NOTE: I am not the original mod creator. This was merely my favourite mod and the original SE mod has open permissions for conversion, so I am sharing my personal backport. This is the modern alternative to Tcz's Bards College Tweaks and Pevey's Become a Bard. If you require assistance on how to play the mod, please ask on the original SE Mod Page. However, do let me know about technical issues in as much detail as possible. All permissions and restrictions of the original mod applies.


Modified mod page description follows:

It is no secret to anyone that has ever done a bard play through that the Bards College is criminally underutilized. With my Bards Reborn mod series, I am working to change that! This mod give the Bards College a massive makeover, adds a new study quest, new bardic powers, and a new character to flesh out your experience as a Bard, taking inspiration and assets from many wonderful mods.


All Features of Become a Bard
With the permission of Pevey, Become a Bard was ported over from Oldrim and merged into this mod to lighten the plugin load and ensure that all features of Become a Bard kept working properly. In addition to the great features of the Become a Bard mod, you can now make your own instruments once you reach a certain point in the Bards College questline (more on that below). Songbooks can not only be bought from Viarmo, but are also scattered around the Bards College for you to learn from. The only changes I made to Pevey’s original mod was making the “Wanderer’s Lute” craftable at tanning racks instead of anvils as I added an “instrument care room” to the Bards College and you don't start with a letter from Lurbuk since you don't actually know him.
 
As this is a port from the original Become a Bard, it has the full Mod Configuration menu and you can see the full features of that mod here. SkyUI and SKSE are not required, but they are recommended. Some options will be inaccessible without the MCM. All of the original mod quests are intact as are the perks and  configuration options. I have used the Special Edition Witcher lute and Oldrim custom songbooks without any problems when using the ‘loose files format’ so I am including that version in case you want to use Become a Bard add ons.

Getting a room: You will usually need to play a couple of songs to receive the free room! This is exactly as the feature functioned in the original Become a Bard.
 
Enhanced Bards College
The Bards Reborn College has been completely redecorated to make it a true “musical museum” with special instruments from the Elder Scrolls Online with readable museum plaques and much more artwork on the walls. When you return with Finn’s Lute and Rjorn's Drum, they will also go on display as part of the museum. Please check the full credits to see all the creators who allowed me to use their mod assets to set up the various instruments.
 
There are additional rooms to explore including a shrine to Dibella and crafting room with a tanning rack for making instruments, an enchanting station and an alchemy station. The dormitory has been greatly expanded with small, but private dorm rooms with a bed and desk for all students. Your dorm room has a chest for your use and there is an extra dorm room for a follower to use or for you to link an NPC to. As of 3.3, a bathing room has also been added that should be compatible with most bathing mods. A port of tcz's original Tweaked Bards College served as a base for many of the new rooms including the private tower and many other quality of life improvements. An oven has been added to the kitchen to give you more cooking options while you’re using the College as a base and respawning resources are scattered throughout the College.
 
Many more books were added to the library making it a great place to find some rare books and over twenty new custom ones that I added in for flavor and the questline. Overall, I tried to improve the look of the college to make it seem more like a place of learning. Once you become a full bard of the college after King Olaf’s Festival, you also gain access to a room in the tower of the college which can serve as a small player home. The library includes two player bookshelves so you can add to the college library yourself. Note that some of the books in the Bards College are static so that shelves had full appearances without going overboard on books that the mod had to load. To diversify the Bards College, an Argonian student named Sakre and a Khajiit student named Kisani have been added to the college. They have new generated dialogue and will join you and the other students in classes.
 
Expanded Questline
A new quest has been added to give you an actual learning experience at the Bards College. The new voiced NPC Malukah Hope-Singer (created with permission from Malukah herself though NOT voiced by her) serves as your academic advisor and the quest giver. Instead of being sent straight to find King Olaf’s verse, you will study at the college and learn the skills of a bard before being sent off into the world to prove yourself worthy of full induction.
 
The courses you must pass are: History, Lyrics, Historic Musical Instruments, the Poetic Edda, the Drum, the Flute, and the Lute. Each course has an oral exam you need to pass so you will need to read books in the library, attend classes and study the items around the college. For the drum, flute, and lute, you will need to raise your bard skill by playing instruments to pass the musical evaluations. Once you complete the courses, Malukah will direct you to Viarmo who will then give you the Tending the Flames Quest allowing you to be declared a full bard at the Burning of King Olaf once you complete the quest. Afterward, you’ll be able to access the Become a Bard quests from Viarmo and the vanilla side quests as normal.
 
New Music Based Powers
Skyrim is a region with a long history of Tonal Magic, be it the Thu’um or Tonal Architecture. Beyond Skyrim there are Sword-Singing and Green Singing so what if bards experimented with their music to unlock powerful effects? The Spellsongs are the result and by playing your lute, your bard can create a variety of unusual effects. You can find the full power list in the article section or play the game to learn them for yourself.
 
As you gain more skill as a bard (using the Become a Bard skill) you will unlock new Spellsongs to craft at the Spellsong scriptorium at the Bards College! The powers mostly mimic illusion spells, but some are boosted and some are original to the mod. A paper scroll recipe has been added to tanning racks to make it easier for you to make the spellsong tomes.
 
This power system was built on the great Spellsinger system from blueboar and adjusted using assets and some spells from Support Bards by mechanarwhal. I won’t say they are perfectly balanced as that can be a relative thing. You can unlock them by raising your bard skill and still lack the stamina to use the most powerful abilities. These abilities are also slower as you play your lute, but I feel that also balances out the variety of useful powers they grant. To help with compatibility, the spellsong tomes aren’t added to vendor lists.

As of 4.0, the Spellsongs have been adjusted to cost stamina rather than magicka which has always been my plan and matches the lore of Elder Scrolls much better and represents the psychical endurance needed by musicians. Related dialogue has been updated to reflect this change. The goal is to make stamina a more important attribute for bard playthroughs and prevent this mod from overcharging mage builds. The highest level spellsongs require 300 stamina to use so you still don't need to put all points into stamina. I've boosted the early smithing, speech, and enchanting spellsongs to five minutes so its possible to make better use of the bonus. I've also boosted the duration or level effect of a couple other spellsongs. As you play, if you have thoughts on improving the balance of the spellsongs or have a Spellsong idea, please don't hesitate to message me.
 
Additional Dialogue at Bards College
This mod adds more dialogue to characters in the Bards College. You can learn a bit more about what brought Viarmo to Skyrim. By speaking with Viarmo, you can make a donation to the college and gain the blessing “Patron of the Arts” which grants a temporary boost to your speech skill once in a 24-hour time period. There are three levels of the blessing with increasing bonus value and duration that you receive based on the size of your donation.

Additionally, the mod adds more dialogue to the students and professors to flesh them out more as people you interact with. You can have a few more conversations with them and unlock dialogue as you advance as a student. Most of them only have vague personalities and no histories in the base game so I had to invent a few things, but everything is lore-friendly and I think suits them. Huge thanks to SKVA Synth for making this expansion possible.



Thanks to Zero Period Productions for highlighting the mod (second half of video). A patch bridging these two mods has been developed and can be found here! Big thanks to CloudQuest for their work on this.

Compatibility
This mod intentionally edits very few assets and will be compatible with most things. You should not use this mod with another mod that edits Tending the Flames or overhauls the college, but otherwise you should only have minor clipping. If you have mods that redo the college or add a player room, I suggest exchanging them for this mod. If you do have other Bards College mods, you’ll see a little bit of weird NPC behavior in the library and dorms, but this is minor and won’t break your game. It is the result of competing navmesh for the NPCs and isn’t going to hurt anything.
 
This mod was created for new playthroughs though the study quests don’t link to the Tending the Flames quest beyond dialogue so you can add it into an existing playthrough and do the study quest with Malukah if you’d like even if you’ve already done Tending the Flames. It does duplicate Become a Bard, so if you remove that to install this one, I’d recommend starting a new game. Also, it is incompatible with Bards College Tweaks due to redundancy.

There is an article for tracking compatibility issues and what is compatible. There are also a few patches made both by myself and others to smooth over issues as they are found. As you play, please let me know what you find is and isn't compatible.
 
Future Plans
Obliviously the first future plan is to fix problems that people find with this mod. If you encounter issues please leave a report with as much detail as possible. I’ve had some reports of this mod overwriting some aspects of other mods that I’ll get patched up.
 
My plans for the expansion of the mod include making Malukah a proper bard who plays songs as well as continue expanding her dialogue. The new NPCs Kisani and Sakre may be made into followers. Additionally, I have a larger Bards College questline planned out that I will be working on as I improve my modding skills and have time. If anyone with more experience modding would like to help out, please do message me.

If you’re using my Bards Reborn Bardic Lore mod then you’re probably catching onto a naming theme. I’m working on a few projects to improve bards as modular parts. Once they are ready, I’ll be combining them into a major bard overhaul, but doing it in parts is easier for troubleshooting and I want to have the parts for people who only want some features as I know the grief that comes with only wanting part of a big overhaul mod.

Version 4.4 Changes
• New bard songs added from Miracle of Sound original music with Gavin's generous permission
• Fixed missing Viarmo dialogue audio


Recommended Mods
Skyrim's Got Talent - Improve As a Bard by jayserpa with Bards Reborn integration patch from CloudQuest really expands the journey to become a bard
Better Dialogue Controls by ecirbaf helpful for the oral exam portions of the mod
The Eloquent Reader by Sthaagg which improves speech by reading books
Ordinator by EnaiSiaion has a great speech perk tree that works well for bard playthroughs
Dialogue Movement Enabler by Vermunds lets you adjust position during dialogue
Tidy Up by SomethingObscure lets you return fallen or bumped items to their proper location
Bards College Excavation by dkdoubledub adds a bard excavation team and a bard flavor quest
Open Your Mouth by CinnaMewRoll has an add on to help your bard sing
Multiple Floors Sandboxing by Dovahklon CollinMacleod to improve NPC behavior
Bards Reborn Bardic Lore by me lets you craft books at the Bards College including stories of your quests
 
Thank you
A massive thanks to the mod authors who gave me permission to use their assets and especially to Pevey who helped me with some source coding issues with Become a Bard. Thank you to Tcz who allowed me to use their Bards College as a base and has collaborated with me to further improve the Bards College layout. Thank you to CloudQuest who has helped smooth over issues and created the debugger. Thank you for Cecell who helped me with the Spellsong lute scripting and saved me from insanity.

Thank you those on the forum who answered my questions and the makers of the video tutorials that I poured over. This was the first mod I ever worked on even if it wasn’t the first I released and the community was extremely welcoming and generous with their assets and advice. They made this a great experience. If you enjoy this mod, please consider sending a message of thanks to some of the great creators who shared their assets with me and helped make this possible.

Added Music
If you like the music you can play using this mod, you can find more by the artists by clicking the links below.

Jon Sayles
Aislinn jamendo
Alina Gingertail youtube
Andrew Foy youtube
Andrew Savini jamendo
Asteria http://asteriamusica.org/
Carlos Vargas jamendo
Ceili Moss jamendo
Cromanon nexus
Franky Joe Texier jamendo
GEM (Jeremie Hout) jamendo
Greg Reiter jamendo
Harry Murrell youtube
Julien Petitjean jamendo
Kevin Loh youtube
Le Collectif Unifié de la Crécelle jamendo
Lemonflower itunes
Milagro Acustico Medina Sound jamendo
Malukah youtube
Miracle of Sound youtube
Ofri Eliaz jamendo
Oursvince jamendo
PremiumMusic jamendo
Rachel Hardy youtube
Randy Granger youtube
Raulin de los Bosques jamendo
Rebonnat Mostha jamendo
Sabrina Valenzuela youtube
Saskia Kusrahadianti youtube or bandcamp
Sean Gordon youtube
Sióg Acoustic Duo jamendo
The Taalbi Brothers youtube
Thomas Berghan http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/tom/
Ton jamendo
 
Redistribution
The music added by this mod is copyright of the respective artists and is used either with permission to Pevey, the original mod author, or via a Creative Commons license.  Please see the links to the artists above to find more detail about their terms of use. You are welcome to translate this mod and post it on Nexus or Bethesda.net, but it must remain free.
 
I have a couple of conditions for permission to use the assets of this mod. There are a lot of assets from other modders and a tribute to a real person that needs to be respected. When I reached out to Malukah, she granted permission for me to use her name and likeness on the condition that the mod remained free always and thanked me for asking her first. Therefore, if you want to use the Malukah character, please contact Malukah and explain what you are working on. If she agrees then you have my blessing to use the actor asset. For other assets, please check the credits to see if they belong to someone else and seek their permission. Outside of those conditions, you have my permission to use the assets you wish. I support the Cathedral ideal, but can't apply my thoughts to the whole community so please be mindful of the assets you use and please keep things positive.

::  CREDITS::
♦ Collaborator Tcz for many changes to improve the college including new navemesh, seam fixes and decoration
♦ Collaborator Cecell for new script removing lute when using Spellsong magic
♦ Collaborator Cloud Quest for seam fixes throughout the college and debug menu
♦ Become a Bard by Pevey merged into mod with permission
♦ SKVA Synth by DanRuta
♦ Spellsinger by blueboar merged into mod with permission
♦ Support Bards by mechanarwhal
♦ Skyrims Unique Treasures by clintmich for unique instruments with permission
♦ Rally's Instruments by Rallyeator for unique instruments with permission
♦ IM A LYRE by Mr. Dave for unique instruments with permission
♦ Legacy of the Dragongorn by icecreamassassin for museum plaques and stands
♦ Modder's Resource Pack by Oaristys
♦ Modder's Resource Pack - The Witcher Extension by Oaristys
♦ Open Books by Blary
♦ Tesak1243 – Paintings by Tesak1243
♦ Paintings and Frames by Artisanix
♦ Rugs Resource by yourenotsupposedtobeinhere
♦ Gemling Queen Resources by Saerileth
♦ Book Cover Resources by Axhoff2007
♦ Tapestries resource by RoboBirdie
♦ Graduate the Bards College for inspiration