Where to get some fine game music?

G

Grand Nagus

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Jan 7, 2004
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Hey guys.

I know this is a touchy topic on some forums ('Aah! Freak! Wants us to help him find warez and mp3z!? Get the pitchforks and torches!'), but this is actually a legit and 'legally OK' question. :D

I've been looking all over the web for royalty-free music that's free to download. What I haven't been looking for is 'illegal music' (I may want to freely distribute this game someday with NO LEGAL FRIGGIN REPERCUSSIONS), so I don't want to hear 'Did you try Kazaa? Did you try Napster?'. I've found a lot of 'pay $100 for a year membership and download all you want' sites, but couldn't find any sites that offered royalty-free music that's free for the taking... I don't want to pay $100 and find out that the site is all 'elevator music' :p . I've found loads o' sites with sound effects, so now when I shoot my weapons I hear aural feedback. But my game's lacking in the background music department.

Can anybody help me with finding music for my 'Life Force'-esque space shoot-em-up game? The help would be much appreciated! :)

PS: Sorry about my somewhat brutally specific request... I've asked this same sort of question when modding and actually got the response of 'Did you try <insert favorite piracy app here>'... Guess they don't realise that you can't distribute your piece of work with PIRATED elements in it (music, textures, etc). Sheesh!
 
I would have to agree with you

Getting good royalty free music is really hard my solution was to turn to one of my childhood friends who composes music as a hobby and he's doing it for me, maybe download a systhesiser program and make your own i guess might be the best bet.
 
You'll probably have better luck converting a MIDI file and recording it as a WAV file, and then using some software to convert a WAV to an MP3. (I'll bet there are oodles)
I make MIDI files and you have a better chance of finding those... http://www.vgmusic.com/ for example... then you convert them... if your soundcard isn't crappy. :)
 
Cool, I'll try the midi thing. I have a Yamaha XG midi box sitting in the attic; guess I'll climb up there and dust it off (I'm a better coder than I am a musical composer, and I'm not a very good coder, so I guess that doesn't say much about my musical abilities...). Thanks for the help, guys!

Hey Iceplug, how do you get DirectX to play a MP3? I have plenty of software and wav editing tools to create a good-sounding MP3, but when I load an MP3 file with this code:
g_pLoader->LoadObjectFromFile(CLSID_DirectMusicSegment, IID_IDirectMusicSegment8, MusicFile.SoundName, (LPVOID*) &MusicFile.g_pSegment )
after initializing DirectMusic thru this function:
g_pPerformance->InitAudio( NULL, NULL, NULL, DMUS_APATH_DYNAMIC_STEREO, DMUS_APATH_SHARED_STEREOPLUSREVERB, 64, DMUS_AUDIOF_ALL, NULL )
I get an error... But if I load a .wav file, it loads and plays it just fine. How do I get the above code to load an MP3 file? Or is there something else I should be doing to play MP3's in my games? If you could help me out on this, I would REALLY appreciate it. :) Thanks in advance for the help!
 
I think DirectMusic is only for playing MIDI and SEG files... you'll probably have to use DirectShow for playing an MP3 file.
(DirectPlay is for external gaming, DirectInput is for controller peripherals).
 
Thanks for the response, Iceplug. Actually, I played around with my wav editing program and found an option to get my 10mb wav musicfile down to 2mb (wow!) using an 'ADPCM' option. The finished result doesn't sound much different from an mp3 file, either! Pretty cool stuff!

Thanks again! Well, back to work... Let's see how bad I can crash my computer (again) using C++ today! :D
 
I believe that ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) files work the same as an MP3. They cut out the really high and low frequencies that humans can't hear. Incidently this is what the Sony Mini Disc uses to compress data.
 
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