What can we expect?
Elemental Forums
I have to confess to being particularly interested about this. I don't recall GalCiv2 being outstanding in the music department. Sins was pretty good. Elemental is a fantasy game, and epic music is as important as stylized graphics in making a truly immersive game.
What's in store for us?
I agree, getting the music right I think will be a huge deal for this game -much more important for an epic fantasy than for a GalCiv or a SOASE.
I hope that at least a rudimentary soundtrack is put in early or some mp3 files are posted up.
Hopefully we get some nice ambient sound as well... birds chiring when looking at the woods, marching when moving an army, etc. Little things like that make the difference between a good game and a great one.
Well, I would rather not see "epic" sounding music on the ambient map. In the tactical battles, maybe, but the regular soundtrack shoud be more subdued.
I'm hoping to hear lots of trumpets and woodwinds, in the same sense that they were used in Master of Magic (just less obviously MIDI) Music is one of my favorite parts of games, and stardock has given me the impression they are really happy with the music they have for Elemental. So I can't wait to hear it.
Ya epic sound tracks really help games like this. Personally I find that the music included in the fall from heaven 2 mod really helps with the immersion, but then again I really liked (most of) the civ 4 soundtrack. Yes I know its not orginal and just a collection of "appropate music" but its still cool. Other sound track I really love were the Homm2-3 sound tracks. Large operatic chorus of Homm 2 were awesome, where as the ochrestal (city) music for Homm 3 was really good to listern to. Especially that orc faction's (stronghold?) music. Sometimes I'd bring up the city menu just to listern to it 
Just as endofdayz said, I would really love for the game to have some really awesome ambeint sounds like for example to go with the awesome music. Perhaps the mordor wastelands need random cracks of lightning and the wailing of my slaves to help bring it to life. In my opinion sound is often more important for immersion than graphics, though obviously gameplay is king.
You just created a coal mine! (Queue epic combat victory music!!!) 
Epic music is good if used sparingly, epic music used all the time stops being epic...
For a game like this, I'd expect most of the music to be instrumental, some flutes, some strings... While in a city some more folky, tavern music. The really epic music should be reserved for close battles, important finds or events (Hey, you just befriended a dragon...) and off course the end game (victory or defeat...).
Just let me easily point to other music sources (i.e. My Music folder, etc.), and go from there. I end up dumping tons of mp3's into my Morrowind and Oblivion music directories. How I wish I could just put shortcuts there....(laptop doesn't have that much disk space...).
For some reason, for games in the fantasy genre, I have a much higher expectation for the soundtrack than others. I would like a variety of tracks, tired of listening to the same track over and over again in strategy games in general, epic and little neat sound effects. Themed music for each race and/or alignment sort of thing would be interesting too.
I'd really like to see something like the Total War series has done. Nice, not very noticable, but pleasing music in the background while nothing is really going on. But once the action starts, then music needs to get epic (E:TW failed with the epic music, it had like one battle song). Let's hope stardock can afford an orchestra this time 
Anyways, Ynglaur, I love Oblivions music. Especially the main theme. What do you think is wrong with it D:
Thrawn, the epic music of total war (rome and m2 in particular) seriously made those games. If elemental could pull something off like that it would be absolutely incredible. I never auto-resolved in M2 because of how good the music was. Never. Please Stardock, music is seriously something worth investing in.
The music in sins was very very good, but I think that that was done on Ironclad's end, not Stardock's
From a question I asked on twitter:
TeamElemental@Three_kings Our music (since PM2004) has been done by Mason Fisher...its rennisance meets fantasy meets classical. It's good stuff, IMHO
Mason Fisher's website: http://www.masonfisher.com/
Sweet. 
Looking at his site, he's also doing the music for Jumpgate Evolution and got signed on to Elemental in February 
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