Composer interested in TR project

[Emul-Ran01]

I'm new to the forum and I'm not sure what the procedure is, but I'm interested in helping with the Tamriel Rebuilt project. I'm a music composer and classical guitarist, and I'm also interested in possibly doing some voice acting (though my voices are probably a little outlandish for pedestrians, better suited for villans, demons, and beasts and stuff of that sort)

I don't have access to performers at the moment, but I could probably post some MIDI samples of a few compositions, as well as submit scores to those who do know performers.

Also, is this project an Oblivion Mod or a Morrowind Mod?

[Eyeball88]

Hi, Emul-Ran01, and welcome to the forum. I'm not the resident sound guy, but I'll try my best to answer your questions anyway!

The best way to get started is to head over to the Showcase thread and create a thread for yourself, posting anything you'd like to show off: Midi samples, voice-work samples, anything you've possibly got that you think shows off your talents. From there, we check you out and if everything is great, we promote you to "TR Modder" so you can have access to everything you need to start modding with us. Though I suppose composing is fairly seperate from the rest of the modding scene.

As for the question of Oblivion vs Morrowind, we essentially have two projects running. The primary focus of our core of modders is Hammerfell, which we have begun for Oblivion. But a large number of older modders are continuing work on Morrowind, either because their computers won't run Oblivion, or because they just prefer Morrowind's gameplay.

Now, the little I know about composing (emphasis on the little) : our previous composer, Dragonfly, did all of his compositions with a few different software programs (and some orchestral samples, I believe) to make the Tamriel Rebuilt theme. You can find it on the front page, in the downloads section, I believe.

I used Logic Audio for the Tamriel Theme, but nowadays i'm using Cubase SX. I used mainly samples from the Peter Siedlaczek Advanced Orchestra collection of sample-CD's as well as some from Orchestral Colours. All of these are available from Best Service and go for about $150 per CD. I recommend them deeply and warmly.

For the Skyrim Theme, I did a lot more experimentation with percussive instruments; I still used the Siedlaczek and Orchestral Colours CD's but also used Prosonus' Orchestral Collection and Symphonic Fields Forever from Q Up Arts. The percussive elements on both tracks are taken from those above CD's and London Orchestral Percussion from Big Fish Audio.

All the tracks are composed in Cubase, nothing is played live, and no pre-recorded loops were ever used. It takes a bit of fiddling around with envelopes and volume to get the sounds just right, but with a bit of patience, it's possible to make pretty thick layering and get those beautiful orchestral harmonics that makes it sound like a real orchestra.

Maybe I should write a HOWTO on composing orchestral pieces on the PC. =)

Cheers!

-- Dragonfly

I'm not sure how helpful that is, though.

Anyway it's good to have you on board, and I can't wait to hear some of your samples!

[Anonymous]

To be honest, if you like using standard notation, Sibelius is far better for you. Cubase is great for mixing and doing all the things to actually make the midi sound good, but to write the music, you cant really trump Sibelius. You can import sib files into cubase anyway, and graff has Cubase...

[Emul-Ran01]

Thanks a lot. This has been pretty helpful. I'm actually using Finale 2004 to compose most of what I do. Its similar to Sibelius, though I prefer it for some reason. Of course, it can't reproduce the orchestral sound.

I go to school at Indiana University and study music there, and I live in a dorm full of orchestral performers, but using a program would be much easier than rounding them all up. Is there any way to get those programs for free? (had to ask)

[The_Warder]

maybe since you are a student you can get a very good discount.

[Anonymous]

Indeed, students do get a discount. You could talk to the head of the music department to see if they are thinking of investing in computers with the programs. Apparently music tech students at my school get sibelius and cubase 'under the table'.

Im looking forward to music tech.

[Pug]

Aye, Uni is the best place to get freebies. The uni's up here normaly have a few people selling gold disks of "any program you want" for dirt cheap. That was years ago though, no idea if they still do it. And I never bought one beleive it or not, since I didn't know much about software and I didn't need or want any back then. Beside I had better things to spend money on, like cider. Could just be a UK thing, but I doubt it.

Students do get some insane discounts.

[Graff]

Howdy, Emul-Ran01, I'm the Sound & Music moderator, when I'm actually here and people don't rush to do my job for me :p

Mostly, there's two viable options when composing music, dragonfly's rather expensive orchestral audio samples method, which provides for INSANE sound quality at the expense of high price and being rather time-consuming, or the method that me and Macar generally use, which is simply writing midis and then using VSTi's or soundfont to make them sound orchestral.

[Macar]

Aye, so far it's all digital orchestras- We're not going to have a real orchestra any time soon. If you want to spend money you can get a program (even with a student discount Sibelius causted me a couple hundred bucks). If you dont want to spend money you can easily just submit a midi file which we can spice up using the method that Graff described.

Hope you stick around.