Campaign Music

[Fidelacchius]

I've been DMing a while now and I want to try something new in my campaign, adding mood music.

So far I've got a selection of Gaelic music for when the heroes return victorious, some classical stuff, such as Bach's 'Air', for when tragedy occurs, some Gregorian chant for dungeon crawls... and that's about as far as I got, because I'm not a big music person.

Help?

Any suggestions are welcome, but I'd like to keep them lyricless (or at least without English lyrics), since I don't want people distracted from my game.

[Paul H]

Hi

Mass Air Assault? Ride of Valkyries (Wagner). [Used in heli assault in Apocalypse Now].

But whatever you do - Never, repeat, NEVER, use the Brewfest wav file from World of Warcraft. You'll spend the rest of your life regretting it & trying to forget!

Thanks
Paul H
Edit: Oh, and "O Fortuna" is a good build up to major event music.

[Reis Tahlen]

Without lyrics, the best is to use OST from movies, video games and some manga series. Dead Can Dance is also excellent.

Lord of the Ring, Beowulf, 300, ... you get the point.

[Shademan]

get soundtracks from movies such as hellraiser, braveheart, gladiator etc etc

[Dsurion]

DDO has some okay stuff you can pick up for free.

http://www.ddo.com/ddomedia/audio

[AslanCross]

The game Bayonetta has a lot of good orchestral/choral music.

You May Call Me Father is a great climactic boss battle theme
So is The Greatest Jubilee

Globus's Epicon has a lot of great tracks, too, though some have lyrics.
Preliator
Crusaders of the Light

If you want to break out of the "Fantasy demands classical music" trope, Touhou Project (and fanmade remixes of its music) have a lot to offer.

Nuclear Fusion
Suwa Foughten Field
Divine Ash

Among others.

[DaMullet]

Nightwish is good, but you have to cherry-pick songs that don't have much english. If you want a good anticlimax, suddenly switch to a muzak version of The Girl from Ipanema or Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song.

[big teej]

I like using nox arcana

in the few instances where there are lyrics it's mostly evil laughter.

[BRC]

The music from MS Paint Adventures was designed to sound like a video game soundtrack, so I've taken to using it.
You can find it Here
http://www.whatpumpkin.com/
The albums you want are the Homestuck ones, plus Alternia has some interesting stuff (I used The La2t Frontiier for a mad scientist fight and it worked out great)

[FuryOfMetal]

Two Steps From Hell only make epic music, i think some of it is used in movies too.

Also I'm into the TES: Oblivion soundtrack right now.

As people said movies and games OST's without the lyrics are good as they're created to be in the background so they don't get in the way.

I remember alot of the Devil May Cry music being catchy and atmospheric, thought i think they had lyrics in, definitely for DMC3.

[Lucid]

I've used the music from Morrowind and Oblivion in my games. It's all in mp3, just rename them for easy use. Most are fairly short tracks, but I just put those on repeat and switch when the need arises.

[Fidelacchius]

Thanks for the suggestions folks. Now I'm spoiled for choice!

[CirclesAllOver]

The soundtrack from Planescape: Torment was pretty fantastic. The Civic Festhall theme is beautiful.

Also, some of the instumental stuff by Joe Hisaishi( the man who wrote music for Hayao Miyazaki's movies).

[jiriku]

+1 for Nox Arcana's disks (I have three) and Midnight Syndicate. It's theme music made by gamer geeks, for gamer geeks.

Also:

Battle Music
Carmina Burana
Duel of Fates

Villain Music
Imperial March
The One-Winged Angel

[Dr.Epic]

Anything from the LotR soundtrack, certain heavy metal bands that frequently reference swords, vikings, or battles, and the victory theme from any FF game (used only for DMs to annoy the players when they beat a combat encounter).

[EvilJames]

Conan the barbarian soundtrack is a classic among the old school gamers. Bit hard to find now though.