You want to draw players into your DND campaign. You’re creating a soundtrack for your video game. You’re just a fan of Jeremy Soule who wants to know how to make fantasy music for fun. Wherever you’re coming from, whatever experience you have, here’s how to get started creating fantasy music, no orchestra or degree required.
You want to draw players into your DND campaign. You’re creating a soundtrack for your video game. You’re just a fan of Jeremy Soule who wants to know how to make fantasy music for fun.
Wherever you’re coming from, whatever experience you have, here’s how to get started creating fantasy music, no orchestra or degree required.
You’ve got your staples: the epic orchestral pieces of LOTR, the delicate, music-box-like pieces of Harry Potter.
But they’re not fantastical because they use certain instruments or melodies; they’re fantastical because they draw you into their respective worlds.
It’s helpful to look at creating fantasy music through this lens; more than the instruments or arrangements you use, you’re trying to immerse people in your world.
This is done with a score that:
Now, all that said, are there things that people expect of fantasy music? Absolutely.
Through centuries of storytelling, certain instruments, melodies, chord progressions, and even sound effects have come to be associated with the fantasy genre.
This is great news for you as a creator; it means you can quickly make listeners think or feel something specific just by using a certain instrument or playing a certain chord.
We’re painting in broad strokes here, but here’s how you typically see instruments associated in fantasy (storytelling in general, really):
So if you’re going for a Witcher-like pagan fantasy world? People already associate that kind of world with folk instruments; use them in your own score for quick immersion.
Play with hundreds of ambient, drum, string, orchestral, and other kinds of sounds inside Lunacy’s award-winning virtual instrument, CUBE.
Try CUBE today.
Melodies and chord progressions aren’t as tightly associated as instruments are in fantasy.
That means you don’t have as many cheat codes to quickly immerse listeners as you do when choosing instruments. But it also means you have more creative room to work and define your own sound.
But that’s not to say there aren’t any associations. For example, you’ll often hear the Lydian mode used to create a sense of wonder.
Same with Dorian-Mode for a more mysterious, medieval fantasy sound.
Minor keys also tend to give a sad or eerie vibe, whereas major keys are typically more triumphant or cheerful.
The first three notes are major keys, followed by three minor keys.
It’s a little dense, especially if you’re new to music theory, but an incredible resource for learning how music is used in video games is 8-Bit Music Theory.
And then there are the environmental, lived-in sounds of your world, also called foley.
If you’ve ever listened to a story without visual cues (audiobook, podcast, radio show, etc.), you know how big of a role these sounds play.
The crackling of leaves and branches as players travel through a forest path… the voices and chaotic street sounds of an overcrowded market… the loud breathing of a beast just woken up from a thousand-year slumber.
Foley fills in the details of your scene in a way that music by itself often can’t do. That’s why you’ll often hear a mix of music, music with foley, and foley by itself throughout the course of good fantasy storytelling.
Now let’s get to the good stuff: actually creating something.
Even without a music background, you’d be surprised how quickly you can start creating music that brings your world to life.
You don’t need a wall of instruments or an expensive studio. All you need to start are three things:
That’s it. Just with these three things (and maybe a MIDI keyboard, but you can also just use your computer keyboard), you have everything you need to play, record, and tweak your fantasy soundtrack to perfection.
Unlimited options aren’t always good for creativity. With the possibility to always try something different, it can be tough to stick with any one or group of instruments long enough to make real progress.
The fix? Narrow down your options. Marry yourself to only a few instruments (three to five) and cut out the rest. It’ll make the way forward clearer, and you’ll have an easier time making your score sound cohesive later on.
Another question to ask yourself is what subgenre your fantasy world belongs to, as some instruments lend to some subgenres better than others (at least stereotypically).
Forget the rules if you want. But when you know them, you can break them with intention.
Do the same with effects and foley. Create a “world palette” folder with subfolders for different scenarios you imagine playing out in your story. Then fill those folders with sounds matching the scenario. For example, you might have folders like:
Just like a color palette in art, this becomes your sonic signature. These sounds might be used on their own, or mixed in with your music later on.
Easily add atmosphere to your world with Haze, Lunacy’s free silky smooth chorus and phase effect.
Download Haze for free.
A song as a singular thing is intimidating. But a 7-piece puzzle you build piece by piece? A lot more doable.
Instead of sitting down with the big goal of finishing a piece from start to finish, work on each of its singular pieces instead: intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, and outro.
Or if that still seems too intimidating, lower the bar again. Create quick riffs to transition between scenes, lay down chord progressions (or even single chords) for different vibes, like triumphant, contemplative, or dangerous.
To help understand what you’re trying to create, pick a fantasy song you like and try to pick out as many parts or layers of it as you can. Try to understand the purpose of each layer. Don’t worry about the right language; it could be the seven parts of a song listed above, or as simple as strings, drums, bass, etc..
For a in-depth look at how to make music using this desconstruction method, check out this free guide by Ableton.
One part you may want to focus on creating first is your melody, even if it’s barebones (like single notes on a piano barebones). It might not feel like a lot, but a single melody can be what you build your entire soundtrack around. Just listen to Harry Potter’s soundtrack spanning dozens of songs and seven movies; it almost all builds off a single melody from Hedwig’s Theme.
You should absolutely learn music theory. You should definitely practice scales. It’s all ammo for your musical ability.
But at the same time, listen to that feeling in your gut. If something feels right, if it fits the scene perfectly, but it isn’t theoretically correct? Go for it.
Along the same lines, don’t let creation live and die in your studio; ideas aren’t always going to come when you’re sitting in front of your keyboard.
If a melody strikes you on a bus, walking home from work, wherever, don’t let it go! Hum or sing it into your phone. You can try to recreate it in your DAW later.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Don’t feel bad about taking inspiration from your favorite musicians. They were influenced by their favorite composers, and so on, going back until the beginning of time.
Listen to soundtracks, pay attention to how music is used in fantasy shows and movies, and try to recreate your favorite pieces (tutorials on YouTube are your friend).
More than trying to improve as a musician, it’s just fun learning to play your favorite songs. And more often than not, this kind of play branches out into all sorts of other, more original ideas to explore.
That’s a lot of writing for a purely auditory topic. So we’ll just leave you with this.
John Williams was where you were once. As was Howard Shore, Trent Reznor, and every other composer you can think of. They all had a day one.
With just a few tools, some rough guidelines, and a willingness to play, you can start creating original fantasy music the second you close this window.
And if you ever feel stuck along the way, revisit the soundtracks you love. Study them. Hum them. Ask yourself what they’re doing. You’ll start to hear the architecture behind the magic.
For help bringing your fantasy world to life, check out Lunacy’s award-winning instruments and effects.
If you’ve ever sat down to create something, especially something unfamiliar, you’ve probably had your brain tell you why you shouldn’t. Money, connections, luck—a million excuses flood your brain as to why it won’t work out, maybe even stopping you from even starting in the first place.
The click of a pen by itself? A boring sample. But run through granular synthesis, that same pen sample can transform into a song lead, a shimmering soundscape, and all sorts of new, beautiful instruments. It’s this nearly limitless potential that makes granular synthesis so useful for musicians, sound designers, and anyone working with sound, especially if you’re struggling with new ways to take your production.
Naturally, music production largely focuses on producing sound—hitting piano keys, holding a synth chord, strumming a guitar. But what if we told you that it’s the space around your sound, the literal physical space, that can push it from good to great? Not just great, but the kind of sound that places listeners exactly where you want them. You’re in control of the place they go to, the atmosphere and vibe around them, and maybe even the time period they picture themselves in. And it’s largely done through reverb impulse response.
