(There’s a more succinct article here for people who may be short on time, or just want to read what Lawhead wrote about Jeremy Soule specifically.)
This one hurts. A lot. Fuck him and his “muse” bullshit.
I don’t want to hijack this post, but I feel compelled to offer ways for people to remove & replace Soule’s music from the TES series, at least for PC players. Because in this case…well, there’s no separating art from artist, is there. Ugh.
First, it’s worth noting that he didn’t do the music for Elder Scrolls Online (except the main title music), Blades (for all like…two people playing that), or any TES game prior to Morrowind. He’s also AFAIK not working on TES6. So that just leaves TES3-5.
- For Morrowind: take any MP3 track you like and give it the exact same name as any vanilla Morrowind track; for ex., “MW battle 5.mp3.” They must be .mp3 files. Drag and drop it into the appropriate folder (”battle” or “explore”) in your Morrowind installation folder under Data Files -> Music. To replace the title screen music + music that plays on death, etc. you also need to overwrite the tracks in the “Special” folder.
There are mods that already overwrite the vanilla music on the Nexus or MW Modding History, but I can’t recommend one in particular. You could also download one of the mods that adds to the existing soundtrack and use the renaming trick to replace the vanilla music with those.
- For Oblivion: same as above, but there’s a couple additional folders to replace, “Dungeon” and “Public.” Again, there are already some mods that completely overwrite the vanilla music, like Fantasy Music Overhaul, as well as mods that add to the existing music that can be used as replacers.
- For Skyrim: here’s where it gets trickier. Skyrim’s music system doesn’t allow simple replacements/additions like MW and Oblivion do. You have to use a mod. Also, most music mods only add to the vanilla music, rather than replacing it.
The only music mod I can vouch for personally that has an option to replace the vanilla music is Fantasy Soundtrack Project. Select the “replacer” version when installing it via Mod Organizer or Vortex. (Unfortunately the Classic/LE version of the mod was taken down ages ago, so if you want to use it you’ll have to do some searching.)