Music for Hammerfell

[Troubadour]

Hmm, I feel like kind of a loud mouth with this being my third thread in a row and all, AND with me bing new, but I just can't shut up I guess!

I joined to help with the sound for this mod. I'm not good at doing other computer related things, but I am a competent musician and actor. Although I am better suited for voice acting I decided to snoop around and see about doing some music with my acoustic guitar (If you Capo it around the fifth fret it sounds very much like a lute). However, one cannot just go prancing along and write any sort of music for a game set in a different world, with different races, and in a different period of time. So I started doing my research.

Music see, is an offspring of leisure time. All civilizations go through the same process. Start as hunter gatherers, usually nomadic. At some point they discover farming and, since land is hard to cart around with you, settle down into some sort of village. It takes a little bit but then they start to develop tools that will help them in their newly discovered agricultural endeavors. This leads to leisure time.

Example: You, an early farmer, have a plot of land. Every day during the planting season you go out and dig with your hands, or a rock, or a piece of wood, putting your seeds in the ground. Then one day you decide you have had enough, and invent the plow while taking a dump in between planting and sleeping. Now you can plant the same amount of field in a little under day, where as it took you a week before! Billy Mayes, eat your heart out. Well what are you going to do now? You have lots of time on your hands that normally you would have spent planting. You could expand your field, but the extra crops would just go to waste, so you need something to fill that empty time. So you write a song about your plow, and how awesome it is!

See? You need EXTRA time to compose music, and you are only going to compose music about things you know and love. Now, why is all of this relevant. Well, we are writing music for the Redguard living in and around Hammerfell. I have snooped around and seen a lot of different discussions on what Redguard music should sound like, but nothing struck me as being quite right. Blues and Jazz? Absolutely not! Eastern? Meh, closer, but music is governed by societal norms, so lets take a look at their society shall we?

Redguard society, from what I have gathered, is centered mainly around kicking butt and taking names while looking cool. Various sources have listed them as being the best of the best when it comes to melee fighting. However, they are also listed as being hot headed, not prone to playing well with others. This is echoed in the events of the game, oddly enough, entitled Redguard, where you lead a revolution and kick imperial butt.

Ok, so we know they like to kill things and that they are very hot tempered. So lets think about places that are like that. Hmm... the first thing that comes to my mind is Scotland! The Scots are known for their fiery attitude and love of battle and drink. So what kind of music did the Scots have, why rousing battle music! Many Scottish songs are designed to get the blood pumping and heart racing. But that's not all they had. Since they liked killing people it was inevitable that someone you knew and loved would die. So they also had mournful songs about lost loves and friends who are no longer with us. Finally, they had good old fashioned drinking songs to round out your hard day of killing people and going to funerals!

Ok, that gives us the type of music that is probably most common, obviously not all their songs will be battle songs or lost love songs, just like when America went through that awful bubblegum pop stage during the 90's. If all of America's music was bubblegum pop then I would live in Canada! But back on subject, we have the type of music, but now we need how they played it. Back to those fiery Scots. What do we think of when we think of Scotland, besides kilts, beer, and mossy rocks shrouded in fog? Thats right, bagpipes!! Now hold on, don't freak out on me. So bagpipes aren't your thing, well you're in luck. Bagpipes are right out because they wouldn't hold up in the dry climate that the Redguard call home. So what kind of instruments do we have from areas that are dry and hot? The guitar, or lute, or lyre, could be one, as well as some types of flutes, harps, trumpets made from animal horns, and drums! Big ones, with thick hide covering being whacked by a huge sweaty guy with an equally huge mallet! Since they are a martial society they probably have lots of percussion, as percussion instruments tend to hold up under lots of hard conditions (I mean, come on, they're made to be hit as hard as you can), so maybe some bongo like drums and some of those fun wood blocks that you always wish you got to hit when you where in high school band. Ya know, the ones that make the cool 'thock' noise.

So, to recap, we have a warrior society that lives in a hot dry climate and tends to be very aggressive. This leads to battle music and mournful songs due to deaths in the family. Their instruments must be able to take the heat and the ware of being on the road, meaning that a lot of the more delicate instruments, or instruments that are not very portable, are right out. I think it would be good to start a 'lore' section for the music board. A place to keep relevant lore on each culture that might pertain to music and such.

I know, I am new, and I hope I am not going to make anybody mad... But it seems that this needed to be hashed out. I am very open to any mistakes I have made, as this is only the product of four hours of research and thinking on my part. Also, I want to say that this is not meant to look down upon works already done, or to limit what one can do. I mean, do it! Try it with bagpipes! If it works then great. This is just to try and get some perspective on the music of Hammerfell as a lot of the theories being thrown around just seemed to miss the mark to me...

Thank you for reading this far.

[Jedak]

This is all nice an intelligent and thoughtful, but remember that the music written for this mod will be soundtrack music, not 'authentic' redguard music. Morrowind's music was not traditional dunmer music - it was game music. Oblivion's music was not imperial music, it was game music.

The same applies for this mod. Although it would be infinately cool if someone wrote real Redguard music and we somehow intergrated it with the mod, this is not the purpose of the S&M section of the mod. We are going to treat music like the vanilla game does - it olny exists as background music.

[Don Bernardo]

Hey Troubadour,
Yeah, we do kind of have to stay in the context of the original Oblivion soundtrack when we make new music for TR. However that's no impediment for a particularly creative composer to come along and add some more folkloric influences into it. In fact Jeremy Soule does it himself, sometimes "featuring" a different instrument in there.

Anyhow, we can't actually stray too far from game music, but I do think we need to somehow say musically, "This is not Cyrodil anymore".

And so, if you fancy yourself a composer, I strongly recommend you post some of your work in the Showcase forum. Then we'll be glad to help you out! I think this whole project works on the show-that-you've-got-something-to-offer-us-first-and-then-we'll-listen-to-you principal.

Oh and post your voice acting samples too!

[Troubadour]

Yeah, I understand what you are saying, that the music shouldn't stray to far from the game music. But I think we need to have a reference base even for that kind of music. I want to do a really good job, and I am having a hard time finding anything that gives me any real direction where music and sound is concerned.

As far as posting something goes. I'm a working on it. I ordered a mic and it should get here by Monday. I know that I haven't contributed any game material yet, that's why I was a little hesitant to post my views, but I assure you that it is on the way.

[Jedak]

I should probubly make a thread explaining everything in the S&M dep here...

EDIT: I do remember we already had a thread for this - discussing the Redguard sound; but that thread (and a couple of others) went with Macar for some reason.