Want something more than bots and macros? Lord of the Rings Online offers a unique music system that allows players to compose and play their own (or anyone else’s) songs in real-time. It’s also possible to use a standard midi keyboard to interface with the game. Players can even write their own text file scripts of songs and trade or post them online and play them in-game. These cool stuff are availabe at Strategy Freaks Forum, which offered exploits, hacks, bots, macros, and a whole lot for LoTRO.
The information here is current as of the mid-June Shores of Evendim update.
Instruments and You
The instruments available are horn, clarinet, lute, flute, harp, theorbo, and drums. Each has a unique sound, and they all are capable of playing 3 octaves, but the range of the octaves varies by instrument:
FLUTE – lowest note is middle-C
CLARINET – lowest note is one octave below middle-C; however the lowest 2 notes cannot actually be played on a clarinet, so playing them results in a breath sound.
LUTE, HARP, HORN – lowest note is 2 octaves below middle-C
THEORBO – lowest note is 3 octaves below middle-C
DRUMS – not actually tuned to notes; each different “note” is a different percussion sound
So you can see, if you wanted to play a high melody, the flute or clarinet might be your choice. The lute is a good instrument for playing both accompaniments and melodies, while the theorbo would be a good bass instrument. However, only the Minstrel class can play all instruments:
BURGLAR: clarinet, lute
CAPTAIN: horn, lute
CHAMPION: horn, lute
GUARDIAN: horn, lute
HUNTER: clarinet, lute
LORE-MASTER: clarinet, lute
MINSTREL: horn, clarinet, flute, harp, lute, theorbo, drums
How Do I Learn To Play?
Unlike Mozart, players don’t pop into the world knowing how to play. Your character must be level 5 before they can learn an instrument. Your class trainer will then offer to train you individual instrument skills for 2.5 Silver each. (These will be offered under the Passive skills tab on the trainer.)
You will then need to find a Bard to purchase an instrument. These are the same Bards that let you manage your currently mastered traits. They are in many – but not all – towns. They appear as a lute icon on your radar map. Talk to the Bard, browse their merchandise, fork over 20 Silver for the instrument you’ve trained up and wander off to a remote spot so dogs won’t begin to howl when you start practicing.
In order to play an instrument, you must equip it. The instrument will equip into your ranged weapon slot. Now, type /music and hit the ENTER key. You are now in “music mode.” While in this mode, the normal key assignments of your keyboard are remapped for music. That is, your hotbar keys won’t access your hotbar – they are available to be mapped to notes on your instrument. (More on this in the next section.)
While in music mode, hitting keys 1-8 will play the notes of a C scale. This scale will be in the middle octave of whichever instrument you have equipped to play. You can hold down 2 (or more) notes to play a chord.
