Mood Music for Ars
Magica
have sometimes
considered methods of adding mood of the gaming sessions. An obvious way
of doing this is using appropriate background music. When in doubt, ask
the mailing list. So I did. Here are the results.
Note that all information here is provided without any guarantees as to usefulness or accuracy. You have been warned.
I, and I suspect a lot of others, would like to occasionally use mood music during significant events in play. Mostly Conan the Barbarian soundtrack for battles, and I'm thinking of buying some medieval-type music for generic background (towns, fairs, feasts etc.). Do you know if any game company has actually published a CD with different types of tunes, so you could select a suitable track for, say, combats, funerals, love scenes, feasts, threats (foreboding), ghosts and vampires (ghostly, threatening), etc.? Changing CD's is a bore, so having all the tunes on one CD would be a big bonus, not to mention save a lot of money.
Source = Composer/Performer/Label/etc.
| Source | Title(s) | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| - | Gregorian chants | 1 |
| Opus 111 | Close Encounters in Early Music, Barcelona Mass & others (*) | 1 |
| Decca Company (cheap) | Music of the Crusades & others (*) | 1 |
| Naxos (cheap) | Early Music series | 1 |
| Annonymous 4 (sp?) | - | 1 |
| Gothic Voices | - | 1 |
| Hilliard Ensemble | - | 1 |
| Source | Title(s) | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| Dead Can Dance | Within the Realm of Dying Sun, Aion, The Serpents Egg, Toward the Within, Into the Labyrinth & others (*, S?, D?) | 3 |
| Enya | The Celts, Storms in Africa, Boadicea, Ebudae, Early works in general (*, L) | 3 |
| Carl Orff | Carmina Burana, especially O Fortuna (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) (*, D) | 3 |
| Holst | The Planets (*, M) | 2 |
| Verdi/Abbado | Requiem/Dies Irae (*, D) | 1 |
| Mercury Records | Era (*, L) | 1 |
| Faith and the Muse | Elyria (*) | 1 |
| Ordo Equitum Solis, Musica Maxima Magnetica records | - (Multilingual, *) | 1 |
| Hedningarna (a Finnnish/Swedish group) | - (*, F) | 1 |
| Shriekback | Oil and Gold (*) | 1 |
| Laibach | M.b. dvorana (dec12 1984) (D) | 2 |
| Edward Grieg | Peer Gynt suite, especially the Hall of the Mountain King | 1 |
| Wagner | Valkyrie theme (C) | 1 |
| Wagner | Valkyrie theme (C) | 1 |
| Peter Tsaikovski | Nutcracker suite, especially Dance of the Sugar-Plum-Fairy (F) | 1 |
| Philip Glass | Songs from the Trilogy (S) | 1 |
| Margie Butler | Music for the Celtic Harp (F) | 1 |
| Clannad | Early works (L, F) | 1 |
| Rimski-Korsakov | Scheherezahde (particularly for Levantine sagas) | 1 |
| - (french company) | Heroic Fantasy vol 1 & 2 (R) | 1 |
| - (french company) | Legendes Musicales (R) | 1 |
| TSR | Red Steel Campaign Expansion & Savage Baronies (V) | 1 |
| TSR | Mystara (V) | 1 |
| Source | Title(s) | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| Peter Gabriel | Last Temptation of Christ/Passion (*, E) | 3 |
| Vangelis | 1492 (*, M) | 3 |
| Wojciech Kilar | Bram Stoker's Dracula (*, D) | 3 |
| Basil Poledouris | Conan the Barbarian (*, C, D) | 2 |
| - | Lord of the Dance (*, M) | 2 |
| - | Braveheart (*, C) | 2 |
| - | Gladiator (*, C, L) | 2 |
| - | Prince of Thieves (*) | 1 |
| - | The Rock (*, C) | 1 |
| - | Dracula's Rising (*, D) | 1 |
| - | Dracula (D) | 1 |
| - | Last of the Mohicans (C) | 1 |
| Prokofiev | Alexandr (sp?) Nevski | 1 |
| - | Henry V | 1 |
| - | Excalibur | 1 |
| - | Queen Margot | 1 |
| - | Cyrano | 1 |
| - | Alien | 1 |
| - | Alien 3 | 1 |
| - | Interview with a Vampire | 1 |
| - | Terminator 2 | 1 |
Since receiving these answers, I have acquired and/or listened to some of the proposed music. Here are some notes:
Finally, If you acquire a significant number of the CDs proposed above, finding and playing the right music track may become cumbersome and disturb the flow of the game. You can avoid this, provided that you have access to a writing CD drive, by compressing the tracks using MP3 compression and saving them on the CD (a large hard disk would of course be even better). You should be able to save over 150 tracks on one CD this way. The drawback is, you need a computer for playing the CD. For MP3 compression utilities, see MP3.com. There's a lot of free music available there as well. I recommend checking out at least the following genres:
Note that if you have bought the original CDs, making a copy for private use is often perfectly legal (still, check the legislation in your country). It is probably not legal to use pirate MP3 files downloaded from the net (note that the music available from MP3.com is distributed with permission), and it is definitely illegal to distribute the MP3 files / CDs you create.
On a related note, once you are using a computer, you can use general sound effects as well. I have a small collection (29 MB zip file, uncompressed size is about 44MB). All the sounds are collected from various Internet sound archives. If someone thinks that this collection infringes upon his or her (copy)rights, let me know and I will remove the offending parts.
I tend to use soundtracks rather than actual medieval music; for Eastern settings (one of my current campaigns is Levantine) I reccomend *Passion* (Peter Gabriel), the soundtrack to the Last Temptation of Christ. Other than that, try some of the more recent film soundtracks; Last of the Mohicans is good for heroic stuff, Braveheart for general background. If you have a number of Criamon magi involved in anything or anything with a slightly ethereal or sinister cast to it (an Unseelie court, for instance) I can recommend several albums by Dead Can Dance as rather good background, too. Start with Within the Realm of a Dying Sun and work from there.
Yes, Dead Can Dance is probably the best ArM ever written, but if you want more I would recomend anything from the label Opus 111, especially their "Close Encounters in Early Music" or "Barcelona Mass". Fans of DCD will recognize some themes. Other good medieval music comes from Annonymous 4, Gothic Voices and the Hilliard Ensemble. I do recomend that you buy several CDs and mix them on tape, however, as 74 min of similar themes can be a bit too much.
Good classical music to have around (although not period) is Holst "The Planets" with one planet for every mood. The "Mars" theme is probably one of the most powerfull scores ever written, but if you plan to destroy the whole covenant I would recomend Verdi's "Dies Irae" on Requiem (the Abbado version being the best). Wagner's Valkyrie theme is good as well, but playing the whole opera will certainly destroy the evening. For really strange Criamon sagas try Philip Glass "Songs from the Trilogy".
As mentioned, "Passion" by Peter Gabriel is certainly one of the best soundtracks for FRPGs, but I would also recomend "1492", "Henry V", "Excalibur", "Queen Margot" and "Cyrano". "Conan the Barbarian" is probaly the best for more combat oriented sagas, though.
For easy listening Clannad would be fine, especially for settings on the Brittish isles and faerie stories. Their early works are the best and the same goes for Enya. Margie Butler "Music for the Celtic Harp" is aslo nice as faerie forest music.
Avoid Chris de Burgh "Crusader" at any cost!
A french record company has released some Cd for the role playing market, they have 6 cd on their catalogue : Dark future file 1 and Dark future file 2 (cyberpunk music), Arkham memories tome 1 (guess what it is...), Heroic fantasy volume 1 and 2 and the last one is called Legendes Musicales and seems to be a kind of heroic fantasy symphonical opera.
I've never listened to any of them but some say they're good and some say that they are rather poor...Well taste is always really subjective.
Anyway I think Dead Can Dance is really a good choice (especially the Aion, The Serpent's egg, Toward the within and Into the labyrinth) beacuse there is a good mix of medieval and oriental influences in their songs and the voices are really good. Maybe you should try a band called Ordo Equitum Solis (from Musica Maxima Magnetica records, Italy) which is really good with songs in french, english, italian and latin. Voices and lyrics are good, I think they will please any pagan.
Personally I don't recommend gothic bands because there is too much guitars and synth, they can ruin the atmosphere. Any record of medieval music will do it well, have a look in the orient section too especially music from the near east. The spanish medieval music is good too due to the heavy moorish influence.
Some bands have really good titles but all the cd doesn't worth the money if you're just looking for Ars Magica music : Laibach (demonic mass, battles), Test department (battles), Sigillum S, Morthound, Vasilisk, Muslimgauze,In the nursery, Death in june, Zone, Raksha Mansham, Zero Kama, Coil, SPK (the album called Zamia Lehmani is a pure jewel of time travel to ancient Byzance) and so on.
A last word about soundtracks : I try to never use them for two reasons, many times they don't fit in the mood because their titles are too modern, and if the players saw the movie they will think about it and will erase the atmosphere of the play session. Anyway soundtracks from Dracula, Dracula's rising (grab this one it's a masterwork of dark and evil music), Alexandr Nevski (from Prokofiev) are pretty good.
TSR has put out a number of CDs, some of which have games on them or are intimately connected to specific games or settings, but others of which are more generic.
The *Red Steel Campaign Expansion & Savage Baronies* CDs supposedly have both background atmosphere music and campaign-specific information tracks.
*A Light In The Belfry* has a bunch of "dramatic voice presentations" plus a bunch of horror sound effects.
And the four *Mystara* combine voice presentations and music tracks.
I don't have any of these CDs, but from the sampler I got, it would sound like the Red Steel stuff is sweeping epic battle scene music, like the Conan soundtrack.
I know of some such products, but honestly, they are not impressing. If you want "Mood" music, I would suggest film soundtracks, which work (obviously) well. If you want period music, you will be rather disappointed to have mostly church music or something of similar sound, which is very authentic (I guess) but not much fun. An excellent choice is the Decca Compny in England, which offers extremely cheap "samplers" like Music of the Crusades republished in 1991. Lookfor this (I do not know which company sells them in Finnland).
Enya (the instrumental tracks on "The Celts" are invaluable in any Celtic campaign. "Storms in Africa", "Boadicea" and "Ebudae" are my personal favourites for using during roleplaying sessions.
Soundtracks "Braveheart" and "Prince of Thieves" do have some really good theme tracks ( although this very much depends upon where your campaign is based - Celtic music does sound awkward in any Levant Saga ). I agree with what seems to be the general opinion amongst gamers -:- the "Passion" CD is great, as is most of the other music suggestions you have already recieved. I have not heard anything by DCD, so that will be a new experience for me, I guess.
Since credit shall be given where credit is due, I would also like to recommend some of the CDs by Swedish/Finnish group Hedningarna. They have some really wild and Faerie-like tunes on some of their discs. If you haven't tried them yet, please consider it. You just might like them...
I have been an avid roleplayer for about ten years now and I have tried ArM. However I never really got the hang of that game. I have played several other games though. among them Vampire the Dark Ages which is very similar to ArM.
The music I utilized with great success was:
Read your web page comments on music for role playing and would like to suggest a band. Shriekback. Most of their stuff is post-industrial. However, they have a few tracks which are just eerie. I would recommend the album Oil and Gold to start, with "This Big Hush" being the best example. If you doubt, they did a lot of the music in the movie "Manhunter" which is the book before Silence of the Lambs.
Nice page you got there, it's been a big help to me while I've been trying to find some background music for us. Verdi's Dies Irae is great ;-) But it could do with a few more titles:
Just found your page on mood music for Ars Magica. I have found a few of the albums you mention useful in my sagas, particularly Enya (The Celts), 1492, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Carmina Burana and the Planets. I'd also recommend the following:
Soundtracks:
Other:
- comments?