Welcome to Gaia! ::

I pretty much have music playing at all times (I make playlists based on books I'm reading... lol), so having music to write to is a definite must. I generally go for music that's either just instrumental or in a foreign language, or else I'll end up singing along with it (and then, if I listen to it enough and figure out the sounds, words in a foreign language doesn't always help).

I've started building up a soundtrack for what I'm working on right now, it's basically a bunch of instrumental Irish/Gaulish music and the soundtrack to Mists of Avalon, plus a couple of songs by a woman named Heather Gale that are simply gorgeous! I've started writing a few themed pieces for it as well, but that's slow in coming.

"Mordred's Lullaby" is definitely my favorite so far, but then, I haven't heard all that much of her work. But I absolutely love that piece! I heard it and went, that's totally something that would have been sung to my main character when she was young! Except, it's not vengence against her father, it would be vengence against something bigger... It's such a haunting, beautiful piece, and I can't get enough of it!
If you have more of her stuff, I would love to give it a listen...

And being a bardic fangirl isn't such a bad thing. I'm trying to become a SCA bard, and I would love to have fangirls rolleyes biggrin

Unfortunately, "Mordred's Lullaby" seems to be the only one of her songs that's on ProjectPlaylist and I'm somewhat reluctant to go willy-nilly posting her stuff around if she doesn't want it up (I don't like to just toss around MP3s of hobby singers and folk singers because they typically have a hard time getting paid for their work as it is; not so with big record labels).

What kingdom are you in? Am I recalling Midrealm, Chicago area, for some reason? Or was that someone else?

Berz.

I find that many of my ideas come from music. Lately I've been listening non-stop to the soundtrack to The New World, by James Horner; both the music and the film are simply wonderful.

I listen a lot to Loreena McKennitt, whose music is similar to Heather Dale's, and Sigur Rós, an Icelandic band. Deaf Center's Pale Ravine is beautiful as well, makes me think of forests and lakes covered in mist or a light rain. Good for gloomy themes without being dark. Helios is similar, but with a different feel. One of the guys from Helios formed his own band, Goldmund. All three are instrumental, but Goldmund is strictly piano with some guitar mixed in. I don't know how much of them you'll find on Youtube and other places, but at Boomkat you can listen to their songs for free, although they will be interrupted every thirty seconds.

Now, what else do I listen to. Ah, yes. Enya. She's a must, at least in my opinion. E Nomine is good for those who like trance mixed with religion and mythology. ATB is good, as well, as is Amethystium, Björk (at least her album Vespertine), Clannad, David Arkenstone, Delerium, Era, Ike Yoshihiro, Keiko Matsui, Kenji Kawai, Hans Zimmer, Mari Boine, Moby, Radiohead - I could go on and on and on. I've got friggin' 46GB with music and most of it is music I use for writing.

Anyway, Enya, Loreena McKennit, Deaf Center and Sigur Rós are absolute musts.

I love, adore and worship Loreena McKennitt, but I can't listen to her music when I write, or I'd just spend the whole time singing along and get nothing done. It took several homework assignments to figure that one out rolleyes redface

Listen to this track Movement 1 (Mythodea & Odyssey), Vangelis.

What do I put to this track.
Heh, I can't say too much without spoiling some of the history of my world.

To put things as simply as I can, one army is powerful and has a great number of troops of different kinds, but the other has an army that is both phenomenal in size. We're talking hundreds of thousands of troops, not including the dragons involved. It's not just the numbers, it's also the power they have. The other army will be overwhelmed as their army is about....2/5 of the size of this other one. I have a very good plan for this as I've been working it out for a very long time now. That piece of music fits the smaller and much less powerful army watching the other one approach, then stopping to ready themselves, and then launching the all-out charge.

In the Odyssey version of the track you've got the vocals. If anyone can find the version with the chorals in it, listen to that.

No problem! ^_^'
The choral version is so much better though.

There's some other great tracks on his CD, Odyssey.

There is one called "L'enfant" which of course means infant, but to me the music goes with a beautiful city with a huge palace full of grandeur.

The choir is in it from beginning to end on the Odyssey CD, but it isn't in that video. The choir is in it, but not all the way through. It's better when they're in it all the way through. Choir music is choral music.