Music. It has been around for centuries. Embedded deep within each human is the natural emotional connection to beat and rhythm. When we intelligently combine these two things with different sounds we create the beauty that is music. It is used to persuade our hearts and our soul to understand one another. We use music to set a mood, set a feeling. Music is universal, international. It can communicate a state of mind without words.

What about music in video games? They can be a powerful pillar of support to the feeling and disposition somebody gets from the experience with the game. Just like a movie, the musical score can become one of the very few core elements that make the artistic concept a masterpiece of thought and feeling.

But how do we use music in video games? How should we execute their cue? Unlike theater, music in a game isn't usually a linear event. Since the player's avatar is a dynamic actor in an unwritten scene it can be difficult to properly implement emotional dynamics and timed appropriateness in musical cues.

One thing that broke immersion for me in Oblivion (and other games too) is the abrupt change in music before the player himself makes an emotional connection with the musical cue. What do I mean? Well, let's say you are exploring the vast wilderness. A beautiful piece of music is playing that uplifts your soul, when suddenly, unbeknownst to your conscious thought the musical score changes abruptly to a dynamically harsh cue. You know what it means, somebody is trying to attack you.

What is the real difficulty here? Well unlike theater where the audience can both empathize with the actor and yet be apart from the scene allowing the mind to see events before the actor does (hence why a music cue can begin to play and set a mood before the actor on screen is aware of it), you are both the audience and the actor in a game. When a musical cue begins before you the actor are aware of the danger, there is no empathy with it because you cannot perceive the source of the danger! The audience and actor dynamic can be a tricky traqeze wire to walk in a video game.



What is my point? I am trying to convey that the music in video games can sometimes be ruined by problematic displacement. Something I hope Skyrim will improve upon is when a battle cue will begin, and how that song will really feel in transition. I don't want it to feel like I accidentally pressed "next" on my cd player (or whatever new fangled device you use these days).


Along with the request above I would also like to voice a humble suggestion to Bethesda about how music is handled in the game. In Oblivion we had three categories to choose from: Wilderness, Dungeon and Town (I believe? There was also the title screen. Please correct me if I'm wrong). One of the things I like to do as a music lover and collector is implement more music into my game. I would like to request that this be more customizable. In what way you ask? Well, it would be nice if I could tie a music file to an single interior cell. Or if I could separate music by region. It would also be nice if I could customize whether or not battle music comes on, how how it begins. Like say I don't want battle music to begin for 10 seconds when the game actually recognizes there is a battle, or 5 seconds etc. It would also be nice if it's not too much trouble, to customize whether battle begins when you start throwing blows (or attack). What if I am in sneak? Does anyone see me? I would like to be able to customize this too. *EDIT* Also, I was hoping that if it is possible the ability to cue fade-in and fade-out when a player goes past a certain area or activates certain elements. Mostly I would like to design music around the puzzles that will now be possible in Skyrim.

I believe that, of all my requests, I would like more power of control when music cues begin and where they begin. Also, it would be nice if I could segregate areas of the map by choice and give them their own music file if I so desire. To complement my suggestion I will give an uneducated summary of how this could be accomplished: if in your data/music folder (or even deeper perhaps), the game sees a file location like "Cell " or coordinates "-0 -0" or maybe something similar, it could cycle through the music in that particular cell. I would hope for something more robust than this (in the sense I could use the Creation Kit to customize my musical experience instead of a folder system), but I thought I would suggest to be thorough.


Right now I am making large lists of appropriate music for the Skyrim region. Sifting through thousands of songs at my disposal using programs like Pandora, Last.fm and other music searching tools. It would be disheartening for me to finally get Skyrim and see no musical customization improvement over Oblivion.

I encourage all those involved in the music area to consider some of the powerful and emotionally moving possibilities in scripting the musical experience further. Thank you for your time.

-Seven

For the posters in this thread:

Please feel free to discuss how you fealt about the past Elder Scrolls games implementation of musical cues and even how other games have done them. All discussion surrounding that is welcome. Have fun

Also, anyone else for this idea? Tell meh! :twirl:

tl:dr More music options. More music customization. No more abrupt Oblivion battle music!

Nice thread. I agree with you on how abruptly music changes when the character gets in battle and the mood is suddently changed.

I don′t really enjoy the idea of removing it though, it would mean that all ingame music would need some kind of drummy rythm, so it would fit battle scenes.
My simple and newbie idea would be of having a "fade volume" effect between tracks to ease abrubtness, but that would only work if all the tracks coincided melodically. However, it would sound wierd if battles lasted 2 seconds...

In a nutshell, I trust Jeremy Soule and sound designers in whatever music will turn out to be. If there is a possibility of costumization as you suggested, fine by me.

Combat music should only begin once you are hit/hit something or if an arrow whizzes past your head or some such. It was very annoying in MW and OB that you knew an enemy was about to attack sometimes a fully minute before they did. :/

I want bards playin music

Thanks for contributing! I actually wouldn't like them to remove it either, but perhaps the cue could be a bit different. One thing that can be an immersion breaker is the same sort of battle music whether you are fighting a wolf a minotaur or a dragon. It would be nice if they had different cues for each sort of 'threat' or experience. I would say this is important, because reusing some of the same battle scores for things that are not threatening can really detract from the power of the score.

I don't want them to remove the idea of battle music, but perhaps just implement it better. Does the music need to start out with loud dynamics right away? Is there something that can begin that sounds like it is transitional?

I think the perfect game (and I would never expect this), would have a musical score where at proper intervals within each movement there is a tie-in to other movements depending on what the player is doing. This would be an incredible feat to pull off, but it would make it so a transitional phase is possible.

Combat music just needs to be slower, like it needs to fade in, not abruptly start

The only thing I don't want, is an epic music for a mudcrab...
But for the rest, I don't really mind it.

Good idea.There will probably be different "grades of sneaking". What I think will happen is when the player reaches the "spoted" degree of sneaking, battle or danger theme will start rolling, instead of just "enemy nearby"edit: ...which eventually would be the same...nevermind...

I think this time around, there will be (or I wish) also different themes for each part of the day: morning, afternoon, evening etc...
Oblivion had just a few tracks (don′t know how much for sure). If Skyrim has double or more, it will be more probable that different level enemies will get different and mor suitable themes

Just so you know, music for Skyrim is already finished.

Thanks for the heads up. I still hope they consider making music implementation more customizable! That is what I really want right now, so that I can customize the experience for what my Skyrim mods will be about. I want to be able to cue music at certain areas in a dungeon, when the user completes a puzzle or what kind of music is going to play when he fights certain enemies. The more customization the better in this case, because I feel music plays a huge role in the game experience.

where did it say that?

HALT!

I would like to see music for weather changes, time of day, region, etc. Daggerfall did it, and it added immensely to the immersion. When you were in your house or on your ship the music was very quiet, subdued, cozy even. There was music for morning, for night and afternoon, music for snow, music for rain, and ear piercing evil music for shops And regional too. If you discovered a dungeon, the area around it outside had creepy subdued music. Really added depth to the world.

I imagine it would be stupid expensive to have that much music out of Soule, but man, give us the folders or something so we can throw in our own music? Won't happen but would be kick ass. There was a mod for Oblivion that kind of did that. It just crashed to desktop more often than not

Cheers

It's not said specifically but in the Sounds of Skyrim video the guy talks about the music for Skyrim being composed by that guy in the past tense and says quite a few things that point towards it being finished (Also, they hired this guy at the beginning of development for Skyrim to do the music so he would have been longggggg done by now)

Like mentioned before, it really annoyed me when battle music would play with a mudcrab that would die in two hits. Play only battle music when its a special or challenging enemy. I was just playing Oblivion tonight, and I recall it playing this cheery music when it was raining. Have different music for the weather please.

I had no problem with Oblivion's soundtrack or its implantation. In fact, it may be the best game soundtrack ever. Over thousands of hours and I still got goosebumps hearing 'Dusk at the Market', or 'Watchman's Ease'.

I discovered where the secret Mythic Dawn Hideout is! It's at MWBOWWAIR

In Red Dead Redemption, all the music was written in the same key and would transition nicely in an out of itself.
Hopefully there is plenty of music/variety this time around. We've got 8 people doing the dungeons but only 1 person doing the music.

Game should only start combat music when it is OBVIOUS to the player that there is a battle, and when it is a decently powerful opponent compared to the player (no epic mudcrab orchestras!!)

Otherwise the way they used music in Oblivion was fine with me..

I believe that like some users have already posted that most of the music is finished. I played Red Dead Redemption and I really appreciated the way they handled a lot of their music. Like you said, the transition felt right, but I would reckon they spent a fortune on areas of the game like that. I think RDR was rumored to cost around 100 million dollars to make? That is very expensive.

Does anyone know what kind of salary you would expect to pay a composer for a game like Skyrim? I'm not privy to this knowledge.

I'm more concerned about sound than music. If you do general effects right like bustling crowds, waterfalls, the sounds of insects or the echoes of movements in caves you don't need music.

Simple fix: Have combat music only start when you get struck, not when they engage you.