Need help With finding more music

[TheAuldGrump]

I've become rather fond of instrumental tracks from movies. Lord of the Rings may be a little too obvious (and Enya may put your players to sleep). Sometimes obscure videogame music can be handy (other times just annoying - avoid the JRPG Lunar series). Stuff from Zelda (especially anything from the N64 on) can be great, especially from Twilight Princess. Final Fantasy soundtracks (especially orchestra versions) are really good.

One thing that may be worth looking into is folk-esq music. Korpiklaani is a favorite folk-metal band of mine. I can even think of some uses for Irish Rovers or good old-fashion polka.

VODKA!
Your feeling stronger
VODKA!
No more feeling bad
VODKA!
Your eyes are shining
VODKA!
You are the real man
VODKA!
Wipes away your tear
VODKA!
Removes your fears
VODKA!
Everyone is gorgeous
VODKA! Yeah, VODKA!

The Captain's Wench

I love to ramble and I love to roam,
But nevermore must I adventure alone.
I met Captain Morgan one night at the war,
And I’ll be the Captain’s wench evermore

[Chorus] He’s better than lovers, ‘cause he’s always there,
And when I get bitchy he just doesn’t care.
He’s never too tired, he tells me no lies,
So I’ll be the Captains wench ‘til I die!

When seas are stormy, and skies are grey,
And I need safe harbour to get through the day,
The Captain is there for me, tasty and warm,
So this Captain’s wench can weather the storm.

[Chorus]

Men come and go, they’re a troublesome lot.
Most leave me cold, a few make me hot.
But next to true love, it all fades away,
So I’ll be the Captain’s wench all my days

[Chorus]

So I’ll be the Captain’s wench ‘til I die!

The Auld Grump

 

[paradox42]

Eh, who am I kidding? I have an eidetic memory, along with a large collection of instrumental soundtracks on my HD, and I know perfectly well that I can do better than my vague first post. So, time to offer specific recommendations for what the OP asked.

Does anyone know any good Instrumental Music for setting the mood for a Scene. It would be much appreciated. I am looking for these things:
Happy
Uplifting
Mysterious
Cofindent
Magical

Happy: Most movies cover this with at least a couple of tracks, since there's nearly always a scene at the beginning where the hero is happy before the Bad Stuff starts to happen, or at the end when the hero has won and everything becomes right with the world. There are also several kinds of "Happy," so I can't be as specific here as I'd like to be. However, you could try:

• "Concerning Hobbits," from The Fellowship of the Ring ST by Howard Shore. Yes, it's really really obvious, but it works- and like I said in my first post, sometimes using the obvious music just Works.
• For a more modern flavor, the "Main Title" from Flight of the Navigator (Alan Silvestri) is pretty good. Starts out mysterious-sounding, but quickly gets rockin' synthesizers in to lighten the mood for a happy, sunny day. You can practically hear the people playing frisbee with their dogs in the park (which is what's happening in the movie when this music is playing).
• If you're looking for primitive instead, try "Eloi" from Klaus Badelt's score to The Time Machine (the 2002 movie). Languid and slow for the most part, but definitely captures the idyllic life the Eloi seem to be leading when the professor first arrives from the distant past. Track 2 on the same album, "Wish Me Luck," is a more conventional "happy."
• James Horner's ST for The Rocketeer has lots of happy in it. The "Main Title - Takeoff" track is a great way to begin an adventure on a happy note Probably best for an urban setting, sounds kind of martial so could be a way to open a tournament.
• The "Town" music from practically every fantasy RPG by Square is Happy, at least until the Big Disaster happens and destroys the world. The ST for The Secret of Mana (Japanese title was just Seiken Densetsu II IIRC) has more tracks than I care to even think about that are happy and peppy- some of them actually enough to be annoyingly so. That ST's full of great stuff though, definitely check it out if you haven't heard it before.

Uplifting: I'm not entirely certain what sort of "uplifting" you're looking for here, since again there are several possibilities, but I'll make some guesses and recommendations based on them.

• For modern "uplifting" music, the recent Oscar-winning score for The Social Network by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is truly great stuff. For specifically "uplifting" tracks on this ST, I recommend track 5 ("Intriguing Possibilities"), track 6 ("Painted Sun In Abstract"), and track 17 ("Complication With Optimistic Outcome").
• If you're looking for "uplifting" meaning "tragic but triumphant," you could do a lot worse than "Flynn Lives" from Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy score. There are several different versions of the album, but I think that that one is track 20 on all of them.
• Jerry Goldsmith did a lot of uplifting stuff in his scores. If you don't want "tragic but triumphant" so much as "tragedy turns to triumph," try "The House Raising," which is track 11 on The Secret of NIMH ST. Starts out frantic and desperate, then turns briefly to utter despair (all's lost!), but then, The Miracle occurs, Magic Happens, and the day is saved in a huge finale. Actually, based on what you asked for, this ST should definitely be in your collection, it has lots more than this one track.
• Brian Tyler's score for Children of Dune is a good one too. The "House Atreides" music which doubles as the Main Title is nothing but triumph, power, and royalty on a galactic scale.
• Hans Zimmer's ST for The Da Vinci Code is a popular one, for good reason. The track which (as far as I can tell) is most popular, also happens to be the one I think is the most "uplifting," so I'll recommend it here: track 13, "Chevaliers De Sangreal."

Mysterious: I have a lot of this sort of thing, myself. The sort of music written to evoke this mood tends to appeal very strongly to me, as it typically has multiple layers of sound mixing several harmonies together.

• Alan Silvestri's The Abyss score is full of magic and mystery in several places. For pure mystery, track 2 "Search the Montana" is probably your best bet.
• Revisiting Flight of the Navigator, "The Ship Beckons" (track 3) is a good "mysterious" theme.
• Alan Silvestri's score for Contact also has some good "mysterious" stuff on it. I recommend track 3, "The Primer."
• Despite the rather non-mysterious nature of the rest of the soundtrack, John Williams's score for Jurassic Park has one very good "mysterious" track: the music for the Opening Title (track 1 on the CD album).
• The music from the original Stargate movie (written by David Arnold) is very martial, but also has plenty of Mysterious in it. Track 8, "Entering the Stargate," may be just what you're looking for. Or for a more "solve the puzzle" version of Mysterious, use track 4 "The Coverstones."
• Jerry Goldsmith's score for Total Recall has good "mysterious" music in several places, mostly near the beginning. Track 2 (on the Deluxe Edition) for example, "First Meeting," is short but full of mystery. Or perhaps try track 20, "Remembering."
• For a blast from the past, how about Toto's score for the 1980s Dune movie? It's difficult to find the version of the "Prologue - Main Title" track that doesn't have Irulan's voice-over "A beginning... is a very delicate time," but if you can, that's some great Mysterious music. And also an Epic opening. Or perhaps "Paul Takes the Water of Life," which is track 23 on the CD version of the album.

Confident: A lot of battle music would fall into this category, I think. The obvious example is the opening theme for Star Wars; does that not just scream "confident" to you? But here are a few others.

• Much of the music in Tot's Dune ST fits this theme rather well. Probably the best is "Big Battle," track 25 on the CD. Don't mess with the Fremen!
• Klaus Badelt's The Time Machine score also has some good "confident" music on it- track 4, "The Time Machine," starts off sad, but quickly turns triumphant- really sells the bold quest to cross time to get the professor's lady back.
• John William's ST for Jurassic Park is full of confidence, which is appropriate as the story is (after all) about overconfidence and its consequences. Tracks from early in the film, before the dino-excrement hits the fan, are probably best. Try track 4, "Journey to the Island."
• The end track on the Dark City ST album, "You Have the Power," is full of confidence- the hero is basically a god at that point in the movie, so it fits quite well. It's a heavy battle using reality itself as the weapon at the start, then the hero remakes the world in his own image- and at the end settles down to enjoy his new life.
• Dario Marinelli's score for V For Vendetta is a more "despairing and sad but utterly relentless" version of Confident. Track 11 "The Dominos Fall" or track 13 "Knives and Bullets (and Cannons Too)" are probably best here- that 13th track also includes the 1812 Overture (hence the cannons), by the way.
• For Confident like, "Calm in the face of a storm," try "Good to Go" (track 9 on the album) from Alan Silvestri's score for Contact. Ellie's going through that wormhole come Hells or high water.
• I'd be remiss if I didn't give another shout-out to the LotR score here. Return of the King has some spectacularly confident music with the battles. Track 13 on the album, "The Fields of the Pelennor," has the charge of the Rohirrim for its finish; can't get much more confident than that. But you might also consider track 4, "The White Tree," which has the music from when Pippin lit the beacons and we follow them across the mountains back into Rohan.

Magical: This overlaps quite heavily with Mysterious, for fairly obvious reasons. I also have a lot of this type of music. Try these:

• Flight of the Navigator has several that fit- the ship's technology is so advanced that it definitely evokes Clarke's Third Law ("Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is indistinguishable from Magic"). Track 6 "Transporting the Ship" and track 7 "Ship Drop" are pretty good.
• I almost put this one in Mysterious, but track 21 on Total Recall ("The Mutant") fits better here I think. This is the music from when Arnie's character meets the psychic mutant who helps him unlock his lost memories. Or for the aftermath of a huge piece of magic that saves the kingdom/world/whatever, you could use the end track "A New Life."
• The Secret of NIMH is great for "magical" music too. The Main Title is highly magical, if a bit sad in tone. Track 9, "No Thanks," also has a considerable magical quality to it. Or track 5, "The Sentry Reel - the Story of NIMH", which features the music from when she meets the very Wizard-like Nicodemus.
• The ending music from the first Matrix movie (score by Don Davis), track 10 "Anything Is Possible," is when Neo awakens to his full powers. So, highly magical.
• Most of the music for VGER in Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first Star Trek movie, Star Trek- The Motion Picture, is magical in tone. Threatening, but magical. Track 9 "The Cloud," track 10 "Vejur Flyover," and track 16 "The Meld" are probably the best, but it depends on what sort of magic you're trying to provide music for really.
• The track called "The Keeper of the Grail" on John Williams's score for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade fits the "magical" theme pretty well, despite the fact that the actual keeper in the movie is a knight. "Ancient sagelike guardian" is the real theme here- so, magical.
• Need I mention the Harry Potter soundtracks here? Probably not, they're really really obvious.
• Daft Punk's score for Tron: Legacy has some good "magical" music in it too. Track 18, "The Arrival," is probably the best, but several other tracks could fit nicely depending on what you want.
• I mentioned The Abyss for Mysterious, and it fits for Magical too. My favorite one in this vein is track 11, "Bud On the Ledge," which is the music for when he comes face to face with the actual aliens. Very magical and powerful.
• A good piece of "ritual" music is "The Sleeper Has Awakened" from Toto's Dune ST.

More specifically i need theme songgs for certain monsters and classes
Aboleth
Most Fey
Alchemist
Gunslinger
Fighter
Wizard
Evil Sorcerror

I'll think about these and edit this post later with specific recommendations. This is getting really long, and I've spent a couple of hours on it already.

A few weeks ago, my PCs got into an Wild-West style showdown with an evil cleric and his posse who they'd been tracking for 3 gaming sessions, in the middle of a dusty street in a run-down mining town. I played Tomoyasu Hotei - Battle Without Honor or Humanity.

It was epic.

Sheer perfection! But weirdly, I got the "you must spread XP around before giving to Systole again," though I have yet to offer any in this thread and don't recall giving Systole any recently.

 

[Falariel]

If you can find it, the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is fantastic!