Hear and play music with nearby players. For the first time in World of Warcraft, your character can litterally become a bard!
Join our Discord server (EN/FR) and our Battle.net group for help, bug reports, good music and more!
Download the optional module MusicianList to add in-game loading and saving features.
Un Guide en français est également disponible. 🇫🇷🥖🍷
tl;dr
Left-click on the minimap button to open the main menu.
Type /mus help in the chat window to get the command list.
How to listen to music
All you need is to have the addon installed. Nothing more is required.
- To mute a player, right-click on his/her name or portrait to open the menu then select Mute. Do the same to unmute.
- You can also just stop the song being played by clicking the [Stop] hyperlink in the player's emote.
- Right click on the minimap button to enable or disable all the music from the addon.
How to play music
Musician plays music files in MIDI format. MIDI files have a .mid, .midi or .kar extension and do not contain any sound like MP3s, but a sequence of notes. This is why a MIDI file sounds differently according to the software or musical instrument it's played on.
You can find millions of MIDI files very easily by searching for MIDI + music genre/title/etc. on Google. I also made a selection of cool music files you can try with the addon.
How to play a song:
- Open the MIDI import tool located at musician.lenwe.io/import in your web browser. (You can also find the import tool in the Interface/AddOns/Musician/MidiConvert folder.)
- Drag and drop a MIDI file.
- Copy the generated music code by clicking the Copy button.
- Back in WoW, left-click on the minimap button to open the main menu then choose Import and play a song to open the main window (or type
/music). - Click the Select all button then paste the music code in the edit window (Ctrl+V or CMD+V on Mac).
- Click Play.
Save and load songs in game
Songs can be saved and loaded back in game using the optional addon MusicianList.
Play live
Live Mode literally turns your computer keyboard into a piano.
Click Open keyboard in the main menu or type /mus live to open the live keyboard.
Configure the keyboard
Before using the keyboard for the first time, you have configure it to determine its physical layout.
This process is straightforward and takes approximately 30 seconds to complete, just follow the on-screen instructions.
The live keyboard
The live keyboard consists in two layers, Upper and Lower, respectively the two first and two last rows of your keyboard (or the right and left side, depending on the layout used). Each layer has its own instrument setting so 2 different instruments can be played at the same time or the same instrument can be set to both layers to take advantage of the full keyboard.
Various keyboard layouts are available, including simplified ones with limited notes but a wider range of keys.
In Live Mode, the other players hear you playing while in Solo Mode, you play for yourself. In Live Mode, keep in mind that if you hear the sound playing instantly at the press of the key, the other players will hear it after a slight delay of approximately 2 seconds.
The keyboard settings can be saved in 12 program slots, accessible using the 12 Function keys:
- Press the Function key to load a program.
- Press Ctrl (or Shift on Mac) + the Function key to save the current settings in a program.
- Press Delete + the Function key to erase a program.
Play with a MIDI keyboard
There is no support for MIDI keyboards in World of Warcraft. However, it's possible to emulate keystrokes with a MIDI keyboard using third party software. Check out this tutorial to learn how to do this.
Song editor
Some basic modifications can be made to the imported song in the song editor, which is accessible from the Edit button or the main menu:
- Set start and end points, to use a part of the song
- Mute and solo tracks
- Change track instruments
- Transpose tracks
The song editor also shows some information about the tracks (MIDI instrument, start and end points, number of notes...) and the activity while the song is playing.
Tips
- You can preview the song at any moment prior to playing it for other players by clicking the Preview button or using the song editor. If another song is playing nearby, it will be muted for you only.
- If another player has Musician, it will be shown in his/her tooltip. Just hover the other players with your mouse cursor to see who can hear you!
- You can add lyrics by combining Musician with the StoryTeller addon!
- Load the next song while the current one is playing to reduce waiting time between songs.
- The radius for hearing the music is approximately 40 meters.
- Play songs that are relevant with your "band" composition. It's nonsense to play orchestral music with only two bards ! 😃 However you can still roleplay as if your character owns a kind of gnomish Music-o-Matic machine that is capable of reproducing a whole band.
- A text emote is shown to the players who don't have Musician when you play a song. You can disable this emote in the add-on options.
Compose your own music
You can compose music for Musician using any MIDI sequencer such as LMMS.
The 16 instruments available are:
- Bagpipe (109)
- Bassoon (70)
- Cello (42)
- Clarinet (71)
- Dulcimer (15)
- Male voice (52 Choir Aahs)
- Female voice (53 Voice Oohs)
- Fiddle (110)
- Harp (46)
- Lute (24 Acoustic guitar)
- Recorder (74)
- Trombone (57)
- Trumpet (56)
And also:
- Distorsion guitar (29)
- Clean Guitar (27)
- Bass guitar (33 Fingered bass)
The other instruments are mapped to the closest-sounding instrument among the 16 available (violin → fiddle, piano → dulcimer, guitar → lute etc.).
The drum kits are replaced by traditional percussions such as a bodhrán (frame drum), a tambourine and a shaker. A standard drum kit is also available for heavy metal songs.
Check the full mapping in Musician.MidiMapping.lua for details.
Unfortunately, due to limitations of the WoW UI, velocity and controls (volume, padding, pitch bend, modulation...) are not supported. The polypohony is roughly 12 notes.
Limitations and known issues
This addon is still experimental. Here is a summary of the problems you may encounter:
- There is no support for velocity and modulation. This is actually not possible with the WoW UI.
- It is NOT possible to play live with other players since the other players do not hear what you play instantly but only after 1 or 2 seconds.
- Sound latency may be experienced with the live keyboard on Windows, depending on your sound card model and drivers.
- Wait for the preloading process to complete before playing to ensure good conditions.
- Music playing relies on the refresh rate of the screen so stuttering may occur on slower computers. Adjust your settings to maintain a framerate above 30 FPS for good results.
- The polyphony is limited, some notes may drop if there are too many playing at the same time.
- Songs having an overly high note rate may stutter.
- Clipping may occur for some songs if you have all your volume settings maxed out. Just reduce in-game volume to avoid this.
Just want to reiterate the need for an option to hide the minimap button.
OK, my ego is strong enough to believe that MY random ass MIDI music is preferable to Blizz's random ass MIDI music. I hesitate to turn on the jukebox and then have to tell everyone in a 40 meter circle that it is me playing. IN OTHER WORDS, how do I make the 'toon change appearance
to show his virtuosity, like in this picture?
C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\WoW/Dorf Bard.jpg
In reply to ukelan:
There is no way to change your appearance unfortunately.
ATM (v1.5.0.4), the only way to let know the other players you are playing is the emote shown in the chat "Ukelan is playing music."
I'm working on custom name plates for Musician for the next release that will show who can hear you and an animation above the name plates for the ones who are actually playing music.
i can't configure my keyboard. i got enter in 14 row 2 and in 13 row 3, but when i try to put enter in both of them, the other one disappears. and i only got 10 keys in row 4 and i can't put shift in 12.
In reply to agnesius:
If you have a keyboard with the big ENTER key that overlaps 3 key slots you can only enter one , this is not a problem, you can leave one key slot blank.
About the Shift key, you probably did something wrong, ensure that the layout you entered is exactly the same as your keyboard (the keys should be in the same position)
Also, on Mac the shift key is optional because it causes some issues when playing live.
In reply to LenweSaralonde:
i tried like 5 times and there is nothing to put in 12
In reply to LenweSaralonde:
In reply to agnesius:
nevermind i didn't see that i could put shift in 2 :D
I've just downloaded the add-on and, while the midi conversion seems flawless, it plays the song(s) so fast it sounds like a bunch of random high-pitched notes. Is there any particular way to fix this?
In reply to Exxceleron:
This looks like an issue with the song. Could you please send me the MIDI file you're using ?
Since the recent Reddit post, some players are complaining about the emote inviting other players to download the addon that is sent every time you press the Play button.
The emote has been reworked to be less spammy in the latest version 1.5.0.4. You can also disable it in the options.
In reply to LenweSaralonde:
Hey, mind if you change the settings in the next release to have the spam off by default? It's *extremely* annoying and definitely preventing me from checking the mod out because of the endless spam I get from other people.
Really cool addon, but every time you play a song or even a note it spams your friends with an emote reading:
"*<Character name> is playing a song. (Get "Musician" add-on or ugprade it from [https://lenwe.info/muscian] to listen!)"
Very annoying, and I was completely unaware that the addon was doing it until some guildmates who don't have the addon got very mad at me about how annoying they found the spam.
for the keyboard thing, it wants 12 keys on row 4 there, but... i literally dont have 12 keys. I just have z x c v b n m , . / then Shift. Like, for key 13 i can just press shift since i dont have that either, but... 12 wont let me bypass. Makes this whole keyboard thing unusable... i've honestly never seen a keyboard that doesnt have this configuration. What key would even go in slot 12? I'm very confused.
Edit: I've just noticed the 2nd slot there has "may be the same as shift" too. A little strange placement there, but... okay. Please disregard this lol
You should add a playlist/queue function. Can start with just a simple command for "queue", then expand upon it to create playlists.
/mus queue songNumber
In reply to journaladdon:
I made a module to store songs in-game :
https://wow.curseforge.com/projects/musicianlist
It does not support playlist or queue but you may be able to achieve something similar with macros.
For example, to play songs number 1, 6, 14, 3 and 7 in the song list you can do something like this :
/run local playlist = {1, 6, 14, 3, 7}; MUS_PLAYLIST_INDEX = ((MUS_PLAYLIST_INDEX or 0) % #playlist) + 1; MusicianList.Load(playlist[MUS_PLAYLIST_INDEX], 2, true)The next song in the playlist should play each time you run the macro.
Need an option to hide the minimap icon.
Better yet, have it work with addons like SexyMap so the minimap icon can only display when cursor is hovering over minimap.
How did you get the characters in the trailer to have instruments? I want a lute for my Forsaken.
Super addon, merci LenweSaralonde !
Can we get an option to save the songs source code that we copy paste, so that we don't have to keep reloading our songs over and over again?
In reply to Xathar1:
BTW, this would require a lot or RAM to store all those files.