Pygame has several commands to play sound. Pygame offers a set of Sound commands to load and play short sound files - usually .wav or .ogg files. For longer files, pygame offers pygame.music commands to stream longer music / sound / voice files directly from the harddisk.

In the source code example below, loading sounds and music is done from a subfolder called data, like the graphic files in the previous source code example.

To get rid of a nasty delay between giving the play command for a sound and hearing it you need to initialize the pygame mixer. This is done before writing the pygame.init() command. Under Linux, I got best results with this line:

pygame.mixer.pre_init(44100, -16, 2, 2048) # setup mixer to avoid sound lag
pygame.init()                      #initialize pygame

Note that loading the sound and music files from harddisk must be done after setting up the mixer. In the code-example below, an-turr.ogg is a longer music file while jump.wav and fail.wav are short sound effects:

 
try:
    pygame.mixer.music.load(os.path.join('data', 'an-turr.ogg'))#load music
    jump = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','jump.wav'))  #load sound
    fail = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','fail.wav'))  #load sound
except:
    raise UserWarning, "could not load or play soundfiles in 'data' folder :-("

After loading the sound effects or the music and thus creating pygame objects, you can simply call the .play() method of those objects. Inside the brackets you write -1 for endless play or the number of times or the time length to play the sound.

#for sound effects: 
#Sound.play(loops=0, maxtime=0, fade_ms=0): return Channel
jump.play() # play the jump sound effect once

#music is already the name of the music object
#pygame.mixer.music.play(loops=0, start=0.0): return None
music.play(-1) # play endless

<note tip>you hear just a short crack noise instead of a sound? Some sounds simply do not work with pygame. Try to open (and edit) the sound with a sound editor like Audacity and save it again, preferable in the free .ogg (vorbis) format.</note>

Note that you do not need pygame's graphic at all to play music files. One of the code examples below use graphical output, the other example use only text output. In text output, you still need to initialize pygame and set up the mixer.

Unlike music, sound effects are easy enough to generate and not worth the hassle of copyright fights. You may find good sound effects here:

• overview of resources at the pygame homepage: http://pygame.org/wiki/resources
• wikimedia commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sound

To generate sound effects, you can either:

• plug a microphon¹⁾ in your computer and start the recording software of your OS. every OS is shipped with a primitive voice recording software.
• use a program that can generate sound effects, like:
  • http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
  • http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html
  • http://www.bfxr.net/ (online)

• http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/mixer.html#pygame.mixer.pre_init
• http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/mixer.html#pygame.mixer.Sound
• http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/music.html#pygame.mixer.music.load
• http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/music.html#pygame.mixer.music.play

To run this example you need:

View/Edit/Download the file directly in Github: https://github.com/horstjens/ThePythonGameBook/blob/master/pygame/010_sound_only_no_graphic.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""
Name:    010_sound_only_no_graphic.py
Purpose: demonstrate use of pygame for playing sound & music
URL:     http://ThePythonGameBook.com 
Author:  Horst.Jens@spielend-programmieren.at
Licence: gpl, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

works with pyhton3.4 and python2.7
"""

#the next line is only needed for python2.x and not necessary for python3.x
from __future__ import print_function, division

import pygame
import os
import sys

# if using python2, the get_input command needs to act like raw_input:
if sys.version_info[:2] <= (2, 7):
    get_input = raw_input
else:
    get_input = input # python3
        

pygame.mixer.pre_init(44100, -16, 2, 2048) # setup mixer to avoid sound lag
pygame.init()                              #initialize pygame

# look for sound & music files in subfolder 'data'
pygame.mixer.music.load(os.path.join('data', 'an-turr.ogg'))#load music
jump = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','jump.wav'))  #load sound
fail = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','fail.wav'))  #load sound

# play music non-stop
pygame.mixer.music.play(-1)                           

# game loop
gameloop = True

while gameloop:
    # indicate if music is playing
    if pygame.mixer.music.get_busy():
        print(" ... music is playing")
    else: 
        print(" ... music is not playing")
    # print menu 
    print("please press key:")
    print("[a] to play 'jump.wav' sound")
    print("[b] to play 'fail.wav' sound")
    print("[m] to toggle music on/off")
    print("[q] to quit")
    answer = get_input("press key [a] or [b] or [m] or [q], followed by [ENTER]")
    answer = answer.lower() # force lower case
    if "a" in answer:
        jump.play()
        print("playing jump.wav once")
    elif "b" in answer:
        fail.play()
        print("playing fail.wav once")
    elif "m" in answer:
        if pygame.mixer.music.get_busy():
            pygame.mixer.music.stop()
        else:
            pygame.mixer.music.play()
    elif "q" in answer:
        #break from gameloop
        gameloop = False
    else:
        print("please press either [a], [b], [m] or [q] and [ENTER]")


print("bye-bye")
pygame.quit() # clean exit 

View/Edit/Download the file directly in Github: https://github.com/horstjens/ThePythonGameBook/blob/master/pygame/010_sound_and_music.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
010_sound_and_music.py
plays music and sound effects
url: http://thepythongamebook.com/en:part2:pygame:step010
author: horst.jens@spielend-programmieren.at
licence: gpl, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

This program plays music and 
plays a sound effect whenever the a of b  key is pressed and released
All files must be in a 'data' subfolder.
The 'data' subfolder must be in the same folder as the program.

works with python3.4 and python2.7
"""
import pygame
import os


pygame.mixer.pre_init(44100, -16, 2, 2048) # setup mixer to avoid sound lag
pygame.init()                      #initialize pygame

try:
    pygame.mixer.music.load(os.path.join('data', 'an-turr.ogg'))#load music
    jump = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','jump.wav'))  #load sound
    fail = pygame.mixer.Sound(os.path.join('data','fail.wav'))  #load sound
except:
    raise(UserWarning, "could not load or play soundfiles in 'data' folder :-(")

pygame.mixer.music.play(-1)                           # play music non-stop

screen=pygame.display.set_mode((640,480)) # set screensize of pygame window
background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size())  #create empty pygame surface
background.fill((255,255,255))     #fill the background white color (red,green,blue)
background = background.convert()  #convert Surface object to make blitting faster
screen.blit(background, (0,0))     #draw the background on screen
clock = pygame.time.Clock()        #create a pygame clock object
mainloop = True                    
FPS = 30 # desired framerate in frames per second. try out other values !
while mainloop:
    milliseconds = clock.tick(FPS) # do not go faster than this framerate
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            mainloop = False # pygame window closed by user
        elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
                mainloop = False # user pressed ESC
            if event.key == pygame.K_a:
                fail.play()                  # play sound effect
            if event.key == pygame.K_b:
                jump.play()                  # play sound effect
    # print the framerate into the pygame window title
    pygame.display.set_caption("FPS: {:.2f} Press [a] or [b] to play sound effects".format(clock.get_fps()))
    pygame.display.flip()          # flip the screen