Sound of Music (on Planes)

Wagner - In the hall of the mountain king
Wagner - Flight of the Valkyries

For the Astral plane or the Ethereal try something trippy maybe
Chemical Brothers or The Crystal Method

Here is my small selection taken from my huge storage drives of music for your D&D enjoyment:

Githyanki:

Knights of the Old Republic - The Sith

Wardruna - Bjarkan

Guild Wars Nightfall Soundtrack - Gathering Storm

300 Soundtrack - To Victory

The Last Samurai Soundtrack - To Know My Enemy

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Soundtrack - Night Fight

Vas- Moksha

Githzerai:

Neverwinter Nights Soundtrack - Main Theme

Wardruna - Laukr

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Ancient China

Tomb Raider: Legends - Mountain Tops

Huun Huur Tu & Angelite - Legend

Guild Wars Nightfall Soundtrack - Land of the Golden Sun

Both races (yes, there are tracks that fit both!)

The Last Samurai Soundtrack - Taken

Taditional Korean Samgomu Drum Dance

Two Steps From Hell - Freedom Fighters
(aka the national anthem of all githkind lol)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Soundtrack - Silk Road (foreshadowing the Pronouncement of Two Skies)

Myst IV: Revelation - Main Theme (The Blasted Plains)

Myst IV: Revelation - Prison Level (Pronouncement of the Two Skies)

Illithids: (you know you were looking for it)

Nox Arcana - Temple of the Black Pharaoh

Nox Arcana - Necronomicon

Nox Arcana - Resurrected

General D&Dness:

Corvus Corax - Totentanz
(great fight music with ominous growling)

Wardruna - Hagall
(good barbarian theme)

All three Lord of the Rings Soundtracks

Morrowind Soundtrack

Icewind Dale Soundtrack

Oblivion Soundtrack

All Neverwinter Nights/Neverwinter Nights 2 Soundtracks

Baldur's Gate

Myst III Soundtrack - Voltaic

Epica - Empty Gaze

Nox Arcana - Madeline's Lament

Immediate Music - An Epic Age

That's just the SHORT list..............O_o

My character, Rehael, plays wind instruments and has recently picked up a flute. He's a Guvner with low Cha, but he has put several points into Perform, enough to take 10 and get a 15 with his masterwork flute.

Net result is that his style is technically accurate but lacks feeling; he gives it an honest try, but while he's a nice guy he's just not a naturally talented performer. To simulate this, I uploaded... midis. :^)

http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/RehaelRepertoire/Gypsy.mid http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/RehaelRepertoire/policy.mid http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/RehaelRepertoire/Foreigners.mid http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/RehaelRepertoire/Matoya.mid

and a few others.

I think this instrumental version of Behold the Machine is the perfect music for Mechanus or Baator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKRk1T_iWuQ&feature=related

Edit: the style of this one doesn't ft, but the text is perfect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ConLzMk-jg&feature=related

The Beats Antique album Collide is currently free for download from the band, so you should 1) download it, and 2) get everyone you know to do the same. Spread it allllll around.

I post this here because very nearly everything on Collide is so, so perfect for Planescape.

http://beatsantique.bandcamp.com/album/collide Clicky clicky.

Anetra asked me to post about the Planescape playlist I'm building, but I never checked back so I never saw the message until now.

When I started putting together my playlist, I intended it to be something to play at low volume in the background constantly during sessions, so I just grabbed anything and everything that I felt fit the Planescape feel. Since then, I've recognised the need for a few different overlapping playlists for different moods, so I'm currently trying to sort everything into categories, which is a lot harder than it seems like it should be.

Here are some tracks that I've used for specific locations on the planes:

Slim Westerns - A Small Good Thing
I played Flamenco (both parts) together with a track of "city noise" when my players first entered Sigil. It's an airy, strange, very ambient track with weird noises in the background, useful for any time you want to drive home the oddness of the planes. Gulch, on the same album, is also very ambient, unsettling and threatening, and with crows cawing in the background. I used it as the soundtrack to Curst.

This Film's Crap Let's Slash the Seats - David Holmes
No Man's Land is one of my favourites. I used it after the party passed through the gate into Carceri.

David Helpling
Promise, which for me screams the Civic Festhall. This is what the Civic Festhall music should have been in PS:T, rather than this, which always grated on me. I got this off a compilation CD, so I have yet to try out the rest of Helpling's music, but I intend to.

I Care Because You Do - Aphex Twin / Philip Glass
Not too fond of Aphex Twin on the whole, but I found Icct Hedral to be great battle music, particularly for major, dramatic battles and fighting with fiends. I've actually found two versions of the track, this one which cuts straight to the action, and this one which is a little more drawn out, a little longer, maybe suitable for a more extended high-tension scene.

I once played this song while writing a description of a baatezu deployment, but only to myself. The associations are a little too goofy to play it at the table, unless for a light-hearted adventure.

More generally, I use a lot of video game soundtracks - the soundtracks to Divine Divinity and the Myst games are particularly appropriate - and ambient artists like Pete Namlook (Travelling Without Moving especially). I also use some of the artists already mentioned in this thread - Wardruna, Beats Antique, and so forth.

I've been toying with using jazz for Sigil, alongside more ambient stuff - I run Sigil as fairly 'noir', so it might be thematically appropriate, but I'm not sure. At the very least it would help set the place apart from the rest of the planes. Here's an example of the kind of music I would include if I decide to go that route.

Beats Antique has a Sigil flavour to me as well. I don't use any NIN, mostly because it feels a little too 'contemporary' and has too many vocals to fit with most of the stuff I use.

One album I forgot to mention, Brian Eno's Small Craft on a Milk Sea is absolutely worth buying. It has no vocals, and tracks ranging from quiet and mysterious (Complex Heaven, Small Craft on a Milk Sea to angry songs like Horse (unavailable on Youtube, unfortunately) and Dust Shuffle that would work well on the lower planes, or possibly the inner planes. Nearly every track on there is usable in some way.

I occasonally listen to Radio Rivendell to try and find tracks, though I've stopped since I seem to have heard more or less everything in their library. Most of it's just generic fantasy music from movies and games, but every now and then there's something that takes my fancy and I make a note of it. Sifting through film and game soundtracks on Youtube is another good resource.

Oh, and I strongly recommend you sort your music into different playlists as you go along, rather than getting stuck in my position trying to sort through hours and hours of music afterwards.

Hey!

I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner, but inspiration/realization finally struck and I procured all of the Cirque du Soleil soundtracks I could find. They were difficult to track down, but not impossible. I'd thoroughly suggest going through the trouble for them though! So good.

Some albums and tracks more Planescape than others. I haven't listened to every song yet, nor really thought about what to use where, but I can already tell they were a good, good find. Highly recommend!

I'm usually listening to some form of metal while writing posts for my Planescape game. It probably shows.

I just listened to the Deus Ex: Human Revolutions soundtrack. There aren't any individual tracks I'd pick out as being particularly awesome, but for sheer volume of ambient background music it's a motherlode.

I'd love to see these suggestions get a space in the zine.

Some great stuff here. For whatever it's worth, I think Opeth's Harlequin Forest might be the best anthemic galloping music ever. (I'd probably be even more into this band than I already am if I weren't afraid it would lead to some kind of LARPing situation...)