A popular leisure time activity in Lord of the Rings Online is the Player Music System.

Music System Overview

The Player Music System gives the ability for a player to have their character play real-time, free-form music in game. Players can either create music by pressing music-mapped keys on their computer keyboard, or by reading in automatically playing an ABC Notation file. The system supports a tonal range of three octaves, allowing for a broad variety of songs which can be played.

Instruments

All classes have access to two instruments (a lute, and one other determined by class)starting at level 5, except for Minstrels, who have access to all instruments. To use an instrument, the player simply needs to equip the instrument into the characters ranged weapon slot, and activate the music system either by typing /music into the chat window, or by hitting the player-defined hot key assigned to music activation.

Basic instruments are available for purchase from any bard. Minstrels only can also use the various crafted instruments as well, available from a woodworker via looted recipes. Instruments purchased from a Minstrel Trainer cannot be used for music.

Music System Options

The following Audio Options pertain to player music:

• Quantize Player Music
  • Locks the notes onto a precise timing grid. This tends to make all but the simplest rhythms sound bad.
• Low Latency Mode
  • Plays the notes immediately when you press a key, rather than waiting for the note to be sent to the server and back.
  • Only affects what you hear from music you play by hand. Disable to hear your music as others hear it (with internet latency).
• Player Music Volume
  • Player music volume can be adjusted independently from game music volume. In addition, any other player on a player's ignore list will be individually muted for that player.

Manual Play

Manual play allows the player to create music direcly by pressing keys on their computer keyboard corresponding to musical notes.

Key Mapping

The system provides 37 musical notes (three chromatic octaves) each of which can by individually mapped to a character on the player's keyboard. These mapping apply only when the player is in player music mode. For example, if the musical note C2 was mapped to the character 1, when in player music mode, hitting the 1 key would play the note C2, while hitting the 1 when not in player music mode would still execute the skill in quickslot 1.

The game provides a default music key mapping, but each available note can be remapped by the user to suit their own needs and playing style.

MIDI Interface

At present, there is no game support for a direct MIDI interface into the Lord of the Rings Online Player Music System. However, some clever players have created interfaces that map MIDI input on their computers to keystrokes, effectively turning their MIDI devices into computer keyboards. A popular example of this is LotRO MIDI Player by Digero.

Scripted Play

Lord of the Rings Online also allows a player to play ABC Notation files from within the game by typing /play <filename> while in music mode.

ABC Files

ABC Notation is a form of music notation presented in ASCII format. In short, it's sheet music in text form. ABC files are simple text files, and can be edited using any standard text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad. For the files to be playable in Lord of the Rings Online, they need to be saved as <filename>.abc and be saved in \Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Music.

All ABC Notation music contains information fields at the top of the file, followed by the abc tune notation. Comments are started by a percent % sign. Full information on ABC Notation can be found in the abc standard V1.6.

% Information fields
X:1			% Reference Number
T:Wild Mountain Thyme	% Song title
C:Composer: Uncertain	% Composer
N:Remarks:		% Notes
Q:1/4=125		% Tempo
M:4/4			% Meter
L:1/8			% Default note length
K:C			% Key
%ABC Tune Notation
z4 c2 A2 |G3 G A2 c2 |c c3 e2 g2 |a3 g a2 g2 |e g3 e2 g2 |a4 g2 e2 |
d c3 d2 e2 |f3 e d2 c2 |A c3 c2 A2 |G4 A2 c2 |c4 e2 g2 |a3 g a2 g2 |
e g3 e2 g2 |a4 g2 e2 |d c3 d2 e2 |f3 e d2 c2 |A c3 c2 A2 |G4 A2 c2 |c4 z4 |]
%End of file

The following letters are used to represent notes:

                                               -c'- ----
                                            b
                                       -a- --- ---- ----
                                      g
------------------------------------f-------------------
                                  e
--------------------------------d-----------------------
                              c
----------------------------B---------------------------
                          A
------------------------G-------------------------------
                      F
--------------------E-----------------------------------
                  D
---- ---- ---- -C-
           B,
---- -A,-
 G,

and by extension, the notes C, D, E, F, are also available. Sharps for all the above notes except c' are likewise available.

Unsupported ABC Notation

Lord of the Rings Online's Player Music System does not support the entirety of the ABC specification. Some of the notation of ABC will be ignored by the system, other parts will cause errors. See Mechanics:ABC Notation for more information on supported and unsupported aspects of ABC notation, including workarounds for unsupported formats.

Notations which are ignored

• Changing meter, and default note length mid-tune
• Grace Notes: {b}
• Guitar Chords: "Am"
• Repeats: |: ABC :|
• Slurs: (A B)

Notations which may cause errors

• Broken Rhythyms: a>b a<b
• Double Slash: A//. Can be replaced with A/4
• First and second repeats: [1 and [2
• Special gracings (rolls, turns, etc.): ~ABC

In addition all music must be single voice (V: tags are not supported).

Notes on MIDI files converted to ABC

While it may seem a fast route to creating ABC files to play in game, the vast majority of available MIDI files contain musical constructs not supported by the Lord of the Rings Online ABC player. MIDI files are often multi-track, multi-voice, and contains things like chords and slurs which will at best sound odd, and more likely cause errors. Players should not expect that MIDI files can be converted and played in-game without sigficant editing.

Summary

The Lord of the Rings Online Player Music System offers a fun leisure time activity for players as unique as the players themselves. From an impromptu performance while waiting for a fellowship to arrive, to planned concerts, the system has something to offer players of all talent levels, and for performers, composers, and just plain music lovers alike.

Notes and References

• Official ABC Notation web site
• The Fat Lute - User Run ABC Archive.
• lotro-abc.com - ABC File Archive
• Official Music System Forums
• Music Improvisation Guide