Musical inspiration for all your RPG and tabletop needs
The very charming Chris of Loot the Room (a happy coincidence of nomenclature), who has been very kindly supportive of this blog, has written accompanying music for his scenario The Wand Maker’s Cabin; talk about full service!
Quite incredible to have composition and a quest from the same mind. Have never run a prewritten adventure before but I may have to change that.
Keith Ammann of the absolutely peerless The Monsters Know blog (book out soon) just showed me this site on Twitter: https://noises.online/ you can make your own mix of background noises to simulate crowds or various nature scenes. Neat huh!
I used his post about Wyverns to plan out a fight once, I was totally ready to use it’s flight and multi-attacks to lively life up. But then the dwarf misty-stepped behind her before she could alight with the elf and it was lights-out. I guess I was prepped for everything apart from players…
Once you’ve gathered a handful of music that you would like to use in your game how do you go about serving it up?
Before the existence of Google Home/Echo (Alexa) /SONOS I don’t believe there was a decent way to serve up sonics for a session short of just throwing down the 12” of Legend by Clannad, turning to side B halfway through and then doing the same with Gryphon by Gryphon (both of these are bangers however). But if you have a smart speaker by the kitchen-table you’re sorted, the latest generations have surprisingly good audio, it’s not top end but as a background it’s ample.
Take some time during your prep to be sure of your volumes (better to start quiet and then lift it a little if needed) and ensure that the link between your smart speaker and the Wi-Fi and back to your device is solid, there’s nothing more scene-breaking than faffing about with tech.
I like to spend as little time looking at screens as humanly possible whilst playing but tablets and phones are ridiculously useful for looking up obscure rules and such so I try to keep the music on a separate device, even the cheapest tablet can handle Spotify duties.
You may wish to deputise a player to look after this for you if you’re too busy, let them DJ it. This takes a lot of trust… but if you can agree milestones it can work.
Make your own sub-playlists for the moods you wish to instil and curate and label them as carefully as you can in your account, this serves several purposes:
A snap of my own sub-lists:
If you can pen your night’s adventure at the same time as listening to the pieces you will benefit not only from an emotional enhancement as you write but it will jog your memory later.
There we go, not a lot of playlists in this update but it hopefully shares some of the techniques I use to implement. Comments are open for any questions or ideas.
The most powerful changes in mood in my games are marked by the moment an arena is revealed on the mat, the minis are laid out, and whatever grumpy beasts the party have managed to vex with their shenanigans finally have their patience exhausted and strike. I like to tip this over the edge with the sudden introduction of dark and dramatic music.
Most of the very best composers of startling and aggressive music are, for me, those Russians writing on the cusp of and then the first half of the 20th century. It’s almost like there was some sort of series of deadly upheavals that influenced their art… Shostakovich, Korsakov (who mentored a lot of the others), Mussorgsky and the peerless Stravinsky all feature heavily in my combat playlist with great punching orchestral stabs, blaring warlike horns, thunderous timpani, the works.
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring blew people’s minds when it was first shown; stories of riots breaking out may or may not have been apocryphal, but it’s certain that people didn’t get it and a fair few of them made a fuss. It was like taking a bunch of One Direction fans to a Slayer gig. I was delighted to read recently that it upset Puccini, doing the Lord’s work as far as I care. It is still a challenging listen today but is packed full of deeply vivid scenes; I’ve picked out a couple of movements in my playlist list but please do listen to it all and read about the story it tells, tonnes of inspiration there. There’s a bit of a shaky recording of it danced here.
Stravinsky had a huge influence on Shostakovich, the 4th movement of his 5th symphony in D Minor is at the front of my playlist and if in doubt it’s the one I hit; I think I could probably startle a few of my players into violent Pavlovian response if I snuck up on them in their daily lives and played it on a boombox. Thematically, it’s just huge – less abstract than The Rite, but still hits some beautifully dangerous points. It does wander a little emotionally, although the underlying menace is constant, and I’ve often found that by magic the action has synchronised with the piece. The last section shifts to a triumphal major key which, if you can manage to tie to the moment of victory, feels just majestic.
You’ll hear more of the others in the list, but I also wanted to highlight some pieces from other countries and eras. Bruckner’s 8th symphony has been called “The Apocalyptic”, which is probably all you need to know, the last movement is colossal, you can really tell he was an organist the way he hits the opening, massive, heroic blasts. Totentanz by Liszt, trans. the dance of the dead, is dripping with macabre menace and uses a theme from plainsong about the day of judgement, hitting it all home hard with tumbling and aggressive piano work, very Lich.
If you want something a bit comical try The Devil’s Gallop by Williams: he was writing music for film and radio and it’s ideal for a quick moving, but not especially terrifying, light encounter. You’ll have heard it before. For a one on one duel try some Spanish guitar, Asturias by Albéniz features lunging stabs and lots of tension.
When looking for this type of music for your own lists one of the key words to look for is “minor”, minor keys are broadly associated with negative emotions. The challenge that comes with much music of this sort is that the mood can shift dramatically, so it is imperative that you listen through to any piece before using it rather than have a surprise little jolly moment halfway through a grizzly death – don’t assume that a bombastic intro tells the whole story of the piece!
If you have any recommendations for addition to the list, questions or corrections to what I’ve written, please do get in touch. I’d also love to know if there are any situations or scenarios that you need music for but just can’t find the right thing.
The hurdy-gurdy is the hideous musical lovechild of the violin, bagpipes and keyboard. It’s played by cranking a handle, which turns a wheel that excites its strings (like an infinitely long violin bow), and pressing keys which stop those strings along a fretboard to play melodies. Instruments of the type have been around for almost a thousand years.
There are a number of localised variations to the instrument; many types have drone strings, so there is a constantly held tone throughout a piece, and often there is a buzzing-bridge which adds a cutting rasp to the tone.
My favourite proponent of the instrument is Nigel Eaton; he seems to me one of those rare people who has mastered an esoteric art and then managed to ride that obscure talent to various wonderful places, he’s been in multiple films (if a casting agent needs a hurdy-gurdyist, it looks like he gets the first call) and toured with all sorts of folkish folk including Page and Plant of the sacred Zep.
From 1988 this is my favourite of his albums, it’s an absolute smasher.
How do I use this music in a game? For me the instrument cries busy town-square, evoking a feel of (occasionally discordant) noise and bustle with the merry vielist busking in the corner with their fascinating mechanical marvel.
Inspiration: Perhaps the busker, Tangol, is accompanied by her dancing sprite, Etiane, who is passing out the collection hat; maybe it has a secret; maybe they saw something happen in the square last time the drovers brought their sheep through. It was the eve of the shield-meet, wasn’t it?
What did the bard do when the party finished fighting… HE LUTED THE BODIES. Heyoo.
I like table top gaming, RPGs especially, D&D the most; the renaissance in the hobby has brought me some good/weird times and it’s nice seeing it grow like it has.
One way I’ve found to enhance my nights as Dungeon Master is to call on experiences as an amateur musician and fan, to ramp up the intensity and sense of fantasy with playlists of tunes from the history of composed and recorded music.
I realised that this might be something I was OK at when I saw our party’s rogue lost in imagination and stabbing to the beat of a bit of Shostakovich.
Over the months some of the collections I’ve curated have picked up a few followers on Spotify and upvotes on Reddit but I thought it was time to put more effort in and start writing about it:
For starters I have basic rules that I apply when researching a playlist. I break both of them, obviously, but you have to have a starting point…
No vocals: The part of my brain that works on speech can only really keep track of one conversation at a time and with role-playing an extension of the oral storytelling tradition I need that mental bandwidth free.
No computer game or film music: I fall back on well known themes it feels like they distract from the uniqueness of the world that we’re building as a group. I loved Skyrim but at the kitchen table I don’t want to be thinking about the Xbox. One of the things I’ll try to do in this blog is explore the music that has inspired the work of folk like Jeremy Soule, John Williams et al. and give you some alternative options to keep the spirit, but use it to help you craft new associations.
Enhance don’t detract: The two above rules are just extensions of this, its about making the games better not stealing the show.
In the coming weeks I will be suggesting play-lists on a weekly basis of music that I’ve used for environments, scenarios and events that I hope you might like to try out with your crew. I will be very welcoming of questions, suggestions and corrections on anything that I mess up or egregiously omit.
I’ll leave you with ~6 hours of unbelievable Lute jams. This is my overworld “a-wanderin’ in fields” list but provides a gentle backdrop to any setting so could just be put on all session for atmospherics without being intrusive.
