You know, after a hard day of adventuring an plundering, sometimes a man just needs to relax with some mead and music at the local inn. Well, that's all fine and dandy, until the resident bard begins to sing a song that we all know and love, except that song is filled with flat notes and awful melodies.

I'm sure the writers of these songs did not intentionally write sour notes to be sung, so what's the deal? Some of these bards are so awful at singing, I have to ask them to stop mid-song. Notably the one at the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, especially when singing "Tale of the Tongues". I mean, that song is supposed to be about me, and he butchers it every time! I can't stand it!

I know I might be picky, and this might not bother other people, but I just cannot stand hearing all these tone-deaf singers! And these bards are supposedly educated at the "prestigious" Bard's College? I laugh whenever they tell me to go check it out. Why, so I can learn how to sound like a dying cow!? Well I hope tuition's free, because I can get better singing lessons from the bandits in the nearby cave!!!

Someone just needs to get Malukah to re-record all of the songs to replace the ingame ones. (If you don't know who Malukah is, check out this awesome video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z9TdDCWN7g&feature=related)

So yeah, that's my two cents. Get some better singers next time, Bethesda. Jeez.

I think it's hilarious. It'd be cheesy if every bard was a master singer.

Agreed. What's particularly annoying is that the orc bard that's supposedly so terrible
just plays the loot from what I've seen, and does a fine job of it, while I've heard "Ragnar the Red" elsewhere and wanted to pull out a daedric warhammer.

havn't you done the bards quests? you go into a dungeon and get a book and then present it to someone and your a bard so "I trained In the bards college" means that they did a fetch quest

Funny thing is, the Japanese voice over sounds so much better. In fact other languages have actually done the bards much more justice, english one sounds horrible. But add Malukah oh that fixes everything. Bethesda would be wise to hire her.

I think it's the old guy in Markarth, I like hearing him sing. I have to make requests or he just sits at the bar drinking though.

It doesn't bother me that much. I mean, at the time, they couldn't afford to hire Enya or Luciano Pavarotti-type of voices to sing the bard songs. To be honest with ya, it would have been overdone if all the in-game bards had amazing voices.

What does bother me is the variety of the songs. I would have liked to have seen at least 5 more songs added to the game, but oh well.... I guess that's what DLC's / Mods are for.

i think beth is pulling a leg on us here and made the bards svck on purpose
it feels like typical beth humor.

That's probably why there is more than one quest that targets bards.

Unfortunately, this.
I wouldnt mind exploring a cave in real life to get a degree though

That girl on youtube isn't that good at all. With all the sound fx and echo she makes herself sound good. The bards aren't that great though I agree.

as a sound engineer i find your comment amusing

Cause all famous musicians sound good without autotune or other editing software.

yea,,,, lol
and i dont work 100's of hours on a track to make it decent. no not at all.

After hearing Malukah, I can't bear to listen to any of the bards in Skyrim >.>

The only bard i enjoy listening to,is the one on Solitude.(don't remember her name)
The others just sound terrible to me....

I asked a bard this evening to sing "Ragnar the Red" and she was so horrible. Towards the end of the song she was just yelling (and was flat and off-key as well).

I once found a bard on the road. I had randomly gotten bounty for killing someone on the road... with no witnesses... so now I usually go talk to the people on the road before killing them. He was a bard and started singing. Killed him.

Actually, it's pretty realistic. Not everyone has a good voice.

Even though Karita is super cute, I find her singing voice absolutely horrid.

Bards are the boss. We share the same landlord haha. Good neighbors.

Cheers

it's deliberate. Some are good and some are really, really bad. Just like they would have been.

Well they aren't playing on machine engineered instruments fed though a computer to adjust the sound levels inside a recording studio for the best acostics.

But on the other hand thier bards trained in a college, who sometimes can't hold a note, have no story telling capablity and can't even switch out words from a song to make it more apprioriete to the area (even though freeing there land of skyrim should always be followed by of the imperials, uniting against the stormcloaks would be the opposite).

You could argue its realistic, although if they where so bad realisticly they'd be a starved corpse on the pavement, not be amoung the cream of the crop working in an inn. But maybe it is an area where realism shouldn't be king, no electric guitars or korg synths sure but bad bards with limited songs doesn't make for wanting to sit in an inn for hours on end drinking and listening.

I like how not all of them are masterful singers.

Exactly this.
The people who complain about this are exactly the same as the people who complain that all the npcs don't look like super models.