Generating Background Music for Your Game

Music sets the mood of your game. In this guide we'll generate tracks for the main parts of a game and make them work as background music that loops.

Open the music generator

Open the audio generator and choose Music Gen. Before you generate, set:

• Duration: 30, 60, 90 or 120 seconds. Short stings for menus, longer tracks for levels.
• Tempo: 80 to 200 BPM. Slow for exploration and towns, fast for chases and bosses.
• Key: any of the 24 major and minor keys, so tracks for one game can share a key.

Each track costs 10 credits, at any length, and comes back as an instrumental MP3 (no vocals).

Describe mood, genre and instruments

• Mood: calm, tense, heroic, eerie, upbeat.
• Genre: chiptune, orchestral, synthwave, lo-fi.
• Instruments: "8-bit square lead", "harp and soft strings", "driving drums and brass".

Put all three in one line: "gentle fantasy main menu theme, harp and soft strings, hopeful".

Match the music to the art

A pixel-art game usually suits chiptune or light orchestral music; a modern indie game might suit synthwave or lo-fi. Matching the era of the music to the era of the art makes the whole game feel deliberate.

Cover the key cues

• Title or menu: pleasant and unobtrusive; players sit here a while.
• Exploration: calm and atmospheric, so it doesn't tire the player.
• Combat: driving and tense.
• Boss: big and dramatic.
• Victory: a short sting.

Make it loop

Game music repeats, so the end has to run back into the start without a bump:

• Ask for it: add "loopable, steady, no ending" to the prompt.
• Keep music for long scenes steady; save big, dramatic pieces for short moments.
• Set the loop point in your engine where the transition is least audible, and add a short crossfade between areas.
• Loop it ten times and listen. If you can hear the seam or it starts to grate, try a calmer take.

Calm and intense versions

For scenes that build up, generate a calm and an intense version of the same theme in the same key and tempo, and crossfade between them as tension rises.

Mix it under the sound effects

Keep music quieter than sound effects so gameplay sounds cut through. Listen at gameplay volume, not on its own.

Free chiptune tool

To write 8-bit music note by note, the free Chiptune Creator lets you sequence patterns in any key and export a WAV.