When you mute in-game music, what do you listen to?

[octavius]

Depends on the game. In games with first person view where sound is an integral part of the experience music is just distracting and I turn it off. Music would be totally inappropriate in Thief 1 and 2, for example.
For other games I usually use the default music, but at a lower volume than the sound effects, although I always crank it up if it's especially good pieces like the Haven theme in HoMM 5.
If using custom music, it's prog like Yes, King Crimson or Procol Harum, or prog metal like old Iron Maiden.
Since I'm a combatfag Gates of Delirium by Yes is an obvious favourite.

 

[mck]

I rarely turn off the in-game music, but when I do I usually listen to Pink Floyd. "Animals" is probably my favorite album to leave on while I play games.

 

[Zeus]

This has become one of my favorites:

http://www.adultswim.com/music/ghostlyswim/index.html

Free album from Adult Swim. If you're familiar with their bump music, it's sort of like that. Some of the songs remind me of Tipsy, others like subdued They Might Be Giants. It tends to melt into the background.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I usually play with the game music on, but in a few cases like MMOs or really old games, I'll generally turn all sound off and listen to my backlog of podcasts or put iTunes on shuffle.

 

[Excommunicator]

I never mute ingame music, it is an integral part of the game.

Completely agree with the sentiment here except sometimes I mute the music when it gets repetitive. A recent example of that is Gothic 3. The soundtrack is fantastic and I have always enjoyed listening to the music outside of the game, but I have never before experienced a game where the music gets so gratingly repetitive so quickly. The soundtrack just wasn't appropriately designed to fit the game context of looping and stop-start repetition so I turned it off almost immediately.

There is a very important lesson to be learned here about the very specific way in which game music should be composed, and how different its structure needs to be compared to the likes of pop and film music. Mount&Blade is another game where this happened (to a lesser extent though), and a similar thing happened with Morrowind despite most of the music being perfectly designed for a game context, simply because there was no contextual music, and that everything would play over and over in every area. The combat music was the worst offender because it was all the same. Arcanum is another; there's just no variation in it.

Still, I would never do something as extreme as play music from another source in the game and continue on playing. I always believe in a pure game experience, and if there is to be no music then it must be the original sound effects and ambiance tracks only.

 

[octavius]

Few things feel more stupid in first person view games than sudden "battle music" alerting you to enemies. It's far more immersive if you suddenly hear an enemy behind you and you instinctively swirl around and raise your shield to meet the attack.

 

[circ]

Female fart sounds.

 

[Turisas]

 

[canakin]

Conan the Barbarian OST if the game involves lots of machete rape. Classical stuff otherwise, like Wagner in strategies and Pachelbel in happier games.

 

[DraQ]

In-game sounds?

I never mute ingame music, it is an integral part of the game.

This.

But generally this.

 

[funkadelik]

In competitive multiplayer games like BF3 or SC2 I listen to thrash metal. If the game has a really good soundtrack I will leave it as is but if it is shitty I will just listen to anything I feel like at the moment. I cannot remember most ingame music though, Zelda is the only series that stamped it's music into my brain.

 

[EmoBunny]

Tchaikovsky and NWA

 

[Morkar Left]

Most of the time I mute the ingame music and listen only to the soundeffects. Sometimes if the music isn't obtrusive I listen to the original soundtrack. But I can't stand having vocals in backgroundmusic and prefer music that stays in the background.

At the moment I'm really annoyed from the way Startrail handles the music. The music is pretty good and fitting and I would like to keep hearing it but the constant restarting/changing of a track when you open another menuscreen is frustrating. It was already in Blade of Destiny but less distracting (plus I liked the soundtrack more). Maybe I will just rip the files and play the music separately...

For spacesims I mostly listen to ambient music or the Firefly/Serenity soundtrack and other wild west music. For some old rpgs with terrible sound I go with a mix of music melodies (Conan, PotC, etc. but mostly from other games like EU3 etc.). One of my favourites for this is the soundtrack from the Amiga Hero Quest game (the table top adaption); simple, oldschool, nostalgic and hypnotic without distracting from the actual game.

 

[kingcomrade]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXtD3Pt0QNo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT16DTEAuMM

I rarely listen to music, but this is the sort I like. Especially the second

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Dark ambient. I'd like recommendations.

 

[Norfleet]

The sound of silence. Or, more specifically, the sound of how old I am, since I don't actually get silence anymore. If nothing is making noise, I still pick up static. Weirdly, sometimes I can hear radio.

 

[Derek Larp]

Dark ambient. I'd like recommendations.

Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse. At least I think it's dark ambient, mostly just droning noises that generate an ominous mood, and they have like 100 hour long tracks on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcFAJXk-ErgO4uPXZqzf9YA

Also search for Dark Ritual Ambient Mix on YT. There's 6 or so of them. Like them very much :D



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Edit: added sum linx

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Dark ambient. I'd like recommendations.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

But anyhow, when I do mute a game, then I'm more often than not listening to podcasts or other long form stuff on YT.

 

[Spukrian]

Shoegaze, maybe some ambient...

 

[ScepticCat]

I rarely mute an original music, only if it's completely boring or if a same sample is repeating endlessly and I can't dive deep into atmosphere. Of course there're some exceptions: as a rookie in hardcore RPG gaming, I was listening gachi when I was playing in Underrail, because this sort of music describes the experience that I had quite well.

 

[Shadowfang]

I sometimes hear the cries of fellow codexers telling me to turn it back on, but other than that mostly podcasts.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I tend to only do this when it's a game that I play all the time or know extremely well that requires a lot of redundant, low-attention activity. Sometimes I throw on a Blind Guardian playlist when farming in Guild Wars for instance. Other times, I'll replace the soundtrack entirely if I know that there's an objectively superior option that abides by the setting of the game. For Conan Exiles, I threw on the film soundtracks along with some choice Throne of Bhaal tracks and other assorted bombastic RPG music.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Since the music in Kingdom Come: Deliverance was rather bland and repetitive, I dropped it in favor of Smetana and Dvorak. Extremely rare for me to mute in-game music, though, even if the quality leaves something to be desired.

 

[wishbonetail]

Radio Psyndora.