So, I've been working on versions of this mod for quite a long time now. It started out as a simple idea, I wanted to add dungeon and town specific music like there was in Oblivion, but then after the improvements made to Beth's music system in Fallout 3 and later Skyrim, and music mods like Xiran's Better Music system, I wanted to make something a little more than just a few location specific playlists.

However, this mod is my way of fulfilling a want of mine that Xiran's mod didn't satisfy, and neither did my mod, which only added Dungeon music. I'm in no way suggesting Xiran's mod or any of the other music system mods are bad mods, they just haven't been what I was looking for.


What my mod aims to do, is bring a number of improvements to Morrowind's music system without adding too many specific playlists or extensive feature sets. Instead, I wanted to create music that I felt was fitting with the game's original soundtrack, something I'm very picky about myself, and some subtle changes for immersion.

What music the mod will add:

• "Dreary" Explore music. This will be played in the Ashlands, Molag Amur, Red Mountains, Firemoth, and possibly future TR regions.
  
• Dungeon Music. This will be played in caves, forts, sewers, ancestral tombs, and other dungeon type areas.
  
• Atmosphere music. The function of these are similar to the regional palette music in Skyrim, on the soundtrack as "http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jeremy+soule+skyrim+atmospheres&oq=jeremy+soule+skyrim+at&gs_l=youtube.3.0.0.3364.8146.0.9354.26.22.2.2.2.1.241.2659.10j5j7.22.0...0.0...1ac.1.1DyyA-rl8ks". They will play in unnamed region cells in addition to the regular explore or dreary explore music. They may also play in some interiors.
  
• A few silent tracks. Right now the tracks that will be included will be three thirty second silent tracks, one one minute silent track, and one ninety second silent track. They will play as part of the atmosphere and dungeon playlists, in order to add breaks in between the music.

A few things I would like to add are possibly location discovery tracks, HP/level dependent queuing of the battle music, and "end" tracks to the battle themes. With the help of a programmer I'd love to make this all native to OpenMw once it's passed 1.0 as well, but that's for later.


What's done?

• 19:22 minutes of dreary explore music
  
• 35:55 minutes of atmospheres
  
• the silent tracks (zero effort but still)
  
• (Morrowind's Special Edition soundtrack is 45:48 minutes long, NMMw's soundtrack has already exceeded that length)

I am uploading the soundtrack on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHIpuFLnytJSSCM9CoLk0C9HUFmHqLwgp&feature=view_all) as I go along and plan to release it on it's own (for free of course) once I am finished. Right now the atmosphere tracks are not up yet because I plan on incorporating ambient sound effects into the soundtrack version of them much like the Skyrim soundtrack did, that however is not my top priority.

How are these tracks even being made?

The tracks are essentially remixes of Morrowind's original soundtrack. The dreary explore tracks were made by putting tracks from Morrowind's soundtrack into paulstretch and then stretching them (usually only 2x) and pitching them down around -600 to -1200 cents. I then put them into Audition, sometimes reverse them, and cut up the melodic segments of them, putting them together into one track. Each explore track consists of pieces from two of Morrowind's original explore tracks.

The atmosphere tracks are tonal drones. They were made by stretching out portions of Morrowind's soundtrack around 10x and applying heavy tonal filtering via paulstretch. Those drones, (I made two long ones which were about 20 minutes each) were then cut up into 2-3 minute segments in Audition that fade in and out. When used in game they provide a nice ambiance while still being melodically similar tonally to Morrowind's soundtrack. It's hard for me to really describe them properly so I'll leave that for when they are up on YouTube or otherwise.

My plans for the creation of dungeon music are similar to the atmospheres. They are what I am working on right now. However, rather than just being tonal drones, I will be using modified versions of Morrowind's original sound effects to add content to them melodically and tonally. The goal is that you shouldn't be able to recognize the sound effects being used, and if you do, they should fit into the music seamlessly.

Have you implemented any of this ingame?

Sadly, not yet. I am a musician, a texturer, and a 3d modeler among other things, but scripting has never been my strong suit. I have tried to read the scripts written by Xiran for his music system mod, but I had a difficulty comprehending what was happening in the scripts and I am hoping that with the help of others I can figure this out for myself and actually start implementing this music in the game!

In the past I did make a dungeon music mod, with the help of others to get the scripts to work. This mod required Oblivion or Oblivion's soundtrack and used it's dungeon music. The tracks were played in dungeons randomly much like Morrowind's Explore tracks are played ingame, however, after battle, the music would not start again and Morrowind's original explore music would play again. There were also a few other issues as well, if one remained in battle for an extended period of time, the dungeon music would begin playing again even though you were still in combat. Similarly, when the explore music played after battle, the dungeon music would begin playing again afterwards, but only after an extended period of time. These problems stemmed with my reluctance to use MWSE scripting. As a result, the scripts had no way of detecting wither combat had started or stopped.


I don't really have much more to say at this point, if you have any suggestions, feedback, or can help me with the scripting portion of the mod, please do post!