About this mod
Adds dialogue to bards so you can ask them to sing songs that other NPCs can sing along with. Also adds several original songs for bards to sing and 12 new instrumental tunes. ESL flagged and highly compatible.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Turkish
- Spanish
- Russian
- Portuguese
- Mandarin
- French
- Changelogs
- Donations
Overview
- 12 new instrumental tunes for bards to play
- 4 songs for the audience in inns to sing along with
- 7 new original songs sung by bards
- 1 poem recited by bards
- 1 scene with Jon & Olfina
- 1 scene where Lurbuk will sing
To hear one of the new songs or tunes, simply ask a bard in an inn if they can play a song everyone can join in with. There are four singalong songs in total and these will differ depending on the bard's voice type. Up to five other NPCs will gather round and join in the song. Others will heckle and be generally grumpy and yet others will just dance along with the fun. Active followers are excluded from joining in. The audience will differ depending on which voice type NPCs are nearby.
Please note that just like in real life, not everyone has perfect pitch or a good singing voice, so the audience may well be out of tune and/or have bad timing. This is entirely deliberate, I'm going for more of a drunken singalong in a tavern rather than a perfect 5 part harmony vocal choir. The beauty of the mod is that as it's all done by dialogue, if you don't want to hear the singalongs, just don't ask for them.
With some songs, they will agree to sing but will tell you that it's not very well known so people won't sing along, so they'll play it on lute and sing it for you. Again, some members of the audience will comment, grumble, dance, applaud etc. The bard will perform their song in their own voice. The songs they perform will differ by voice type or individual bards. See the article for full details.
You can also ask the bard to play some background music. They'll pick a random tune from a setlist of 12 and play it. These are all original (generated) tunes and hopefully lore-friendly. You can only request songs and tunes if you're in an inn.
For songs and tunes, you can only request them between 9am and 11pm and only if the bard is not already performing one of them. There's a 1 hour (in-game) cooldown on asking for songs and half an hour for tunes.
The singalong songs from vanilla are Ragnar the Red and The Dragonborn comes. Again it depends on which voice type as to what they will sing. I've also made entirely new songs either from scratch or by expanding existing lines in the vanilla game. For instance sometimes NPCs will mutter 'with three beers down.....etc' and I've written more verses to flesh the song out.
Male Nord bards will sing The Pirate King of the Abecean and the lyrics for this are taken from a Skyrim book. I've written a basic tune, sung it, then used generative AI to make it sound like other NPCs in the game.
The same goes for the original songs. You often hear Mikael offering to sing Sweet Maidenfair from Hadleyshire - well, now he does. I've written the lyrics, composed and sung it then converted the voice to Mikael. Other songs are based on Skyrim books. See the article for full details on all the songs, with credits.
There's also one poem that the bards can recite for you.
Again, to expand on the lore, you often hear a scene where Jon is writing a song for Olfina. Well, now you can talk him into singing it to her. (You need to have done Jon's force greet hello, "just passing through" type stuff first).
You can also ask Lurbuk to 'sing' for you, but I promise you the denizens of Morthal won't be too pleased about that.
Installation
Simply install like you would any other mod using your favourite mod manager. Should be safe to install mid-game.
Compatibility
Should be compatible with pretty much anything. Nothing vanilla has been edited and as everything is handled by dialogue, it shouldn't conflict with any other mods that add new bard songs.
FAQs / Comments
The mod is ESL flagged so it won't take up a spot in your load order. It has been cleaned and checked for errors in xEdit.
If you have my mod Whistling in Skyrim, there's a patch in optional files which will block NPCs from whistling while bards are performing.
Most songs don't have subtitles.
Current active followers are blocked from joining in the singalongs.
LE version?
No, but if someone wants to backport it, just let me know.
Does it work with AE?
The mod was made with the older version of the Creation Kit so it's compatible with all versions of Skyrim SE/AE.
Can you add more songs?
Possibly, but each song takes hours to create so probably not in the near future.
Waaaugghh! I don't like 'AI' !!!
Don't use the mod.
I don't like the voices/singing/songs
See above
Known issues
- Sometimes the bard will continue carrying out their current idle for a few seconds before performing. These musician types can be difficult to work with at times.
- Sometimes the bard and the audience will get stuck getting into position, just Skyrim being Skyrim, they'll get there, just wait.
- Lip sync on songs isn't perfect but it's the best it's going to get. Just imagine they're pulling funny faces like some musicians do.
- There's a pause in one of the songs - yes there is, can't be helped.
- Sometimes the lute animation will glitch - again, Skyrim being Skyrim.
Credits
Shadowman for help with voice training
I've used some voices from Amateur Singer with permission granted on the mod page.
Eleven Labs AI
Suno.ai
Replay
Testers
Gonzeh, Yandros, Taranis, Joeshady
Recommended Mods
Relaxed Bards - highly recommended so bards are not constantly singing and playing.
Hit Dialogue Scene Cooldown - makes vanilla scenes repeat less frequently.