Ok this is for the people who really want to add that extra dimension of awesomeness to the game. I'll try to be as clear and concise as possible, but if you have issues understanding, I'll try to explain it differently. I also want you to know that I am trying to be comprehensive as possible. The only thing I'll leave out is how to make your own song files. I've experimented with it, but I haven't gotten the hang of it yet.
Ok so the music system is pretty detailed (you'll get the hang of it) so here we go:
Instruments: All players have the ability to play at least 1-2 instruments (I think they changed it so everyone could play a lute) without a minstrel mentoring them in something else. Minstrels you might have guessed can play any instrument they darn well please because they are minstrels... fancy that. Here is a list of those instruments.
Burglar: Clarinet, Lute
Captain: Horn, Lute
Champion: Horn, Lute
Guardian: Horn, Lute
Hunter: Clarinet, Lute
Lore-master: Clarinet, Lute
Minstrel: Clarinet, Lute, Harp, Horn, Flute, Theorbo, Drum, Bagpipes, Cowbell
Rune-keeper: Clarinet, Lute
Warden: Horn, Lute
One more thing of note about instruments is that they are cheap (2 silver) and that the ones without stats can be traded and shared between people because they aren't bound.
Passive Skills and Mentoring: Like any skill you may have, playing an instrument requires that you have the passive skill/proficiency to play that instrument. This is easy enough to get since you can get this at level 5 at your skill trainer. Minstrels have a different layout since they have so many more instruments to work through.
Drum is lvl 10 for them, Theorbo is lvl 15, Bagpipes are lvl 25, and Moor Cowbell is lvl 40.
At lvl 30 minstrels get the basic mentoring skills (horn and clarinet) available to them along with the "Scribe Stance" skill. Cowbell mentoring is given somewhere around lvl 36. The other instruments require special items to grant mintrels the mentoring ability. An example of this is the Harp mentoring skill is given as a reputation reward from the Rangers of Esteldin.
I have yet to compile a complete list of where you get all of the mentoring skills, but I *do* know that if you have a thing for farming Cargul near Carn Dum and Urugarth (in Angmar) like I do, you'll know that they will occasionally drop random things like that. I'll probably go on a rampage up there (company is welcome) to see what ones I can confirm.
At any rate there are only a couple more things I could say about mentoring. The first is that the mentoring manuals cost
500s each, so if you wanna go beg a new instrument off a minstrel, please supply your own manual. You can buy them at Bards. The second thing is that minstrels have a really long linked cool down on their mentoring skills. So if you show up with 5 mentoring manuals and want all the instruments, you'll be out of luck or standing there for several days. So just keep that in mind when you want something new to play.
How to Play Music In-Game
Ok here we are getting to the part that you all want to know about. I'll go over the basics first just to make sure we all know what the heck we are doing.
So at this point I am assuming you have whatever instrument you want to play with in your inventory. Go ahead and equip it. Know that if you are not a minstrel, it will take up your ranged slot so you need to remember to re-equip your real ranged weapon before you return to fighting for the good of Middle Earth.
Now all you have to do is get into "music mode". Do this by typing "/music" in the chat window (without quotes of course) and hitting enter. Tah Dah! You are now in music mode. You should look like you are playing your instrument. But no music is coming out right?? Now you are ready to play music.
So the important thing here to note is that you can fiddle around making random note by pressing the numbered keys (1-0). I think that - and = are also included. You can also alter the scale I think by pressing "shift" or "ctrl" at the same time.
But this is all sooooo old fashioned. Let me move on and tell you how to really rock out.
How to play real songs: So in the other thread for songbooks I posted a site called "thefatlute.com". I will be talking about this site a little since this is the easiest place to get songs. You can sign up and "download" files, but they generally end up in the wrong place.
I'll pick a song and walk you through my version of the process.
Ok so I picked something off the first page. There we have the solo version of Dancing Queen, meant to be played on the lute:
Dancing Queen Solo You'll see that you can click in the box and select what we call an "ABC" file (it refers to the way music is written on a scale). "ctrl" + "A" will select all amd "ctrl" +"C" will copy the file.
Now you'll need to open the awesome program called "Notepad". All computers with Windows have it. You can find it under "accessories" (unless you just want to search the whole computer for it) sitting next to "Paint". Open it up and you'll see a big fat empty program window waiting to have things put in it. "ctrl" + "V" (paste) that file that you selected earlier into the window.
Excellent! You are halfway there.
So go up to "File" and click. Select "Save as". When that window pops up it's going to want to know where you are going to put that file. You need to put it in
My Documents->Lord of the Rings Online->Music->. You may notice that you saw your screen shots in the Lord of the Rings Online file. In the even that there isn't a "Music" folder in that Lotro folder, just make one.
Before you save, make sure that you select a title to the file that is
"one word" with no special characters. So "dancingqueensolo" rather than "Dancing!@! Queen$$ SOLO!!@&*#@". Also make sure that the file type is either text (".txt") or ".abc". It used to be that LoTRO only recognized ABC files, but now they've made .txt files readable. So I'm going to save it as a .txt file.
After you click "Save" you now have your first playable song in your Music folder.
Ok, now you have to get back into the game. (As a side note, only those with a good computer should attempt to "tab out" of the game and leave it running while you do the above".)
Equip that instrument (this song calls for a lute) and get into
music mode like we talked about earlier.
This time you are going to put
"/play dancingqueensolo" into the chat box (Or "/play ___________"<- whatever you called it, no quotes in-game). Hit enter and wait for the music to start. On the rare occasion it won't play due whatever. Sometimes I misspell stuff either when I saved it or when I typed it in. You can see the error message in the general chat tab.
Group Playing for the Advanced
Ok now that you have the hang of it, I'll talk about how to play a song with a group of people. On thefatlute.com you can sort songs by the number of written parts it has by clicking "Pts" on the Song Book page. Find a song appropriate to the number of people that will be playing.
Some songs might actually have something like 2 parts and was intended for 4 people to double up on it.
In any case, find the song you all agreed on (make sure it's by the same arranger or it won't workout) and save the part you can play. I like to specify in the title what part it is like "_______drums" or "__________winds". It just helps me remember what part I can play.
Get back in-game and make sure you are in the group that you want to play with. This can either be a fellowship or raid ( that's how they do it if you were wondering how people got 8 people syncronized).
Now type
"/play (songtitle) sync" and hit enter. In the general chat window it'll say that "______ is ready to play______". Once you are all ready, the leader or whoever feels like it, is going to type in
"/playstart". And this my friends is how you play a song all together.
You should know that if it doesn't sound like you are playing it might just be that your part has to wait till the intro or whatever is over.
So I think that is all I can think of to talk about the music system at the moment. Let me know if this makes sense to you etc... Oh, and please ask questions if you have any. I might not be able to answer them right away, but I will work on it.
Love,
~Annalethiel~
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