Thoughts on the LOTRO music system and a Courserrim band

[Briallan]

NOTE: This post was written some time ago, when we were all learning about the music system. Although this thread still contains some information that is not covered elsewhere, and has been updated for accuracy, you should really read Siltharan's later post which presents a tutorial on how to play music by yourself, how to play in a band, and how to create LOTRO music files using Digero's Maestro tool. I am locking this thread, since all issues in it should be covered by other forum discussions at this point.

Thanks to George/Krohkur for posting a lot of info about LOTRO music on Facebook and the course forums, and to Siltharan for getting the ball rolling toward getting a band together!

I would like to add a few thoughts as well, in the form of a summary of info from various sources, for people who are newbs to the music system. Since I’m a newb as well, I’d appreciate any corrections if I’ve got some of this wrong. This might help people decide which of George’s links they might want to dig into further. Also, the last section of this post contains some suggestions for activity you might engage in to get band activity rolling.

The music system can be utilized at varying levels of complexity, as follows:

One-man band

just put an ABC file you want to play in your “My Documents \ The Lord of the Rings Online \ Music” folder (let’s say it’s freebird.abc). Type /music into the chat window to equip your instrument and enter music mode, and then type /play freebird.abc, and beautiful music ensues.

Duet or trio

The difference from the one-man band situation is that each band member has a different version of freebird.abc in their music folder (e.g., if the band consisted of a lute, a horn, and a drum, the lute player would have the lute part for the song; the drummer would have the drum part, etc.). To play, each band member types /play freebird.abc sync, and then any band member types /playstart, and everyone starts playing at once.

Larger bands

In theory, an 8 or 10 person band is no different from a duet or trio, but the main problem is that the more people you have in the band, the more likely that someone who was supposed to play at a scheduled concert or rehearsal event isn’t available, due to some RL (real-life) issue, like having to work late or take their cat to the vet.

One solution is to have additional players on standby to fill-in, with some characters who can play a wide variety of instruments.

A second solution is for the players in the band to have alt characters on different accounts available on standby. Thus, your main character and alts might be on your VIP account, but you would also have created an alt character on a free-to-play account whose primary purpose is to fill-in at band events as needed. So if some player is missing, you logon to a second computer, walk your alt into position, type /play freebird.abc sync, go back to you main computer and do the same with your main character. This is known in MMORPG-speak as multiboxing.

Do you really need a large band?

No, music can be played to pleasing effect by any-sized band.

However, let’s say you want to play a Beatles song that is fairly close to the original arrangement – you would need, say, 4 band members? No, you would need more. A band member in LOTRO can only play one instrument at a time, and the melody and harmony (or, if you prefer, vocal and backup vocals) would each need to be performed by a distinct band member. Thus a band playing a typical Beatles song might consist of:

Lute – lead guitar role
Lute – rhythm guitar role
Theorbo – bass guitar role
Drum
Clarinet – lead vocal
Horn – back up vocal

.. or even more instruments, if want to simulate some more complex instrumentation that might be added by studio musicians on the recorded version of a song.

This is why you often see eight or more band members in many band performances.

What does my character need to do to play music?

First, your character must be trained in the use of that instrument.

At level 1, a character will generally be able to play a lute and one other instrument (either a horn or a clarinet depending on their class). Level 1 minstrels can play additional instruments, and eventually learn them all as they go up in level. Non-minstrel characters can be trained to play all instruments by minstrels with some restrictions:
• for both minstrels and non-minstrels, there are level requirements you need to meet to play certain instruments, e.g., you need to be Lvl 10 to play the drum
• although a minstrel can play a particular instrument at a fairly low experience level, the minstrel needs to be about 30 levels higher to train someone else to play that instrument

Second, your character needs to have the physical instruments that he is trained to use; these are purchasable from Bards.

Creating ABC files

ABC files are just text files which contains a form of musical notation. In theory, ABC files can be created by hand. In practice, they are often created by a stand-alone program or plug-in, such as Digero’s Maestro, that allows the user to convert a MIDI (.MID) file into a multi-part ABC file, with one or more MIDI tracks being mapped to a single LOTRO instrument part, thus creating all band members' parts at once from a single MIDI file. Digero's ABC player (which is bundled with Maestro) can then be used to play the resulting ABC file to see what it actually would sound like when it is played in-game.
 
Non-ABC music

There are other ways of making music: you can play notes directly using the keyboard (works OK for solos, but there isn’t a good way of syncing multiple band members using this method); also you can play MIDI files directly in the game (i.e., instead of ABC files) if you use a plug-in by Digero.

Suggestions

Thus, to those who have ambitions of doing concerts and having more musical activity in general, as part of the Courserrim activities (regardless of which kinship you actually belong to), you might consider some or all of the following:
• Reply to Siltharan’s original post in the Kinship Activities thread seeking info about your character, instrument, song-preferences and what time of day you typically play LOTRO, since in-game coordination is needed for anything other than one-man bands
• Check out the music links that George posted to the Landroval Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Online-Games-Coursera-Lotro-Landroval/595484307162126 ; one additional reference (which may exist somewhere deep within one of George’s many links) is the LOTRO wiki music system overview: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Music
• Get training from minstrels for instruments you can’t yet play but would like to
• Buy instruments that you want to play – most instruments cost only 2 silver; maybe we could keep some extras in kin chests, though that might not be the best use of space.
• Create alt characters on a second or even third free-to-play account for multi-boxing; typically this would be a minstrel character for greatest flexibility; even at very low experience levels, such characters can be very useful

[Briallan]

OK, I screwed up -- I meant to post this in the kinship activities thread -- sorry!

[Siltharan]

Not a problem. I'll link to this post in my thread, as well as add in the question about when people are available/online, as you suggested.

[Trower]

Trower is now able to mentor the Clarinet, Horn and Pibgorn. Give a shout if you're intersted in learning any of these instruments.

~Trower

[Ice Weasel]

This link is a public shared folder that I'm dropping some stuff in... ABC files, all.

Some (the Multi1.rar archive) haven't been tested and may need some tweaks.

The ClassRock.rar has some Beatles, Zepplin, CSNY, and Simon and Garfunkle, among others.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Link added. (I'm getting old...)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qtdsank13wfq4c1/yBnAzIuaWh

[Briallan]

Thanks for putting all this stuff together for us! Once course activities are done, I'm hoping to focus more on band activity, including testing some of the ABCs that you, I and others have been creating.

I think you forgot to add the actual link in your post -- could you edit your post to include it, please?

[Ice Weasel]

Briallan wrote:

I think you forgot to add the actual link in your post -- could you edit your post to include it, please?

DOH!
Yes, indeed, the grey hair beat the grey cells there.


Post is edited to add the actual link. Thanks for the catch, Briallan!

You might be able to tell, but I love the music system in LOTRO. I've never heard or seen anything like it in any other game.

I am a pretty terrible musician in real life. I do best editing midi or digital audio files, but I can noodle a line or two on a keyboard or a *very* limited (and painfully produced) number of tunes on a guitar, but mostly I've not had the time or dedication to practice anything and become adequate.

LOTRO lets my characters be musical dynamos, and play in concert solo or in groups, or perched on a lonely rock out in the world, serenading the sunset or rising moon... A romantic frustrated musician's dream!

[Branndl]

Thanks for all of this info! I've wondered how people knew how to play such great tunes in game, and to play together so well!  :-)

[Briallan]

I have updated the original post of this thread to account for the more deeper understanding of the LOTRO music system I've acquired over the past weeks. That original post is now, AFAIK, accurate, and gives a good overview of certain topics related to the LOTRO music system. However you should definitely check out Siltharan's more recent post, which not only covers the basics, but provides detailed info on how to use the Songbook (which we use in the Courserrim band) and how to use Digero's Maestro tool.

[Siltharan]

There's some overlap now between my detailed tutorial and your overview of the LOTRO music system. So if anyone wants to get more in-depth how-tos, check out my stickied tutorial. :)

[Briallan]

That's right. My older post was geared toward getting people to start thinking about a band, while I view yours as more of a hands-on practical guide for people who are interested in playing in the band that we've now started.

The reason I updated my post rather than delete it is that it does contain a few topics that might still be of interest and are not covered elsewhere, so in that sense it's complementary to your tutorial. But I wanted to link to your post to make people found it if they happened on my post first, since your tutorial is more relevant and more timely to our current situation. In fact, I'll edit my initial post to link directly to yours, and I will no long update mine except to correct erroneous or out-of-date info.

In fact :) what I was thinking is that we really should have a wiki that combines in one place all the relevant info that's of use to our band members .... but, that would probably involved combining relevant posts from our forums with excerpts from related forums and wikis .. so I'm not ready to tackle that at this point. I'm hoping that keeping all our music stuff in a single forum is a good enough way of getting the right info to people interested in our band activities.