Press Play: Free music loops and sound effects you can use in your Scratch and Python games

Add this music to your Scratch and Python games!

Use my sound pack to add exciting looping music to your Scratch and Python projects. I've created about 30 music loops and tunes you can use in your games. Some of them have a couple of variants you can switch between, so you can create a longer sequence with more variety. This sound pack has been created using a variety of synths including the Novation Mininova.

Find out more about Scratch and Python in my books Scratch Programming in Easy Steps, Cool Scratch Projects in Easy Steps, and Mission Python. Free chapters here!

On this page, you can:

• Preview the sound loops in the pack using a Scratch player
• See how to download the music loops and sound effects
• Learn how to use sound effects in your Scratch projects
• Learn how to use these sound effects with Python
• Read the full track listing, including length and tempo numbers for the tracks

Preview the sound effects in my soundpack

Use this player to preview the sound effects. The double-headed arrows select a loop, and the Play button plays it. When you choose a new loop, the current one plays to the end before it starts, unless you press Play. This is so you can test how the loops work together. Some are designed to play different parts of the same tune.

Download the Press Play soundpack

• Get the sounds in the jukebox project on the Scratch website. This is the simplest way to get the sounds. They're all on the play button (triangle) sprite.
• Download the .ogg files in a zip file (6MB download). Use this option if you want to use the sounds with Pygame Zero. These files do not work with Scratch. See instructions below.
• Download the MP3 files in a zip file (10MB download). This version works with Scratch but not with Pygame Zero.

This sound pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

How to add music and sound effects in Scratch

• Before you can use a sound, you need to add it to your sprite. Click the Sounds tab, and then hover over the Add Sound button at the bottom left. Choose Upload a Sound. If you use my project on the Scratch website, the sounds are already added to the Play (triangle) sprite.

  

• To start a sound playing, use the start sound block. This starts the sound playing in the background, while the script continues. You can use the name of a sound, but you can also use a number (the first sound on a sprite is 1, the second one is 2 and so on). You can use a variable that contains either a number or a sound name, and drop it on top of the menu in this block.

  

• To start a sound playing, but make the script wait until it's finished playing, use the [play sound until done] block. Again, you can use a name, number or variable to choose your sound.

  

How to make music loop or repeat in Scratch

• To create looping music, you need to use the [play sound until done] block, and start the sound playing again when it finishes. Here's a simple script to start and stop looping music. The [loop sound] and [stop sound] blocks are created using the My Blocks feature in Scratch.

  

• Here's an example of how you might use those blocks. Press 1 to start sound 1 playing, 2 to start sound 2 looping, and S to stop the music. You can make any key play any tune, and use a sound name, number, or variable containing either of those to tell the script which sound to loop.

  

• I used the My Blocks feature to create the new blocks for [loop sound] and [stop sound], because they make it easy to tell the script the sound number you want to play. However, when you run the [loop sound] block from a script, that script will pause until the tune stops. To get around that, use a broadcast that starts the sound looping. Here's an example that will start the background music, but without stopping the sprite moving.

  

Creating special music effects with this sound pack

• Some tunes have different parts that you can combine to make a longer sequence, like this:

  

• The "cool suspense" and "frantic suspense" loops are the same tune at different speeds. You could use them to make the music speed up when the game is becoming particularly intense.

  

• When creating scripts like this, you can go to the Sounds tab, click the sound on the left, and then copy its name above the soundwave. Go to the Code tab, and you can paste it into your script.

How to make music loop or repeat in Python using Pygame Zero

Pygame Zero does not support the MP3 format, so you'll need to use the .ogg format sound files instead. Copy the sound into your sounds folder.

To make a sound repeat indefinitely, use:

sounds.twinklestar.play(-1)

where your sound file is called "twinklestar.ogg", or use:

sounds.ballet_jam_104bpm.play(-1)

where your sound file is called "ballet_jam_104bpm.ogg".

I wrote instructions for adding background sounds to the lunar surface locations of the Escape game from Mission Python, my book which shows you how to build a space adventure game.

Track listing for Press Play

Here are the details of the tracks, together with their length (in seconds) and tempo (in beats per minute, or BPM). I've also noted whether the track loops.

Where next?

• Find my other music projects here, including my album of electronic music Artificial.
• Scratch Programming in Easy Steps - Explore Scratch with projects including word games, art and music projects, and projects for the micro:bit and Raspberry Pi Sense HAT.
• Cool Scratch Projects in Easy Steps - Create 3D games with the enclosed glasses, a drum machine, a cartoon frog game and more!
• Mission Python - Create a space adventure game with the Python programming language.
• Sean's Scratch resources