Excellent news!! I'm a big fan of your music, Tashin! Thank you so much for it! :thumbsup:

Thank you for the new track Tashin - Keep up the great work, it is truly appreciated by those you share it with.

Emerald Paradise and The Forgotten Age are my favourites.

thanks Tashin! always loved your work, fits perfectly with Soule's pieces.

Still the best custom music for oblivion!

Tales and Tidings is great. It really fits in Oblivion. Well done!

May I ask what program you used to make the music?

I'm using this with All Original and several other music packs, with playlists created by BMS. It's amazing how much better the game sounds - and as a classical musician, I really place a lot of importance on music in media.

Sure, the sample libraries I used so far are are EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra (gives the Hollywood sound) and Garritan Personal Orchestra (more classical), and my sequencer is Cubase. I've recently been experimenting with Synful Orchestra, which can play some extremely realistic and expressive lines, and I've re-done Tales and Tidings using it. It sounds *much* better now and I'll upload it after I polish it up a bit.

That's incredible, I always thought these tracks were actually performed and not sequenced. Great work.

Nice to see the thread still intact
Okay, as promised, here's the new version of Tales and Tidings.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11436 (look for Updates in the files section)
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=2825

Notes:
While I was happy with the original from the music composition side, the
instrument sound wasn't very satisfying, and I thought it would be a pity if
the piece didn't reach it's full potential.

It was time to upgrade the synth, and rather than go for yet another sample
library, I thought it would be more fun to try something different. Synful
Orchestra has a very unique way of playing realistically (you can read all about
it at synful.com). I re-sequenced the entire piece from scratch to try and get
the most natural sounding phrases from Synful's expression mechanisms. Although
I haven't figured out the best way to program it, I think the results are worth
sharing -- it's much closer to the sound that I envisioned.

Thank you very much for these beautiful pieces of music, it enriches the atmosphere in the game more than any mod I have ever tried! I sincerely hope for more pieces of music like this, so that I might, in time, completely shift out the original Oblivion soundtrack with some new music, because I have gotten pretty bored with the same music running since 2006 to now..

Updated version downloaded - It sounds great!

If I was to use this pack with Better Music System (which I haven't installed yet; just making preparations right now), what would be recommended mapping of these tracks? I know I could just download the pack, listen every track and distribute them to folders as I see fit, but it sounds like spoilers to me. I'd rather hear them in game, where they are meant to be.

Hi Tashin.

Just downloaded your Files.

With your installation instruction Copy the MP3 files to the appropriate sub folder under \Oblivion\Data\Music.

Do I put the relevant Music file into the relevant sub folder? Such as the battle track into the Battle sub Folder.

Any help much appreciated.

James.

An after thought.

Do I remove the music files that are already in the Sub Folders?

(Sorry for the delayed response, my digest mail expired for some reason so I didn't see anything new)

Nilms, I hope you've got everything working now. The [Explore] / [Public] etc. in the filenames are just tags to help identify what scenes I designed the pieces for. The game doesn't care which folder you put them in, and some people mix and match. And I don't recommend you delete the existing files, because you'll have to re-install to get them again -- if you don't like something, best move it to a backup directory. I think the game needs at least 2 MP3s in each sub-folder or it gets confused.

Kir, sorry, I haven't tried Better Music System. Sounds really good if you can gather enough suitable tracks. If you really don't want to spoil the first experience (you must have amazing willpower ), there is a readme.txt in the zip which has some descriptions of each piece, which might help.

Cubase, eh? Sounds good. I would have used a different string pad. Are you using garritan's for that. It might take a bit longer but splitting the chords into separate instruments would make it sound a bit more realistic. Even having the more synthy string pad with a string quartet on top would do make it sound more realistic without giving up on the "bigger" sound of the orchestra pad. I think the individual pads on garritan's sound incredibly realistic and you should take advantage of that. Otherwise good score. It sounds like you know what you're doing as far as composition goes.

Can't wait to see more in the future.

I meant to work on this a few months ago but other things came up. So this was bouncing around in my head for a pretty long time, but oh well, better late (again) than never.

13. [Battle] Vanguard's Assault

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11436
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=2825


Notes

My first idea for this piece was ascending French horn line that appears in the
2nd half, which has a slightly unusual harmony that shifts in minor thirds.
I found it quite hard to meld with anything else, but never wanting a good tune
to go to waste, I kept trying different combinations.

I finally settled on mixing it with the 12/8 rhythm and style from “Dance of
Curse” from the Escaflowne soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (still my favorite anime
TV series score, and I haven't heard anything quite like it since). I was
looking for something to contrast and lead up to the heavy blasts, and the
lively rhythm seemed a good balance, so I ended up using it a lot more at the
front of the piece.

Overall, I tried out a few things to distinguish it from my earlier battle
tunes – the melodies are more chromatic, the rhythms a bit more pronounced,
and the harmonies more varied. At some point, the 2nd half started sounding
too modern and science-fiction like, so I had to make a few adjustments to
turn back the clock slightly, but I think the end result works.

Beautiful, as usual. :goodjob: The music sounds familiar to one of the good ol' RPG or action game (don't remember which), I enjoy it.

I have a question, previously you mentioned using Cubase, I wonder if you can also compose music with pre-17th century musical instruments with the software (e.g: lute, harp, flute, bagpipe, etc) ? Just wondering because it might make Oblivion more "classical" if there's a background music with old musical instruments.

Thank you! :foodndrink:

I just had a listen to "Vanguard's Assault"- wonderful work. Another addition to my music folder from you, and it is much appreciated. Thank you!

I only use a couple of actual "music mods" (otherwise, I add whatever I like, from all kinds of sources, into various vanilla and BMS folders) and this one is the best of all, IMO.

Very nice update. Thanks.

Thanks!

I rummaged around in my sound libraries and found a few flutes that might be usable, though definitely not professional quality. The harp I can probably distort a modern harp into sounding older. No luck on lutes I'm afraid. All my paid-for instruments are modern ones, and I've noticed that I'm definitely lacking in the old/ethnic sounds, so I'll be keeping an eye out for them.

I just went and listened to some lute music on Amazon, and I really liked it. I'll buy a few MP3s and see how they sound in a town. It will be interesting to write some of my own if I get a virtual instrument, though I don't know if I'll be any good at it

Medieval Instrumental Collection is worth trying for anyone interested in authentic music
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25486

Just downloaded Vanguard's Assault - Great work Tashin, it sounds great!