Perhaps it's because he's fantastic at what he does and Bethesda love his work.

On wikipedia it states that he is doing the soundtrack. I don't know if anyone else has said it but I did first about a week ago.

so far i've liked his music, and come to associate it with the elder scrolls in general.. another composer with a different style would be jarring to me.

I totally agree.

One of the first things I was looking forward to Pre-Oblivion was hearing Jeremy's work for the first time.

I wasn't disappointed.

I'm absolutely certain that Soule's amazing soundtrack is in a large way responsible for the hundreds (if not thousands) of hours that I've spent playing Morrowind and Oblivion. That said I wouldn't be disappointed if someone else scored Skyrim, so long as its still mysterious and organic.

wow..worked of the music for both my favourite games..legend, but i dont mind if it isnt him, as long as the music is epic, suits the situation and sends shivers down my spine!

I just love how he made he Oblivion theme: Copy "Pirates of the Caribbean" and then change it just a tad.

That said, his songs throughout the rest of the game were very good, but the theme just bothers me.

Neverwinter Nights -> Jeremy Soule is a genius

I'd say there are better composers out there than Soule. He's not bad, but his music is very, very generic. There are other games out there with better soundtracks. Granted, they probably don't fit the theme of Elder Scrolls, but currently I'm a fan of the Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood soundtracks, Mass Effect II, and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Those, and the Tron Legacy Soundtrack, but that's more for my love of Daft Punk and techno music that wouldn't fit Elder Scrolls in the least.

It'd be alright if Soule came to do the music again for Skyrim because it probably won't be bad. In fact, if he's responsible for the intro music for the trailer, and the rest of it turns out to be just as good, I'd say he'd improved and Bethesda made a good choice having him back. But with Soule comes the high risk of lack of jaw-dropping masterpieces, and that's what I'm really looking forward to in a game.

I really like Jeremy Soule's work.

my top two soundtracks of his:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHGgBugeyHI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPw1nJxMvS0

It seems to me that some people speak without knowing too much about the topic of which they speak.

For example, Jeremy Soule has stated in interviews that he always wanted to do game soundtracks because of the different nature (i.e., challenge) of composing music for such a medium compared to others such as film or live theatre. He has composed many game soundtracks aside from the few that have been mentioned here. This is what he does for a living, not film or other types of composition. He is one of the most acclaimed composers in gaming history. This is quite obvious or some of his themes would not have been chosen for the Play! orchestral concert tours.

As for "Pirates of the Caribbean" ... you know, people should understand that many, many people have not seen those movies, right? You might as well accuse the composer of the movie soundtrack of ripping off Jeremy's compositions. Or perhaps we should accuse Pirates of ripping of fantasy film compositions from years past, right? It's amusing to see people think that what is "normal" for them is true for everyone, and proceed to use their own subjective experiences as measuring standards for everyone else. Unfortunately, that doesn't help understanding and acceptance between people, though.

I always loved soundtracks for film (TV or movies) as well as games (which is an area where Japan has always been FAR ahead of Western markets... for example, the Ys series had over 50 CDs released for it way back in the mid 1990s about 10 years after it first began as a game franchise). I can say that Jeremy Soule's soundtracks for TES III and TES IV as well as Guild Wars are some of the most emotionally moving themes I have ever heard, particularly outside of Japanese soundtracks. Part of this may be historical experience, too, but it's certainly quite silly to claim that most people do not feel emotion in Soule's music (just the opposite is true if anyone reads the posts by people who follow his music). Even a (Western) game with excellent music such as Bioshock cannot compare as far as emotional empathy; such a soundtrack fits the game (as in Bioshock) but it doesn't generate emotional empathy like Soule's pieces do. The only comparison I can make with Soule is excellent Japanese game soundtracks such as Ys, Valis, and more recent works such as Xenosaga I or Star Ocean: The Last Hope.

I give Jeremy Soule 6.5 out of 10. Okay, fairly generic, but enjoyable enough and doesn't get old too fast.

I agree with a previous post. Oblivion was an amazing soundtrack (better than Morrowind) and I actually brought the soundtrack too. I've never herd music from a video game that really expresses an emotion to me. Last type of music that really captured me was playing Grand Theft Auto II listening to Maria Calla on Gianni Schicchi's opera: O mio babbino caro (I think I said that right) on the raido. If you remember the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AvIqS_62xA, that's what was playing (yeah I brought that game mainly on the track then the game lol)

I've always wanted bethesda or another major company with cash to throw around to involve john williams, danny elfman (besides fable, who only used him to cover the main theme and made the game sound very inconsistent) or george fenton, all of whome are amazing cinema composers and could give the video games that sense of urgency, story and to properly set the mood.

To me, yes, jeremy sounds like someone spamming angelic noises with no particular emotion being expressed at me and while it makes passable ambient music it really just kills the immersion of the game very quickly. The last piece of work I really liked by him was the Morrowind main theme, which they unsurprisingly recycled in Oblivion.

Rating a composer points....
Nice one.

I really liked the music in Oblivion, so I'm glad that Jeremy Soule is doing the music again.

Um... okay. I could have expressed it in words rather than numbers if you'd prefer.

I was surprised to learn the guy who wrote Morrowind's main track was the same one for Oblivion. They are so different that when I read someone saying he hated his work, I did not know whether JS work was more towards the great M or the mediocre O.

Then I remember having heard his name somewhere else. I love music, and I generally remember the names of those who impressed me (like Lind Erebros from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pm_ZXqNC3c).

So I googled his name and that of a game where the main track was excellent imo, and I was not wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By2fP78P7A4

This guy did some excellent work indeed.

You know, you need to factor a few unmentioned things in vis-a-vis soundtracking:

(1) In the pre-Morrowind games, they used MIDI, and the HMI audio interface, which let them assign a midi or a small group of midi's to specific action triggers. Hence you get things like the two snow themes, one of gentle, falling flakes, and one of brassy, riding across the white lands at a gallop. All the MIDI files extracted added up to all of 1.95 megabytes; what, a fraction of -one- mp3? They had the room for all the thematic music.

(2) With MIDI, a good part of how it sounded depended on exactly what card the user had, or if the later cards, what soundfont they used. The basic 'everyone has this on there somewhere' instruments sounded terrible; as in performed by the Kazoo and Tin Can Orchestra. Put a good card, or a proper orchestral soundfont in the mix, and.......... Mmmmmm......

(3) Morrowind, which was the start of the MP3 era, =did not have the kind of music assignment engine that earlier games did=. You never really knew what theme you were going to get....and the composer had to take that into consideration, as too much variation in thematic structure could and would destroy the immersion in the game world. As those who did mp3 recordings of Daggerfall's soundtracks to use im Morrowind learned when suddenly, in the midst of danger...you were listening to the tavern theme set.

(4) MP3's are -not- friendly to wide ranged musical scoring. The compression kills both upper and lower dynamic registers. Here's a test. Get the soundtrack CD from Conan the Barbarian (and I would =love= for Basil Poledouris to do a TES soundtrack....). Take the Anvil of Crom track, and convert it to MP3. Now listen to each source. The higher instruments are duller, the peaks clipped off, and the bass and percussion, while still very much there, are also a bit stuffed with tissue paper. And it is those deformed, compressed parts of the musical score that typically are the parts that trip emotional spikes. You hit a kettle drum; it isn't the 'thump!' that really gets to you (that more or less gets your attention); it's the sounds as it dies away. The dynamic range heard in Soule's music ingame is =not= the range you hear in the uncompressed versions. And if you know your work is going to get muted, it kind of affects how you do your work to begin with.

(5) Another reason the MIDI's had much better impact is that they didn't have the limits of MP3's; namely you didn't have to end the music, have a brief mute period, then restart at the beginning (unless, of course you hack the mp3 format, which has this set up by default). You could drop right back into a MIDI anywhere you chose and loop unto eternity (in the renamed 'winter2.hmi', you started off with a nice intro and theme for 46 bars, did a little 5 bar bridge at the end, then dropped right back into the beginning at bar 2, bypassing the wind up and sounding as if the musicians just kept playing, not rewinding). In a lot of ways, the mp3 music format is stifling to composers, as you have to deal with start,-theme-end-pause-replay, instead of start-theme-bridge back to matching beat near beginning-continue. And a ham handed encoding engineer can utterly destroy a theme's uniqueness with a fraction of a percent too much compression.

Frankly, I'd love a return to Daggerfall style music control. So the Ipod generation couldn't snag the themes; big deal. The composers could expand the number of themes and cuts they created, tailor them for their intended environment. And sound on computer systems is more than capable of multitracking (say a base MIDI theme; later, at a critical juncture, same theme with added voices, building the tension. You could have several of those additions to the base theme, from higher and brassier instruments to descending choral, depending on the needed environment). You have to factor in whether the game mechanics help or hamper the composer, and like it or not, the mp3 era hinders

For that matter, you could always run two sound engines, leaving the mp3 scores for the epic, dramatic sweeps and using MIDI to generate the ambient music that is in taverns and homes and repetetive dungeons.....

I have to disagree. The music from MW was amazing, and I still find myself humming the title theme sometimes

Disagree completely with Inon Zur bloke, I played with the music of Dragon Age and Fallout off, just didn't enjoy it.

I also love Jeremy Soule, he's my favorite composer for video games, though I think its on the Guild Wars soundtracks where he's at his best, though morrowind's. Personally though, I wish they'd just get http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9fk-IuF8oY to do the entire score. Sure, having something like that playing while fighting a rat would be rather odd, but whatever, it would be awesome.

Ahaha, I think I'm going to get the most epic video game music I can find and put it into my Oblivion install, then run around doing the most mundane things possible. Fighting sewer rats, swimming around in small ponds, picking flowers.

It'll be awesome.

Gasp! People have different taste in music and feel different things when they hear a song! Shocking new development! Let's debate matters of sheer opinion because, clearly, mine is correct and yours is not.

man, thx, this was a good track in your link

*gasp* - it's a forum, as long as people are respectful and decently civil toward each other, they can debate matters of sheer opinion. Go figure - that happens on the internet! :ahhh:
If you would like to discuss the topic at hand, great, if all you want to do is make off-topic snippy posts, move on to a topic you are interested in.

I also deleted a couple posts - people are debating the composer or hoped for composer for Skyrim. Making snotty posts about people's tastes or whatnot... not gonna fly, mkay?


I loved the music over the Skyrim trailer, has given me chills every time I hear it. I like Jeremy Soule's tracks for both MW and OB and would be very happy if he does the Skyrim track. I find Inon Zur to be a pretty bland composer for the most part - his music for DAO and FO3 added very little, it was pretty indifferent, imho.