Ludo Fighters has a battle march under every match, plus three short stings. None of it was recorded in a studio, and none of it comes from a music library or an AI service. Every note was made in code.
Why make music in code?
Two reasons. First, we own every part of it, so there is nothing to license and nothing to credit. Second, music written as code is easy to change: adjust a few numbers and make it again.
The instruments
Each instrument is built from scratch: our own drum, taiko, bass, pad, pluck and brass voices. There are no samples. A snare is filtered noise with a fast decay. A taiko hit is a low pitched thump. The brass is a stack of tones shaped to swell and fade.
The battle loop
The main track is a 30-second loop at 128 BPM in E minor. That is 16 bars, built so the end joins the start without a seam, so it can play under a long match without a noticeable restart.
- A marching snare keeps the beat moving.
- Taiko hits give it weight.
- Low brass comes in for the middle four bars, then drops out again.
It plays quietly, under the game. The dice, the boots and the shots should always be clearer than the music.
The stings
- Fight: a two-second sting when a gun fight starts.
- Victory: a fanfare that ends in E major, for a match you win.
- Defeat: a low chord and a falling phrase, for a match you lose.
When a sting plays, the battle loop dips down so you hear the sting clearly, then comes back.
Music and sounds are separate
The music sits alongside real recorded sound effects: dice rattle and land, wooden steps, a gun reload, a pistol shot, a ricochet, a body fall and a respawn teleport, all from Freesound and released under CC0.
In settings, Music and Game sounds are separate switches, so you can keep the dice and the shots and turn the march off, or the other way round.
You can listen to the loop, the stings and every sound effect in the sound lab.