Composer reporting for duty!

[surasshu]

Hello all!

My name's Steven Velema (aka surasshu), a 22 year old composer from the Netherlands. I read about your mod on the TES forums, and I think you guys are really doing a great job so far, and I'd love to do some music work for you if you need any.

I'm a professional game music composer, and I've worked with Jeremy Soule before (just conversion of his Harry Potter work to GBA and NDS--his Goblet of Fire theme is absolutely stunning and very much underrated by game music "connoiseurs"!).

My website is a bit bare-bones at the moment as I'm in negotiation with a webdesigner to make it into something more presentable, but there are a few MP3 samples available on there, as well as a portfolio of work I've done (the last few titles I've done aren't on there, but it gives a pretty good idea). Obviously, I will work with high quality orchestral samples to deliver whatever you guys need. I might even be able to get some soloists to record for me, if I'm lucky... But that's not a promise.


I normally don't do this "pro-bono" thing as I'm quite busy, but I really love Oblivion and your work looks very professional and high quality so far, and I would love to have the opportunity to work on some top-quality orchestral pieces (I usually work for handheld games, which is definitely a lot of fun but also quite limited in scope).

So uh, yeah, if you guys need me, just let me know!

[Razorwing]

Groeten surasshu, and welcome to Silgrad Tower!

:wave:

Thankyou for thinking so highly of us, I hope we won't disappoint. The beautiful thing about team modding is that everyone brings their particular expertise and aptitude to the table and it all comes together in a mod that has high quality in all areas, simply because modders get to do what they're good at and enjoy. I doubt there are many single modders who love and excel in everything from literature to quest design to 3d modelling to sound But in a well-run team filled with intelligent and ambitious individuals, all that is attainable. I would like nothing more than to see you join our endeavor here

I really enjoyed your "Daggerfallen" piece. I can totally see that hitting the dance floor charts. :bananarock:

It just so happens that I have something I could really use your help on, in case you're interested. I'm modding a town called Reich Parkeep, which is part of the Silgrad Tower mod, and it would be awesome to have exclusive ambience music track for the town, which plays over and over while the player is in the town.

One idea I have is that the first half of the track is reminiscant of classical fantasy, while the other half is darker, more mysterious, slightly alien perhaps. If you could weave in a similar sound to one of the clips in the attached archive that would be a very nice bonus. (can't add the actual clips btw, they're copyrighted by Bethesda) If you've played TES3 I'm sure they're already familiar to you The reason for those ideas is that Reich Parkeep is a divided town, with a clearly separated Imperial and Dunmer-Redoran district. The classical fantasy half would then allure to the Imperial component and the other half allure to the Dunmer component. The end of the second half has to flow into the beginning of the first half, so it can be streamed over and over without any noticeable change. Three to five minutes would be great I think. Is that something you would be interested in? =)

[surasshu]

I don't know in how far it's feasible to do this, as I'm not sure about the technical specifics of the music engine... But, is it possible to have 2 layers crossfade between eachother? I thought maybe I could do a "Imperial" and a "Dunmer-Redoran" version of the same basic theme, which you could crossfade between (depending on which side of the town you're at)?

It sounds like fun, though. I'll get started on some themes and stuff!

[Razorwing]

I've only had the game for a week, and most of that time I've spent just playing it.

But I know that Bethesda uses mp3 files, which have a bitrate of 192 kbit/second. I have a strong hunch only one track can be played at a time, and fading in and out between two tracks coinciding with a player action - like crossing into another part of town - wouldn't be possible. It's definitely possible to play different music tracks in different parts of the town though, so we could have two tracks - but then I think the aspect of bytesize comes into play, because we can't let it span too many megabytes. But then again I imagine the bitrate of the tracks could be optimized to counter that to some degree?

[noremorse]

Welcome surasshu! Glad to see you're interested in our mod!
:wave:

I can't really add anything else to what RW already said, but I was very impressed with both of your orchestral pieces, namely Daggerfallen. Outstanding.

RW: Do you think it possible to use a script to crossfade the two?

Also, instead of making two seperate sections of different styles, why not completely mix them? Similar to that of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. They took orchestra and dropped in bass guitars.

-nr

[Razorwing]

Maybe. What does crossfade mean?

[noremorse]

I'm in a graphical mood today.



A crossfade is basically when it blends together, the editing that makes a smooth transition between two audio files.

[Razorwing]

Ok. Personally I'd like to err on the side of caution and assume it isn't possible until someone disproves me. One clip with both styles, or two separate clips, is all I need and want.

[surasshu]

Sorry for not replying sooner, I got a bit caught up with some stuff. As far as I can tell the Oblivion engine only supports 1 music stream at a time, so I just made one track that can loop for now. It's being bounced on my other PC right now so I'll upload it soon. Hope you like it.

EDIT: And we could do 2 tracks but then they'd have to become considerably more minimal. I went for a bit of a Bruckner/Debussy-esque thing here so that doesn't really work too well if it can get cut off at any point. Anyway, bouncing... =D

EDIT2: Reich Parkeep Bounce01. =D

EDIT3: I decided not to add in any howl samples just yet, but I will if you think it needs it. Instead I tried to musically "imply" their sound into the arrangement with some accented horns and woodwinds in the second half.

[Razorwing]

surasshu: Ooh, it's perfect, thankyou very much!

Only question now is how to script it to play, hmm... I'll investigate the matter thoroughly.