Music is pretty vital to my experience, but I've never used it as atmospheric stuff for games. I do, however, occasionally have -a song- that I must listen to occasionally.
One of the most common songs that pops up as an 'This situation requires this song' moment is Fighting Trousers.
Grooveshark has shown me such amazing things that I couldn't find elsewhere, and serves as a wonderful playlist when I don't have access to my own.
Also, it's better than Pandora, because it doesn't A ) put really random, entirely unrelated things into their stations B ) limit your skips C ) only work in 'merica.
I can't stand to listen to lyrics while roleplaying, so I have a playlist that is a combination of classical, opera and movie soundtracks for that. The rest of the time, if I am writing, sketching, or bashing, I listen to stuff like this:
I need sound when playing. I get freaked out without music in the background.
When I'm writing stuff in large chunks and need to concentrate, I put on fairly ambient background music. I have a station called moonmountainwaterhippienoise on pandora that has just a lot of peaceful new age stuff.
When I'm doing RP or coding, I tend to listen to fairly soft stuff and if I find a song that seems to match the scene really well, I will literally just play it over and over on repeat. Damien Rice gets played a lot.
When I'm bashing or just muddling around, I like turntable or upbeat stuff. Electronic, dubstep, pop, hip hop, rock, pretty open there.
When I'm PKing, I need either stuff with a decent tempo and little to no lyrics (rattatat or crystal castles is perfect, so is symphonic instrumental metal or movie scores) OR something very mellow that can melt into the background.
Example PK tunes:
(most epic beat drop I've ever heard - 3:04)
Adrian von Ziegler is pretty great if you want some ambient Aetolian music. His stuff really seems to fit the dark fantasy theme well and I play him on loop every now and then:
My personal music tastes tend toward the "sad boy with guitar" stereotypes.
When I'm coding, I put on something mindless in the background. Random Hulu shows are great if I don't care about plot details. Reality shows are fantastic and competitive LoL streams too.
Right now I'm not able to use my big desktop setup so I can't multitask that well, so I throw Maury on the TV if I'm not at my job.
Comments
No but really, I'm a fan of rap music. Have you listened to MF DOOM? You need to listen to MF DOOM.
http://turntable.fm/4f6a1378a3f7517491000823
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35skkjcpuyY (Exploring)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51K4cUTuvc0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMN8uJNboSY