A friend and I got on the topic of listening to in-game music vs Playlists and I figured I’d start that discussion here.
If I’m playing on Steam Deck, I tend to keep the volume off while watching a TV series with my wife or watching some YouTube Let’s Plays if she’s doing her own thing (been binging Kanajashi and Andrewmangaming for Space Engineers Survival)
On PC, I often find myself listening to a “radio” built around whatever band I’m in the mood for. Top picks for me are Poets of the Fall (favorite band), Silent Theory, and Dayseeker.
I dunno why but it’s hard for me to tolerate music I’m not absolutely in love with, so these days I mostly listen to curated lists of songs I like while I game. Those range across everything though, Japanese pop, Celtic music, Heavy Metal, Eurobeat, Classic Rock, you name it and I probably listen to it. I just don’t listen to it in randomly determined order or quality level. (It might be because I grew up listening to albums more than the radio, so I got used to listening to what I like more often than what I don’t.)
When I’m playing Last Epoch I’ll hang out on the aggressive rock music more or if it’s later at night and I’m tired, I’ll end up listening to podcasts and not concentrating on the game as much. That applies generally for most of my casual time-waste-y action games I play.
What’s weird about that is that most of the time the podcasts I listen to require me to think, stop / rewind, listen again, etc. But all of that is somehow more relaxing / less caloric than playing games to fast music. Kinda weird to notice how much more efficient the brain is compared to the body.
What podcasts do you listen to? Same with the more aggressive rock, as that’s the main genre I listen to (even if my wife likes to call it emo music haha)
Hah! That’s awesome. She has a great sense of humor.
I listen to Jordan Peterson a lot. I like to listen to Star Wars Theory, that guy’s great. He’s starting a podcast with StupendousWave here pretty soon that I’m sure I’ll tune into often. I’ll listen to an episode of WATP on occasion, if they’re covering someone particularly hilarious. I also catch Every Frame A Pause highlights sometimes for the same reason.
I used to listen to Joe Rogan infrequently but I’m not into famous people so that guest list is spotty for me, haha.
I’ve heard of Every Frame a Painting, I’m guessing that’s his podcast. I’ll have to give the star wars one a listen. I tend to watch a lot of the videos on star wars lore (as well as video game lore, love me some lore) so a podcast focused on it could be fun. Thanks for the recommendations!
Every Frame A Pause is more of a making-fun-of-the-internet type of podcast where they cover pop culture. (WATP is that also.) It’s easier to catch the highlights because those streams go for 8 hours or more sometimes.
I have a short piano & strings playlist w/ mostly Brian Crain, and I have saved the Roboquest, Grim Dawn, Farthest Frontier, and both Anno 2205 and 1800 playlists. It’s not quite classical (especially Roboquest lol) but it counts I suppose!
I also listen to a huge range of music, but my main tastes fall into the modern post-hardcore, metalcore, and nu metal genres.
Some of my favorite music is stuff from Japan / anime. Those guys actually still play music so they understand melody and composition the way classically trained musicians do.
If you ever get a hold of their traditional or more modern folk music (Enka) it is freaking wild too, some of that is really fun to listen to. Check this out if you get bored / curious enough, one of my favorites:
For myself, I am currently listening to the Stormlight Archive books by Brandon Sanderson. I really like Michael Kramer and Kate Reading as narrators since the days of Wheels of Time. Often, I listen to audiobooks I read 20 years or longer ago. Neuromancer by William Gibson and Hyperion & Endymion by Dan Simmons are waiting for my attention. Listened to the Thrawn trilogy earlier this year, something I read when they came out in the 90s.
If it is work related, it’s indy publishing. No details, as they could lead to doxxing myself. Furthermore, I am not sure if it could be considered a breach of the NDA.
I listen both to real classic (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and the like) and contemporary composers. Ludovico Einaudi is a favourite of mine.
I have no main taste, I guess. Some days I prefer soft music, other days I like power metal. Probably the reason I like Blind Guardian so much, they have such a great range of music.
Technical it is neither. The lyrics are hand made and then i use prompts with AI to generate the music. My YT will never be monotized as i use it to learn and develop skills.
If i monatized all my AI content i would probably get in a lot of trouble lol- would need to forever have no montization on all my old videos lol. I edit some of the audio myself also. That above song is 2 songs layered
Using AI is hard-harder then most people think. Especially writing part. Glad you enjoyed it. I making a fan song for Shadows X generations, and a Gamergirl song.
I made one for Last Epoch. Not up yet. Try it, jts fun at least to make music
In almost every game I turn off the music and listen to my own. I listen to mostly everything, from extreme metal to extreme electronic, jazz, blues, classical, pop, indie, etc. You can check my Last.fm if you’re curious.
I have almost 300k songs in my music library and I listen to them randomly all the time.
I can’t focus enough to listen to podcasts or audiobooks, even though I read all the time, usually about 30-50 books a year (depending on their size and flow), mostly sci-fi, fantasy or horror, though, like with music, I tend to read most everything as well.
Since you are all discussing book recommendations (well, audiobooks, but same thing), I will suggest the Death Gate Cycle, which I really love, from Weis and Hickman (the creators of the Dragonlance books, which I also love).
At first I usually enjoy the in-game music, if it’s good it can last me for a hundred hours, but after that I usually turn it off and listen to music I like.
I wouldn’t call it hard. Just like with any tool, you just need to learn the quirks and how to handle them. And that you can learn laughably fast compared to acquiring the real skill that you replace by AI.
A marathon is relatively hard, only a minority can manage that distance. On foot. If starting basically at zero training, it requires months or even years of training. I could drive that distance after my first day behind a wheel.
300k is crazy impressive! My YTMusic Likes playlist is only in the 300s (though that’s mostly because the Google Play Music playlist didn’t import when they merged the systems, I’d probably be closer to the 500-600s)
As for book recommendations, my favorite book series is the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher with honorable mentions to the duology of The Summoner and The Blood King by Gail Z. Martin and The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini (mostly nostalgia, but I also love me a good hero’s journey). The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks was a good read too, seeing how the writing got less dark and edgey between the three books matching their titles was interesting (Book 1: The Way of Shadows was really edgey and lacked any sense of hope, Book 2: Shadow’s Edge was edgey but had a lightness and sense of hope to it, and Book 3: Beyond the Shadows was barely edgey at all but was full of light and hope despite the dark setting)
Miracleofsound has some bangers, in the YouTube music genre I also enjoy covers/originals by GBSN, Colm McGuiness, and Peyton Parrish (who did a duet version with Miracle for Valhalla Calling)
I’ve been building up my library for almost 30 years now. The hardest part is just getting the tags properly filled.
Spotify would have been a good alternative for me, but for 3 main issues:
-Some stuff I like isn’t there
-I can’t say “Don’t play this song anymore”
-There is no playlist for every genres. All the suggested playlists are grouped (even if loosely) around genres. I can’t get a playlist that will play Cannibal Corpse, Skazi, Miles Davis, etc, all in the same one.
I’m going to look up those books, but I just wanted to mention that, according to wiki, it’s actually a tetralogy, with Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen released in the subsequent years.
Fantasy-wise my favourites are all from Weis and Hickman. I love almost everything they wrote, with the first 2 Dragonlance trilogies being my emotional favorites (I read them in my formative years and both Raistlin and Tasslehoff are a big part of my personality) and Death Gate being my intelectual favorite.
