't really find what I was hoping for though (maybe I should have used 'sounds'?). Many of the posts seem to discuss inspiring battle music (metal, orchestral, techo), which is totally cool (I'm a big Danzig fan for anyone from THAT thread), but I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on tracks that are or could be reasonably construed as location specific.​

Ideally, each would be long (sixty minutes even?), so as not to require constant restarting, feature subtle, non-intrusive, non-vocal music that is periodically (every minute? two minutes? five minutes?) overshadowed by a location specific noise. Here are some examples:​

1. Dungeon - water dripping, doors creaking, footsteps, whispers, weird laughter, grunts, metal clinking, crying and so on. Presumably the background music would be somber, spooky, etc.​

2. Wilderness - wind rustling through trees, bird sounds, crickets and other "forest" sounds. A daytime and a nightime version would be awesome. Night music might be a little spookier and have wolves howling, etc. Seasonal variants would be awesome as well - the winter version might be marked by prominent howling winds, for example.​

3. City- perhaps the murmur of a crowd in the background, occasionally someone yelling about "Buy this fruit," or an "Excuse me," or "You there," or whatever. A tavern variant would be cool tool, I suppose.​

Anyway, maybe something like this has already been created by Paizo/WotC. If so, any links would be awesome. If not, then perhaps some enterprising reader might be inspired -​

Edit: Thinking that videogame tracks MAY be my best bet?

If you're comfortable with experimenting on converting sound files (and some instances you don't even have to convert), you can find a wealth of sound effects in game install files. I recall pulling out a great collection between The Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series. I've also pulled some great sound effect files from games such as Thief and Neverwinter Nights.

There's a another software package out there (it does cost $$) called RPG SoundMixer that I've used for a number of years; unfortunately the developer for that program has all but abandoned it, its still a good program that comes with a ton of sound effects.
 

Thinking that videogame tracks MAY be my best bet?

I use Syrinscape quite a bit in my games, and I pulled pretty much all of my ambient sound/music files from World of Warcraft. It works wonderfully, especially since only one of my players has played WoW.

That reminds me. Benjamin, I'll get you more feedback once I play around with the new version.
 

I use Syrinscape quite a bit in my games, and I pulled pretty much all of my ambient sound/music files from World of Warcraft. It works wonderfully, especially since only one of my players has played WoW.

That reminds me. Benjamin, I'll get you more feedback once I play around with the new version.

Cheers! That would be great!

It's uber cool to hear of people using it at the gaming table! I've also had a couple of people use it in theatre shows... and one at a book reading... and stuff like that.

Now... just need to get it into the NASA space program... mmm I wonder would it run on those computers in the space shuttles....!?!?!?!

:confused:

Ben
 

I've got an amazing CD with sounds from caverns, called Deep Into the Earth - Sounds of the Earth. It's one of those new age CDs with natural sounds.

Dripping water, wind in caverns, and so forth - totally astounding!


I've got a couple of others too, with surf, forest, howling wolves, but the cavern sounds are outstanding and is the one I use most.

It's sadly out of print, and goes for truly horrifying prices at Amazon! Over £50! :eek:
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top