MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online Correspondent Jim Braner writes this overview of the music system in Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online.

If you have spent any time running around Middle Earth with your speakers on, you have heard the various tunes and kinds of music around. The Shire with its warm Celtic feel, the Lone Lands with its... well I can't actually remember what kind of music it has. Memorable or not, you can make music too! We have all seen Minstrels with their lutes and harps in battle and various players in seemingly random spots playing away. Besides the lute and harp there is also the theorbo, clarinet, horn, cow bell, drum, flute, and bagpipes. Each class has passive skills purchasable from their trainer for two of those instruments; except Minstrels who can purchase passive skills for them all. Each passive instrument skill will cost you 2 silver and 50 copper.

After you purchase the passive skill, you need the instrument that goes with it. Head to any Bard for that. The Bard in the Prancing Pony in Bree is easy enough to get to if you don't happen to remember where any others are.

Read The Sound of Music in LotRO

Ah LOTRO music, was once a good, skillful concept. Until they added the ABC thing... then after that you had all these skilless ninnies playing sweet child o mine and the benny hill theme tune, what a load of bollocks!

hilarious picture

Personally, I was quite thankful for the Player Volume Control.  When I hit Bree for the first time, I panicked and luckily someone in my vicinity was able to tell me how I could remove player music entirely. Whew!

Personally I think the ingame music system is one of the highlights of LotRO. Many hours can be spent around the mailbox by the Prancing Pony playing Name That Tune. It's a lot of fun and quite relaxing.

As for commenters above, Aramanu() should be thankful that the "skilless ninnies" can input a ABC file to play. If not for that, you would most like be doing what Samhael is doing

A seemingly not often known fact that should be noted is that Synchronized playing works across a full raid!  

that's right- you can have up to TWENTY FOUR PLAYERS synchronized on the same musical piece!!!   i've yet to see or hear of anyone pulling such an event off, but it would be amazing if done right!  personally, i have synched up with 9 players on a piece, and i have created my own .abc version of a song that has 12 individual parts!  (alas, haven't yet gotten to test it tho )

Originally posted by Aramanu

Ah LOTRO music, was once a good, skillful concept. Until they added the ABC thing... then after that you had all these skilless ninnies playing sweet child o mine and the benny hill theme tune, what a load of bollocks!

Aramanu, you need a different server. It's no secret that certain servers in LotRO seem to favor the butt-monkey idiots, while others don't. Just gotta look around until you find a happier home.

Originally posted by amariedan

A seemingly not often known fact that should be noted is that Synchronized playing works across a full raid!  

that's right- you can have up to TWENTY FOUR PLAYERS synchronized on the same musical piece!!!   i've yet to see or hear of anyone pulling such an event off, but it would be amazing if done right!  personally, i have synched up with 9 players on a piece, and i have created my own .abc version of a song that has 12 individual parts!  (alas, haven't yet gotten to test it tho )

I was wondering if a synchronized raid would work!  I wanted test it out and mention it for sure in the article but wasn't able to muster up enough people to try it out.  I imagine a humble symphony played in lotro being amazing to hear AND see!

Originally posted by amaller

Originally posted by amariedan

A seemingly not often known fact that should be noted is that Synchronized playing works across a full raid!  

that's right- you can have up to TWENTY FOUR PLAYERS synchronized on the same musical piece!!!   i've yet to see or hear of anyone pulling such an event off, but it would be amazing if done right!  personally, i have synched up with 9 players on a piece, and i have created my own .abc version of a song that has 12 individual parts!  (alas, haven't yet gotten to test it tho )

 

I was wondering if a synchronized raid would work!  I wanted test it out and mention it for sure in the article but wasn't able to muster up enough people to try it out.  I imagine a humble symphony played in lotro being amazing to hear AND see!

aye, if only they'd give us some good string instuments that can sustain lengthy notes like a violin!

the particular 9 piece song i took part in was Snow by RHCP, sounded prety wicked, but wasnt my own rendition.  the 12 piece i have and want to test someday is a rendition of I've Goth Rhythm, from the musical Crazy For You.  i've tested the individual "tracks" but havent managed to get enough kin/friends to test the sync up

Originally posted by amariedan

aye, if only they'd give us some good string instuments that can sustain lengthy notes like a violin!

 

the particular 9 piece song i took part in was Snow by RHCP, sounded prety wicked, but wasnt my own rendition.  the 12 piece i have and want to test someday is a rendition of I've Goth Rhythm, from the musical Crazy For You.  i've tested the individual "tracks" but havent managed to get enough kin/friends to test the sync up

Some sustain would be VERY nice!  And I would of loved to hear that rendition of Snow, very cool.

I am trying to get a character/server list going.  Maybe with enough people intersted here you can get your 12 people. :)

Character/Server List Thread
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/212809

1. I do like the Music-system and the ABC-system too

2. I like to play songs that sound best with multi-instruments..

3. Its VERY difficult to arrange a group with the same (good-sounding) songfiles

4. We HAD the possibility to play multi-part in sync songs like /play name # sync

5. Since book 12 (Vol I) this did not work any more

6. Now you have to place each part in a different songfile which makes it almost impossible to manage...

7. Any1 recognizes this ?

I just love to stand at the Prancing Pony and playing Princess Leia tune, or some Dubliners hit or sometimes even Yakety Sax, lol. A tune for every mood. These days we have bands playinf christmas tunes. Very nice. I love that feature. A little bit hilarity included. ;)

Just any case someone doesn't know as well. If you type /playlist  all the songs in that music folder will be listed in the text window. Then you can just copy/paste the file you want add in the extension .abc and voila!

Love the music system, both for composing and the abc files. So great for RPing opportunities.