Hi all

I like to have music in the background when I run my sessions, for atmosphere. I tend to use Spotify, so I'm looking for anything that's on there. Obviously there's the Star Wars soundtracks, which I use extensively, but if anyone has any other suggestions that would be great. I'm particularly looking for good atmospheric tracks that run for quite a long time - there's a lot of good film music out there that would be great, but the tracks are only 90 seconds long and it doesn't quite work. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

I use a lot of Pandora stations, but on Spotify there's this Skyrim playlist that's pretty good. The songs aren't individually long, but there's almost 1000 songs on there.

Depending on the flavor of your campaign, some music from Avatar: The Last Airbender might work; I know the story of my campaign certainly fits enough, and I've used the Agni Kai (Extended) song for boss battles, and Last Agni Kai for really harrowing moments. Those two, at least, work well on a loop.

If, for some silly (or awesome) reason you run a horror game, the artist Musica Cthulhiana is good.

I'm not terribly familiar with spotify, so I'm not really sure what you can get at... but I agree that video game soundtracks are a good place to look!

I'm really fond of the Starbound soundtrack for background music.

I typically begin each session with the BoJack Horseman theme, given that our initial Jedi character is the Jedi equivalent of BoJack.

The Dungeon Keeper soundtrack is appropriate for delving into Sith ruins.

This is my Hunter character's theme song.

Check out the 90s Star T@&k shows. They had good music

Thanks guys, these are some great suggestions.

A couple of sessions ago, as one of our group entered a swoop racing arena, intent on racing for control of a couple of local swoop gangs, someone fired up "Welcome to the Jungle" on their phone. It was perfecto.

If you want to introduce a really epic force using bad guy, using Revan's theme on Youtube is really nice and epic. Had a GM that used that whenever the big bad showed up and you knew you were in trouble

Also if you've ever heard of Epic Score, they've got albums and albums of sick story music. Granted, almost all of their music is really short, but its GOOOOD. There's also Two Steps From Hell. All this stuff is sort of generic adventure music but great for long loops.

I've also had some really intense moments out of just having a super long playlist going in the background. Like when my PC's were chasing a bounty hunter through an orbiting ship graveyard. They were running a YT-1300 and the bounty hunter was in a Firespray, so it was basically the Falcon chasing Slave I, and the bounty hunter was their final encounter for our campaign, so naturally, I gave his ship some seismic charges from AotC. The bounty hunter hit my PC's engine block with missiles, but then our impromptu Wookie mechanic rolled a double Triumph and a Despair (the whole table went nuts) just as another charge was dropped.

So as the Firespray had a shockwave throwing debris everywhere, the PC's managed to shoot out his upgraded engines and force him to land in a derelict Separatist capitol ships' shuttle bay. The Tri/Tri/Des blew out the PC ships' engines completely, but it gave them a full-speed boost to get ahead of the wave on dead engines....

but...

Because gravity and physics, they had no way to stop the ship, so while they avoided this charging line of debris AND landed inside the shuttle bay... they did so at full throttle. The YT impacted the interior wall of the shuttle bay cockpit-first and--after rolling a 149 Crit roll on the ship, so it was literally 2 points away from exploded--the PC's concluded the most ridiculous chase I've ever done.

The point of this story is that this whole time, there was epic misc battle music (from the aforementioned Two Steps From Hell) playing in the background during the chase, and then literally the moment we figured out what to do with all the **** Triumph/Despair rolls, the song changed to this beautiful slow LOTR tune (one of the Elven suites with all the mournful vocals), and it was beyond perfect. The imagery of asteroids slamming into the side of their target after a space mine detonated while the PC's threw everything they had into surviving long enough to crash their beloved ship, all to slow sad music? Just... yeah. So sweet.

GM'ing is the best for moments like that, and I totally think it's the music that can make or break a moment.

Try finding the soundtrack to the first Conan movie.

Also if you've ever heard of Epic Score, they've got albums and albums of sick story music. Granted, almost all of their music is really short, but its GOOOOD. There's also Two Steps From Hell. All this stuff is sort of generic adventure music but great for long loops.

I highly recommend Two Steps from Hell, Audiomachine, Future World Music, E.S. Posthumas.

Also if you've ever heard of Epic Score, they've got albums and albums of sick story music.

This was an EXCELLENT suggestion. My thanks.

The Planets from Gustav Holst. 1916.

Great space opera music and very much a huge inspiration for John Williams Star Wars scores.

Especially "Mars, Bringer of War". It's like the older brother of the Imperial March.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isic2Z2e2xs&feature=youtu.be

The Planets from Gustav Holst. 1916.

Great space opera music and very much a huge inspiration for John Williams Star Wars scores.

Especially "Mars, Bringer of War". It's like the older brother of the Imperial March.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isic2Z2e2xs&feature=youtu.be

Quick trivia note: Nicholas Meyer originally intended to use The Planets as the score to Star Trek VI.

Quick trivia note: Nicholas Meyer originally intended to use The Planets as the score to Star Trek VI.

Rites of Spring is very dramatic in a discordant edgy way

Amazon Prime Music has all of the Star Wars soundtracks, so I put them all in a playlist, and hit shuffle. Works well enough.

Try finding the soundtrack to the first Conan movie.

This is the music I use to open my Pathfinder campaign immediately after my little "Previsously on Rise of the Runelords" preamble. It is pretty epic

For Star Wars games using Spotifty I've been tapping into a lot of other John Williams soundtracks and other bits and bobs. I have different playlists for general Star Wars background music, for battles, for chases, for downtime and a few things I pick ahead of time to read when I have a specific scene I'm tying to set. Best examples that I can recall (I'm at work at the minute);

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and ET (All great once you exclude the tracks which contain motifs which are too iconically linked to the film). Don't even try with Indy though, his little motif turns up all the way through most tracks.
• There's an album on Spotify called "The Towering Inferno and other disaster classics", it's all very bombastic and tonally pretty spot on for big silly scenes in your campaign.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula by Anton Copolla is pretty amazing though make sure you remove the Annie Lennox song at the end. The odd other track is a bit light but do make sure you check out "The Beginning" and "Vampire Hunters"
• I use the most recent Boards of Canada album in run down parts of big cities, the Social Network soundtrack in a well run metropolis, sections of the Fez soundtrack by Disasterpiece when they are alone in the quiet of space though some of them suit run down parts of town too.
• I found some useful sections in the soundtrack for the most recent Superman film. Generally Hans Zimmer stuff doesn't work out of context of the visuals but on the whole this one stands up well.
• There is a Clone Wars series compilation on there, called something like "The Clone Wars: Series 1 to 6" which has some of the music for the big scenes from the series.
• On frontier worlds I use alot of Spagetti Western stuff usually (but no texclusively) Ennio Morricone.

That's all I have for now. Hope it helps. Good luck.

Amazon Prime Music has all of the Star Wars soundtracks, so I put them all in a playlist, and hit shuffle. Works well enough.

Did that for the last years. Only problem is, that by now I'm growing annoyed by the soundtrack, because the group takes (despite my best efforts) waaaay to long to decide, and you can only listen to the same music for so long =(

The sound tracks have been made available for both star wars - republic commando and star wars - the old republic od recommend both, if you can get a hold of KOTOR as well id recommend that also

Generally the soundtrack of any video game offers a few hours of material that would be of benefit. I'm thinking The Banner Saga and Strike Suit Zero both have songs that work well. I personally own the latter, and it has some pieces that would be very cool for a capital ship or starfighter campaign.

Kevin Kiner has a lot of his music online.
http://www.kevinkiner.com/

Mass Effect sound track is great, for Fantasy I love the Conan online games sound track.

Also if you've ever heard of Epic Score, they've got albums and albums of sick story music.

This was an EXCELLENT suggestion. My thanks.

Most welcome, sir. There's so many tracks in there though it's hard to keep track, sooo if you come across any you should totally let me know. I'll do the same.

i use this http://www.ambient-mixer.com/ ithas spaceports and other area's if you not looking for music