I've had reports of audio issues with other mod managers, so this one is highly recommended.
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Dive into the Classics of 1950s Radio
Replaces the Classical Radio songs with new music, ads, and newsreels from the 1950's!
Compatible with More Where That Came From v3.2! That affects Appalachia Radio channel, this affects Classical Radio channel!
How does it work?
Think of this as a re-texture, but for audio. I swapped out the original audio files for new ones. Now, on the Classical Radio channel, instead of hearing Claude de Bussy's Prélude àl'après-midi d'un faune-iles, you'll hearThat's Amore. If you and your friend have this installed, you'll both hear the same modded song at the same time!
This mod has MORE songs than the default Classical Radio! How, you ask? Well, because for many songs I jam-packed 2 or more new ones into the same track! For instance, the original 11-minute 'Orpheus Symphonic' is replaced by four songs. There's even some ads mixed in with certain tracks. Talk about American ingenuity!
Tips and Patronage are appreciated. Support goes right into making more mods!
Conflicts?
You will have no problem using this alongside any other radio mod, so long as that one doesn't affect the Classical Radio channel. You can have both this and More Where That Came From (version 3.2) active! However, bear in mind that mod does plan to eventually overwrite Classical Radio at an undetermined future date.
If ever in doubt, run both mods and load Rad World Radio last! You'll never get a crash from a mod like this.
Song List
All the songs are taken from 1950s records, provided by Archive.org archivists. I also mixed in vintage commercials (typically between late 1940s and 1950s) from Archive.org.
Most tracks are digitized from a shellac record, which I think you'll find sounds neat. There is crackling on the audio, which came from their digitization process.
If you want to hear any of these, just copy the text into a Google search and it should bring you right to the Archive.org page.
Sourced from Archive.org
Music You May Know
Johnny Guitar by Peggy Lee; VICTOR YOUNG And His Singing Strings
That Old Black Magic by Sammy Davis, Jr.; Johnny Mercer; Harold Arlen; Morty Stevens
STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER by Dennis Day and Freddy Martin and his Orchestra; The Martin Men; Bob Russell; John Philip Sousa
Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar by Gary Crosby and Sammy Davis, Jr.; Morty Stevens; Don Raye; Hughie Prince; Eleanore Sheehy;
Anyway You Want Me (That's How I Will Be) by Elvis Presley; Aaron Schroeder; Cliff Owens
Non-Instrumental Music
Spoiler:
Show
GOMENNASAI, Columbia JL 7
I Wish I Had Never Seen Sunshine by Les Paul with Mary Ford; Mary Ford; hnnie Roberts; Jimmie Davis
THERE'S A STAR SPANGLED BANNER WAVING SOMEWHERE by ELTON BRITT and the Skytoppers; Paul Roberts; Shelby Darnell
Good-Bye Maria (I'm Off To Korea) by Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) The Singing Cowboy; Don Larkin; Joe Simpson; Ken O'Rourke
You Are Mine by David Carroll; Jack Halloran Singers ; Cochran; Sterling
The Song is Ended (But The Melody Lingers On) by Art Mooney and his Orchestra; Berlin; Alan Foster and The Cloverleafs
I DON'T CARE IF THE SUN DON'T SHINE by PATTI PAGE; D'ARTEGA
Garden of Eden by Joe Valino and George Siravo
The Little Engine That Could by Burl Ives
The Glow Worm by The Mills Brothers
There's A Blue Sky Way Out Yonder by Spike Jones and his Country Cousins; Arthur Fields; Fred Hall; Bert Van Cleve
I Want To Be Evil by Eartha Kitt; Henri Rene and his Orchestra; Lester Judson; Raymond Taylor
A Hundred Years from Today by Sarah Vaughan; V. Young; J. Young; Washington; Lew Leslie
Do You Know What It Means to Be Lonely by Bill Kenny Of The Ink Spots; Al Hoffman; Milton Drake; Jerry Livingston
Rocket '88' by JACKIE BRENSTON and his Delta Cats; Jackie Brenston
'99' Guys by The Maples; Von Freeman Combo; Childers; Benson
Four Walls by Jim Reeves; Marvin Moore; George Campbell
Thunder and Lightning by Georgia Gibbs; Campbell; Barer; Glenn Osser
Fever by Little Willie John; Davenport; Cooley
I Found My Peace of Mind by Pee Wee Crayton; P. W. Crayton; E. Crayton
The World Is In A Bad Condition by Madam Posey; Posey; The Travelaires
Don't Mind The Rain by Bill Kenney Of The Ink Spots; Ned Miller; Chester Conn; Sy Oliver
All I Do Is Dream of You by Eddy Howard And His Orchestra; Eddy Howard; Freed; Brown
I Believe by RED FOLEY; ANITA KERR SINGERS; Ervin Drake; Irvin Graham; Jimmy Shirl; Al Stillman
Moonflowers by Peggy Lee; Axel Stordahl; Johnny Burke; Jimmy Van Heusen
Pagan Love Song by Tony Martin; Herni Rene's Orchestra and Chorus; Freed; Brown
Tokyo Boogie Woogie by Columbia Tokyo Orchestra; Shizuko Kasagi; M. Suzuki; R. Hattori
Muddy Water by Delmore Brothers; Alton Delmore
Joe Joe Gun by CHUCK BERRY
Big Mamou by Dolores Gray; Link Davis; David Terry
Song of The Sewer by Art Carney; Sid Feller; Dubey; Karr
The Japanese Farewell Song by Lois Winters with Orchestra & Chorus; Yoshida; Morgan
Space Command by Dallas Frazier; Cousin Herb Henson's Orchestra; Cousin Herb Henson
Happiness Street (Corner Sunshine Street) by Tony Bennett; Percy Faith and his Orchestra; Wolfson; E. R. White
!Ay Amor! by Amanda Del Llano; la Orquesta de Eleazar Martinez; Amalia Mendoza
Tomorrow Mountain by Frankie Laine; Paul Weston & his Orch.; The Norman Luboff Choir; Carl Fischer; Latouche; D. Ellington
So Long (It's Been Good To Know Yuh) by Red Foley And Ernest Tubb; Woody Guthrie
In the Still of the Night by The Five Satins; F. Parris
LEARN TO LOSE by Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra; Vaughn Monroe and Chorus; Wally Brady; Terry Gilkyson
Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Billy Eckstine; Bobby Tucker & His Orchestra; Al Dubin; Harry Warren
Winner Take All by The Platters; Wayne; Frisch
I'm Afraid of Wimmin' by ARTHUR (Guitar Boogie) SMITH And His Cracker-Jacks; Arthur Smith; Smith
Sheeesh, What a Grouch! by Wolf; Komack; Carney; Art Carney; Sid Feller
Poor Me by FATS DOMINO; A. Domino; B. Bartholomew
Let's Take A Trip to The Moon by Mervin Shiner; Grady Martin and his Slew Foot Five; Howard Watts; C. N. Bradley
These Things Shall Pass by Bill Kenny Of The Ink Spots; Stuart Hamblen; Leonard Joy
Watermelon Weather by Perry Como and Eddie Fisher; Hoagy Carmichael; Paul Francis Webster; Mitchell Ayres
The Creep by Jerry Gray And His Orchestra; Linda Lee; Andy Burton; Carl Sigman
Instrumental Music
Hindustan by Supersonic Guitars, Billy Mure
Guitars In Space by Supersonic Guitars, Billy Mure
Starvation by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats; C. Newborn
New Guitar Boogie Shuffle by The Super-Sonics; Arthur Smith
Mambo From Mars by Alfredito and His Orchestra; Escobar; Lang
Head Hunter, from The Savage and The Sensuous Bongos by Don Ralke Orchestra
Flying Disc by George Favors
Advertisements
Spoiler:
Show
Dupont Detonation Caps
Dupont Rat Poison
Groves Nose Drops
Glocoat
Exlax
Pepsodent
Olga Coal
Spam (two ads)
Patti Cake Cookies
Chase Sanborn Coffee
American Way
Sugar Crinkles
Rice-a-Roni
Ironized Yeast (two ads)
Bromo Quinine
Crimes vs. America
Popsicle
Ting Pimple Cream
Cost of Living
Pet Milk
Cupcakes
Community Chest
Shinola Wax
Roma Wines (two ads)
Arrid Deodorant
Energine Shoe White
Blue Coal
Household Finance Corporation
Jello
Mr. Clean
Cream of Wheat
Newsreels
Atomic City, USA, CBS Radio 1950-02-25
The Battle for Iwo Jima Anniversary Tribute 1955-02-xx
How'd you do it?
I'd love to share how to do this so that we can have more radio mods coming from our community.
Bear in mind, it is not easy, and requires familiarity with modding tools! But where there's a will, there's a way.
If you want a time estimate, I would say it takes about 30 hours to make a mod like this. 20 hours between Excel and Archive.org, 8 hours in Audacity, and 2 hours to work the .xwv conversions and .bsa2 packing. Yes, it is largely a labor of organization to get this done, rather than direct editing. Your time will be composed of fitting songs into time blocks, and tweaking the timing in Audacity to get it just right.
Table Original 'Classical Radio' Songs and Song Lengths (.csv formatted)
Used tools: Archive2, Audacity, XWM Music Converter and Excel.
I started by reverse-engineering another successful FO76 radio mod, More Where That Came From, by opening its .bsa2 file using Archive2. This showed me that a radio mod simply contains .xwm audio files. When the .bsa2 is loaded, those .xwm files are replaced, much like a simple retexture mod. A .xwm file is a specific audio file type used in Bethesda games that you can easily convert to from a .wav. That bit of reverse-engineering showed me everything I needed to do to create my own radio mod.
I used Bethesda's Archive2 tool (get this by downloading the FO4 creation kit) to open the Sounds01.bsa2 file (located in FO76/Data), and exported the .xmv files for all the Classical radio songs. This was about 59 .xmv songs.
Then, I converted those .xwm files into .wav using a converter tool. I used XWM Music Converter.
I then started an Excel worksheet to keep track of the lengths of all the original .wav files (as well as function columns here which track time / 2, time / 3, to help find lengths that would fit 2 or 3 songs in), and a second sheet to track all the lengths of the prospective songs I wanted to add. A third sheet tracked which prospective songs I could fit into the time lengths of the originals.
I collected a large quantity of songs and ads, 116 total, as you won't be able to use every song you want. Think of what you're doing as 'filling air time', you need to fill specific time lengths with new songs. I also gave them each a rating, and notes regarding possible trimming times or why I applied that rating. Ratings and notes helped me make tough decisions when it came time to choose my favourites for particular time slots. I began to assign prospective songs to the original time lengths in my Excel sheet.
For instance, the original 7-minute Classical radio song 'Venus' was assigned a 30-second Blue Coal ad, as well as the 3:22 song That Old Black Magic, and 3:08 Pagan Love Song.
One important part of this is that while assigning songs to the originals, you need to keep in mind that you will not often be able to match the song lengths exactly. You'll likely end up with a few short seconds of air time. At the other extreme, you cannot just put a 2:00 song in the place of a 4:00 original and expect it to work well, what will happen is an extra 2:00 of empty air. If you go over the original time, you'll cause overlapping audio, although most records have a couple seconds before they begin so a small amount is OK. You'll need to cram more than one song in the time length of certain original tracks, sometimes up to 4 songs to fill an especially long song.
I worked my way through all the original Classical radio tracks, filling the largest and smallest tracks first in my Excel sheet, since I reasoned doing the extremes first would give me an easier time with the final few median times.
The above is the largest part of the project. Collecting audio, rating it, and finding time slots is the main part of a radio mod project, and happens in Excel. The other main part of the work is in Audacity.
Once I was happy with my song overwrite assignments in Excel, I opened Audacity and worked on the original tracks one-by-one. I muted the original Classical music, and imported my custom songs over it to match the lengths according to my Excel sheet. I also reduced the audio volume to match the level of the original songs. I made commercials just a bit quieter. I exported it with the same name as the original track, but with different audio. So, for instance, I would export a file named 'mus_radio_76_classical_antonbruckner_symphonyno7_mvmt2nd' but the contents would actually be the song 'A Hundred Years from Today'.
Once I had exported each of the original audio files, which I replaced with custom audio but kept the original names, I then converted them from .wav back into .xwv format. Then, I pack that back into a .bsa2 archive, and voila! A custom radio mod that will replace the original music!
I had a small issue at the end with the folder path. It is important that Classical radio stations have a /classical path, and not a /general like the Appalachia radio.
Closing Remarks
I hope you enjoy! This is a mod I made not only because I saw a demand, but also because I just wanted to hear some better radio without an announcer!
If you ever want to peruse Archive.org's fantastic collection, I highly recommend! There are some real gems that open up more of what made the American 1950's such a desperate, but idealistic time. For instance, did you know there was an obsession with Polka music? Now you know!