How to Play Music in New World

You can open up the Music UI by pressing F5. This should pull up a screen that looks like the image below.

Next, select a song by pressing “R” which will open up the song selection window. From here you will choose the difficulty of your song, which song you want to play, and which instrument you want to use. You need to have that instrument equipped and have learned every page of the sheet music of this song. We will go into more detail in the sheet music section.

New World Music Buffs (Rewards)

You can choose which reward or buff you want to receive prior to playing the song by utilizing the drop down menu within the music UI. The strength of the buff is reliant on how well you perform the song. There are 7 buffs that you can select:

  • Decidedly Dexterous – Gathering speed increases by 75% for 30-90min.
  • Territorial Triumph – Territory standing bonus increases by 10%-30% for 30-90min.
  • All Together Now – Group character XP sharing bonus increases by 4%-15% for 30-90min.
  • Song in Your Step – Reduces player encumbrance by 20-100 for 30-90min.
  • Fortune’s Favor – Gathering yield increases by 3%-10% for 30-90min.
  • Luck’s Labor – Gathering luck increases by 2% – 5% for 30-90min.
  • Never Stop Learning – Increases mining, logging, skinning, harvesting XP gain by 4% – 10% for 30 – 90 min.

You unlock these as you level up your music tradeskill. Each buff is unlocked at the following levels:

  • Decidedly Dexterous – 2
  • Territorial Triumph – 5
  • All Together Now – 25
  • Song In Your Step – 75
  • Fortune’s Favor – 100
  • Luck’s Labor – 150
  • Never Stop Learning – 205

Once the song is complete, the buff you apply with your song will last 1 hour. Each player can only have one active music buff at a time.

Instruments

Instruments are new items in New World that are used to play music. There are 5 types of musical instruments:

  • Drum
  • Flute
  • Guitar
  • Mandolin
  • Upright Bass

Each instrument has its own sets of sheet music but not all songs in New World use every instrument. Just like other items in New World, instruments have 4 tiers. Below are the number of perks you can get on an instrument at each tier in New World:

  • Tier II – 2 perks
  • Tier III – 3 perks
  • Tier IV – 4 perks
  • Tier V – 5 perks

Instruments are crafted using the workshop and require the Furnishing Trade Skill. At this time, the only way to get an instrument is through questing or crafting. Unlike most items, Instruments have guaranteed quality (Rare, Epic, etc). There are no crafting mods for instruments.

You must have a lower tiered instrument in order to craft a higher tiered version of that instrument. For example, to craft a Composer’s Upright Bass, you must have a Musician’s Upright Bass.

Sheet Music

Sheet music is required to learn how to play all songs in New World. Each instrument has its own set of sheet music. You learn a piece of sheet music by simply salvaging it. If you already know a piece of sheet music, you can sell it!

Some songs require multiple pages of sheet music to learn. You can tell how many pages of sheet music a song has when you mouse over the sheet music. As you can see below, this is page 1 of 3 to the “Sneaky the Smuggler” guitar sheet music. You will need to locate all pages of sheet music to be able to play a song.

Where to Find Music Sheets in New World

Music sheets can be found through quests rewards, mob drops, and chests all over Aeternum! These are also sellable items. If you have trouble finding a piece of music you can always check the trading post.

How to level Music in New World

Before we look at the best way to level music, lets look at some quick facts about music experience gain.

  • The length of the song does not affect XP gain.
  • The higher the difficulty of the song, the more XP you will gain.
  • The amount of great and perfect notes you get within a song slightly increases your overall XP gained.
  • The amount of XP gain is slightly increased while playing in a group.
  • The amount of XP gained by a group is not affected by the size of the group. A group of 2 and a group of 5 will gain the same amount of experience increase.

Ideally you’ll want to choose a shorter song and play it on expert level in order to level the music skill quickly.

Best Perks on Instruments for Leveling Music

  • Spotlight (Solo Leveling)
  • Ensemble (Group Leveling)
  • Fanfare
  • Opening Act
  • Second Chance

New World Music Guide Conclusion

That completes our New World Music Guide! For more on the tradeskill that you can use to craft instruments, check out our Furnishing Guide!