Oh, but it's never too late... Also, I'm not that big a fan of wine unless it's in a winesauce... But if you say it's like a good winesauce I'm all with you...



They are both nice but I do have a few critiques...

There is a somewhat artificial 'feel' to them. I would say it's due to mainly two things.

1. Too little or wrong use of the reverb. Reverb does a lot to the overall sound, but using a bad reverb could make it sound just awful. Also, you have to make sure detail isn't lost so it comes out all fuzzy.

2. The soundlibrary used. An expensive one is better and sounds more real plus they have expressions for the instruments, e.g. play stronger etc. However, if you look a little into number 1 I think that this (number 2) in much can be forgiven.


Ok, now on to a few smaller compositional things.

1. The violin in FM_SUNNY is a bit sharp/loud compared to the other instruments. From 24 s and forward basically.
2. The are distiorsions in the sound in FM_SUNNY.
3. You may want to tweak the last note in 13.


Also, don't forget that you can put in some info into the metadata of the ogg. E.g. your name etc. You can look on the existing songs for inspiration. You are also allowed to use 48kHz and higher bitrate if you want.

I'm updating the webpage in the first post behind the scenes, but once I'm finished I'll add your songs as well.

Thanks for the critiques, the libraries I'm using are actually pretty good (Miroslav Philarmonik), but I didn't dedicate much time to these remakes, I just made a quick configuration for the levels, reverb and notes velocity, which is probably what makes the whole thing sound artificial.

I'll put some more work into them and reupload them.

Looking forward to it.

May I recommend LA Scoring Strings and Hollywood Strings as they are the most realistic string libraries ever made.

Yeah I know there are better libraries around, but I currently don't have enough free space to install those monsters... I probably will get a new hard drive in a couple of months, I'll give them a try then.

However, I polished a bit the two songs I uploaded yesterday, they're not perfect yet (I still have to work some more on the levels) but I guess they sound a bit more realistic.

13: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wo2yky0y2ny
FM_SUNNY: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?k2ytml2gk5z

If you do a generous donation... But I agree, they do sound good!



I think 13 is getting there but SUNNY may need further work. Still a bit flat sound.
Much better ending in 13 now but I think it can become even better.

May I also do a suggestion, though I don't know if it will sound good or not. The fast strings you faintly hear in the background from the beginning in SUNNY, try to lift them up a bit. Then at around 24s they can really be enhanced with the addition of the flute which complements it.

Also, you don't have another flute to try with? It sounds a bit dull. And, if possible do a little spicing of the strings as well. Might be better if you play a little more with dynamics.

Alright! I now submit a zipped up collection of completed tracks, named as their MIDI counterparts, completely oggulated and vorbisified.

I'm still fiddling with a few others, mostly dungeons, so they're not presently included.

Here it is, hope it works...

Wow, it looks like a lot of work has been going on in my absence. Hopefully I'll post some of my second phase mixes soon but i'm pretty busy at the moment with my new business and also writing a new symphony 'The Crusader' based on my Norman ancestor Walter De Lindsay who led an army to Palestine alongside Edward I The Longshanks during the 9th crusade.

Nice work

@coldgreysand

Sounds good! I'll listen through it more this weekend and give you feedback if you want me to..

I've also added the songs to the website (and yes I will update the design eventually... )

@ragholio

Sounds like a lot to do, but also fun.. We'll see when you have time for more DF-music.

Ok, so I couldn't keep away from listening to the songs longer than this..

I thought I'd give some feedback and my thoughts of the songs.

The overall sound and feeling is great! Generally I have no complaints, only things that I might have done differently, but that's just a matter of taste.
The sound is what I've come to expect from you by listening to the "previews"; good use of instruments/dynamics etc, good mixing levels but perhaps sometimes too little time to "catch my breath", i.e. in your face much of the time.

You have taken all songs to a new level, but IMO especially 29 and SUNNYDAY.

29 is my favourite, although I find the first part of the song better, since it's more unexpected than the second half. That sitar is pure genius and I like it a lot, a hell of a lot. It also reminds me of my favourite Beatles song (Tomorrow never knows)...

In some of the songs you've done a twist that I'm not 100% agreeing on, but then again, it's all just a matter of taste.
E.g. 21 starts off more evil than I had imagined, but I think it works though.
Or 18 in which I always thought it was wind, but you interpreted it as water. I think the song is played at night on land, but I'm not entirely sure.
Or that some songs have what I consider Spanish influences, e.g. 22, FOLK1, FOLK2, TAVERN, SQUARE_2. I like the versions, but the arrangements are more Spanish than I expected, or how I should put it..

All in all, very good quality and it's a good thing your providing the songs for free, cause I would have payed for listening to them...

I agree. Coldgreysand's 29 is awesome. So are several of the others. This is the first time I've heard a version of the tavern song that was listenable. It was also the first time I had the stupid thing stuck in my head.

My only complaint is reverb and balance. When I listen to this batch what I hear is epic reverb. It sounds cool, but it has two issus: the first is it sounds like all the music is being played in a HUGE hall all the time; the second is some of the instruments get drowned out nicely by the others. 18 and overlong are good examples. In 18 the pads and bells smother the flute. In overlong the entire London Symphony Orchestra (which does sound awesome) smothers the flute.

My reverb comment applies some of ragholio's stuff too. I like reverb, but sometimes it's a bit much for the nature of these songs.

One other idea crossed my mind while listening to coldgreysand's stuff. Tracks like 22 and 29 now have flavour that suits Hammerfell nicely while folk1 and folk3 sound like something fit for a group playing in a large court (lots of reverb and more complex than the originals). The tavern and square tracks sound distinctly European. With this in mind it would be totally awesome to have different versions of the songs that could be scripted into different areas. Have the shop music change depending on region and/or quality of the shop. Have middle-eastern sounding songs in Hammerfell and European ones in High Rock, etc, etc. Taking an idea like that to its logical extreme is a whole ton of work, but it's already somewhat doable just with the limited selection of recordings already available for some of the pieces.

So in conclusion, you guys rock. I'm building a nice little collection of Daggerfall music to listen to while I'm not playing Daggerfall.

thanks guys, I'm glad you are enjoying them, and thanks also for adding them to your (official[?]) page. I'm glad the tavern songs are a success, they were fun to make. I've been working on the dungeon tracks and I expect to get an upload of them in the next week or so. I have to say it is a little funny releasing all these before I am able to test them in the dxl engine, but in case things are weird I can always edit and reupload them.

as to region-specific music, that would be neat, but I think it is unnecessary. It already changes with the seasons, weather, time of day, dungeon, temple, ruin &tc. Adding another level for hammerfell/high rock would kind of be overkill. I think. At least, I think it would be too much work for a minimal pay off, imho. And besides, I think its pretty cool to have even the more middle-eastern tracks play in the northern regions, it makes everything seem more cohesive. Also, in my other thread SuperLlama has said that the track gday___d reminded him of the desert, while it always seemed like a high rock track to me. I guess it just goes to show how versatile and interpretive this soundtrack really is.

Anyway, thanks much for comments, they really do help.



wow, that's like the ultimate compliment, thanks muchly!

Is there a converter around that would let me convert ogg to an easier to handle format?

Semi-official... My personal server.


My approach as well.


You're welcome...


If you can't play oggs, just download an ogg-codec, eg. from the link in the first post.

If it's because of some other reason I would suggest something like
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=convert+ogg+to+mp3&aq=f&aqi=g-c10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=b1c10b0d9fd8e212
I use soundforge for most conversions, but that is a software you pay for. Perhaps "Audacity" can do it as well? Or maybe vorbis website has some conversion tool.

I thought this issue might arise. I will supply all my tracks as mp3s, in addition to the required vorbis format. I'll try and get an upload soon.

Yeah, but it's really an issue which shouldn't be an issue since almost everything these days support ogg. Mediaplayers, mp3-players, you name it.

If you upload mp3s I can zip them, put into a pack and put on the server. But ogg is the format which is to be used in DaggerXL.

Just don't start holywars
P.S.: ogg ftw

Yeah, not all actually. Not all "usb stick" MP3 player (you know, those things that are like an iPod, except a tenth of the price and no need to go through proprietary software to add or remove stuff from it, so pretty much better in every aspect that matters). There are technical reasons why the OGG Vorbis format is still rather rare in such embedded devices, and is rarely used for streaming. For a PC, playing files stored locally on a harddrive the objections raised in that article are honestly irrelevant. But for other devices, there are good reasons to provide MP3 versions as well.

You are probably right in that both mp3 and ogg should be provided, although I still withhold that it's an issue which shouldn't be an issue...

And Gez; FLAC ftw...

Just giving a heads up that I'm moving next week after I come back from my vacation on monday, so the musicserver will be down from monday/tuesday until late next week, probably friday-saturdayish at the longest.

So if you want to download something, do it soon or you'll have to wait/search for the songs in the threads.

Alright again! The dungeon tracks are now all complete. Here they are, in two files this time, as they are pretty large. Still in the required ogg format.

dg-DFRemixes-Dungeons01.zip
dg-DFRemixes-Dungeons02.zip

I'll give them a listen sometime. It's a shame the music isn't getting as much attention as texturing from non-musicians.

I'm back again. Took the morons 2 weeks to get the internet up and running again. Will listen to the tracks soon and the website is back up.

Downloaded and added the second pack to the webpage, but had trouble downloading the first pack. Will give it a go again later.

Comments coming probably tomorrow.

Ok, now for some feedback on the dungeon tracks...

They all sound very good and are atmospheric.
They defiantly sound like the preview-tracks you did and have the same quality.
All horror-sounds you have put into the songs helps the songs a lot I think.

There are however not that much variety between the songs, which is both good and bad. Good in that they are cohesive, but bad that the player might be bored (they know what to expect) after a while, since it's the same "sound" in most of them. Additional versions of the tracks I think would be preferable in order to get some variation, since as I said, these tracks all sound very good... I have some versions started which I can finish when I'm less swamped with other work.

I personally like when more "synthetic" instruments are used. I always thought "dark fantasy music" should sound a bit synthetic/electronic in order to get some contrast to "happier fantasy music", which should be with real instruments. Note that this is just my opinion...

Oh, and also; I successfully downloaded the rest of the tracks as well and they are all now put onto the server.

Please see the 7th answer on our's blog:
http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/2009/08/1 ... -at-night/
I have problems with captcha letters at soundclick. I've send to them e-mail regarding this issue. I'll try to contact him as his help in this section would move the project greatly.

Many have attempted to contact Robert in the past including myself. He seems to have found religion and moved on with his life.

I finally was able to register to the soundclick. This page seems to accept only google chrome in my case or is this something with linux detection. And I was able to send e-mail to Robert I wrote as fallows:

Welcome!
Sorry for disturbing but I have a small request for you. I came along your high-quality music remakes from Daggerfall at youtube and last.fm radio and those files was supposedly created by you to the contribution of "The Daggerfall Music Project". Since the page is down i assume the project was closed. Now getting to the point. There ware many projects which have been trying to bring Daggerfall on new computers with much better graphics and music but most of them failed. There is still one project however which is at good road to finish. There is a a working demo at the moment and the graphic designers are working hard to bring high-resolution textures (later models). The project leader contacted the Bethesda Softworks and they accepted the idea of the remake although they will not help with it. Btw.I hope you know that Daggerfall is now a free game and is now available for free download at Bethesda pages.
The project's page is here:
http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/
And their forum is here:
http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/
My request is that it would be most beneficial for them and for you if you could join them. However someone on the forum mentioned that you probably dropped music remaking for good. If so is there any possibility that you could give the project right to use your music remakes of Daggerfall which are already created?
I'm not connected to the project leader or designers in any way but I would like to finally play Daggerfall on High Quality Graphic and your music remakes are really good and I would like to hear them in the game.
Sorry again for disturbance and I wish you most peace and happiness.

Probably Rogholio you are right but at least I tried. Too bad as his music is very awesome and it would give the game a much greater spirit. I'll inform you if I get any answer.

Hey-I didn't know there was sth like that now I can turn off music at Dosbox and insert new one's manually .Actually I thought the music project was more dead then alive,but bucking through the posts I see I was mistaking.



Unfortunately you ware right:
Delivery is delayed to these recipients or distribution lists:
rh@rhmusic.net
Subject: Daggerfall-request (Robert C Hood)
This message has not yet been delivered. Microsoft Exchange will continue to try delivering the message on your behalf. "
Since his e-mail there is directed to rhmusic domain which is down he will never receive my e-mail.

Oh, well at least you gave it a shot

No, the project isn't dead. It's more "on hold" until we have more details on the specifics of the playback engine that will be implemented in DaggerXL. Also, It's a pretty busy time of year just before Christmas.

I'm sure you will be able to use Roberts music with DaggerXL one day, as the idea behind this project is to collectively gather together as many quality renditions of Daggerfalls music and then let the user decide wich versions they wish to use. For example, most of my tracks have been purist remakes i.e. I've left Eric Heberlings compositions intact and mostly just updated the instruments using high quality libraries. Wherease others have seen fit to completely write their own renditions of certain tracks and add lots of imbellishment. So far alot of tracks have been produced, so even if we didn't do any more, none of it has been for nothing

Well yes,but there is one small issue with Roberts music.... copyrights. Although they are remakes he didn't allowed to place his music to DaggerXl remake so probably I won't hear any music from him in the game

I don't think you need to be that concerned about his opinion on the copyrights of the music when we can't even contact him for years.

The project is a long way from dead, at my end too. I've done tracks, although I feel I want to try them out ingame before I annonce them here, since some things are experimental. I like to experiment...
When I'm able to listen to them ingame in a manner which is representative for what the "final product" will sound like, expect new stuff from me within a month or so, unless I'm extremely busy at that time.

On a second note; I'm watching the forums regularly, although my life takes a lot of time from these kinds of projects at the moment and have done so since June.

There is this forum for Robert Hood's music, though he doesn't seem to have been active on it since 2008...

Some one was able to upload big banch of his work to youtube-you can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLd5uIAH ... playnext=1
But without his permission I cannot download it from youtube and try to convert it to ogg format as this violetes his copyrights.


Is his e-mail there is too connected to rhmusic domain? Have you tried e-mail him?

I don't know; you have to register to see forum member email addresses; and I didn't bother registering on that dead forum. You could ask Klasodeth since he registered there.

My guess, though, is that it probably ties to the same address as well, since that's what is in his www link.

I wouldn't recommend trying to convert YouTube files when download links for the original .MP3's have been available.

MegaUpload - Daggerfall Music by Robert Hood

DivShare File - Daggerfall Music - Robert Hood.zip


I tried sending an email through the forum. Because it used the forum software, I can't see what his email actually is. Hopefully he'll receive it and respond.

I honestly don't think that he will ever resurface. I remember he was active for a short bit on Interkarma's forum, and when the remake engine by interrupt was getting going it used his music. Though Dungeon Hack has turned into a non-DF game, it is still actually using his music. Couldn't we use it and cite it in the same way that they do? I mean he did make the music for a DF remake project.

When I sent an email through Robert Hood's forum, the automatic response that was sent to me included a copy of the webmaster's email address:

rhmusicnet@yahoo.com

Since this e-mail is on yahoo e-mail server there is hope....

Does anyone have a stock of the DaggerXL music project music in .mp3?

Not mp3, since ogg is the format to use. But you could always convert the songs in the first post to mp3.

If I knew how I would

It's easy, most of the modern media players could do that. Which one do you use?

If you really want MP3, you can use (as me) , Switch Soundfile Converter, who work pretty well. Thanks to it, I can listen DXL musics on my old MP3 autoradio.

Format Factory is a nice and free piece of software for stuff like converting sound files to other formats.