BRIEF DESCRIPTION

I was disappointed when I found out my bard couldn't sing, and that instead, when they put down their instrument and parted their lips, they just performed a slightly off-tune whistling rendition of the gorgeous songs Bobby Slavov composed for us. That's why I put a truly embarrassing number of hours into this project! Now bards (or anyone with musical instrument proficiency) can use their beautiful voice! Just unequip their musical instrument, and instead of the whistling icon and music, you will see a singing icon and hear a singing voice.

THE BACKSTORY

I've been in love with the bard music and the way it works in this game ever since I got to play alongside an NPC for the first time. I was so inspired by the effort the composer and developers put in to create this delightful experience (that most players won't even see). It inspired me to get into mod-making to expand on this experience even further.

• My rogue Durge learned to play the lute from Alfira, and when she joined him in camp, I discovered that if he played it near her, she would start playing the same song too, at the same time! Amazing!
• And even more amazing, for Bard Dance, there were two different lute parts, so they each played a unique part!
• I immediately ran to Withers and recruited a bard hireling so I could see if a different instrument had a different part. It did!
• I ran to Withers again and hired even more folks to join the band, re-spec’d them to bard, each choosing a different instrument in CC, and had them all play at once. I got literal chills, getting to hear the depth in each song, the harmonies, etc.
• I realized that with a party of only 4, I couldn’t have a large enough band to actually hear all the parts at once. I was too obsessed to stop now. Party Limit Begone let me have more party members, and another mod (I tested a few different ones, more info below) let non-bards play along. Now I could have Lute, Lute 2, Lyre, Drum, Flute, and Violin all play my new fave song, Bard Dance, at once!
• (I was then obsessed with the idea of making my irl D&D party into a band, so I used Appearance Edit Enhanced to change the appearance of my hirelings. At the time, you couldn’t change race/body type, so it wasn’t spot on, but it was better than nothing. Now, you can!
• At the time, even with the party size increased, I still couldn’t have more than 3 custom characters/hirelings, so I lived with that sadness for awhile, until the release of one of my fav mods Full Custom Companions (Hirelings) let me finally have the custom party/band of my dreams.)
• At some point, I discovered that you could also play a song without any instrument equipped, and was disappointed that the whistling sounded kinda crappy compared to the gorgeous instrument parts.
• I decided to change that.
  

HOW DID I DO THIS?

Since the bard songs Sing For Me and The Power already had vocal versions, I set out to somehow make the vocals work in game. I isolated the vocals from the songs on the soundtracks so that there is no longer a backing track baked in, to add to the immersion for a bard soloist. Then I chopped up the vocals a bit to make them sync up with the instrument tracks in game, so that you can sing along with any other bard/performer accompanying you on the same song. This, plus figuring out how to find, extract, and convert the right audio tracks from the game, and then converting my new tracks and beating my head against the wall trying to get them to work in a pak, took literal months. I also made new icons to reflect singing rather than whistling, which honestly shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but I am a perfectionist and a modding noob, which is a bad combo. All in all, a huge labor of love.

HOW TO USE

• Vanilla behavior: The Perform action is granted to characters with Musical Instrument Proficiency. If you have an instrument equipped, the icon is a picture of your instrument, and that’s the part of the song you play. If you have no instrument equipped, it instead shows a whistling icon and plays the whistling part of the song.
• With this mod: The unequipped Perform action now shows a singing icon and plays singing tracks, replacing the default whistling. Only the songs that I’ve added so far will replace the whistling audio, but the instrument/singing icon isn’t song-specific and so it will be changed for all (hopefully I will be able to add vocals to all the songs eventually).
• DLC: You won't be able to perform DLC songs (this mod currently only includes Sing For Me) unless you have the Deluxe Edition DLC. There may be other mods out there that change this, but I'm not trying to help break rules.
• Proficiency: You won't be able to sing at all unless you have Musical Instrument Proficiency. See below for ways to get it.
• The Power of Friendship! This mod really shines when you accompany the singing with other performers playing instruments, especially a full band. I edited the singing tracks so that they all line up well with the existing instrument tracks.  See mod recommendations below to make this easier, and see each song’s notes for tips on what order to start the performances.
  

Musical Instrument Proficiency

• Vanilla methods:
  
  • At least 1 level in Bard. This also gives you a free instrument of your choice at your first Bard level.
  • Performer feat: You gain Musical Instrument Proficiency, and your Charisma increases by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain the option to take a feat every 4 levels, instead of an Ability Score Increase.
  • Only for your main character, you can get it through gameplay (minor-ish Act 1 spoiler)
    Spoiler:  

    Show

    by successfully helping Alfira write and play her song. She also will give you a free lute. You must offer to help (don't criticize her), take the spare lute she hands you, and succeed two Performance checks as you play along. It's not enough to just verbally encourage her, you must actually take the lute and play it. (Sadly, this means skipping the question for what it's about first, or you miss the chance to take the lute.) If you succeed both checks, you will now have proficiency and also Lihala's Lute.
    
    
• Mods: If you want to “cheat” to get proficiency, especially useful to allow your other party members to accompany your singing, there are a number of mods that work in different ways to accomplish this. Note that they each still need an instrument equipped to play along with you. (This section may be out of date because I was going to post this mod months ago but got too into the nitty gritty, I'm so sorry.)
  
  • Start your own band - Everyone can play music - adds proficiency to all* backgrounds, so everyone has it. May conflict with other mods affecting backgrounds, not sure. *It doesn’t currently seem to include Haunted One, the background for Dark Urge characters, so if you’re playing Durge and don’t already have proficiency from the vanilla game, this will only work for the rest of your party.
  • Learn Weapon-Armor-Music Proficiencies and Musical Instrument Proficiency For All - both use and require Script Extender and seem to apply a permanent passive effect bestowing proficiency to all characters. Not sure if there’s a significant difference between the two, and they’re newer mods so I haven’t tested them personally, and don’t know anything about conflicts.
  • Musical Proficiency from Instruments - as it sounds, it adds a buff effect to all instruments that makes you proficient in them. Handy, but doesn’t allow the singing/whistling performances. May conflict with other mods affecting instruments, not sure. I’d like to imagine from a flavor/roleplay standpoint that the instrument is magical in some way, and “wants” to be played, so it grants you the ability to do so. This mod page also includes an optional mod that gives you all the instruments.
  • Play With Me - modifies the Perform action to provide an aura effect, giving musical proficiency to anyone nearby while you are actively performing. I also like the flavor of this mod, that normal people (who otherwise wouldn’t know how to play) can be swept up into the bardic magic, and find themselves able to accompany the bard’s performance. Feels like less of a “cheat” than the permanent free proficiency mods, since you still need at least someone with the skill to start the performance. May conflict with other mods affecting the Perform action. All non-proficient performers will automatically stop their performance when the bard stops.
    

More handy mods

I really love these mods, and strongly recommend them!! (This section may be out of date because I was going to post this mod months ago but got too into the nitty gritty, I'm so sorry.)

• Party Limit Begone allows you to be accompanied by more than 3 instruments at once: I totally recommend trying the full band experience and getting to hear the entire composition of each song, all together.
• Full Custom Companions (Hirelings) lets you make plenty (way more than 3, vanilla hireling limit) of custom bard buddies to play with you, so you don’t have to mess with the build of the origin characters or use another mod to “cheat” for proficiency to have a full band.
• Perform With Your Party gives the "Perform with Party" action to any character with an instrument equipped and instrument proficiency. This action will make all party members (who also have an instrument equipped and proficiency) automatically join in on the song! This is the fastest way to get a song going, though the group has to be started by an instrument, as it creates an entirely new action, separate/in addition to the vanilla solo Perform action, and it doesn’t include whistling/voice. (Though I would love to add compatibility with this mod in the future) You can either start the accompaniment first and then the singer, or vice versa (see each song’s notes for my recommendations). Requires Script Extender.
  

Vocal range notes

Unlike whistling, which is pretty gender-neutral, these vocals are not necessarily going to match your Tav's voice (or whatever other character ends up singing them -- could even be an NPC, like Volo). I have provided a couple alternate versions of the songs to better fit different voices. So far, I have directly edited the pitch of the original vocal tracks. This means a few things:

• The accompanying instruments also had to be transposed (i.e. the key has been changed for the whole song, not just the vocal track, for any non-original voice version)
• I could only edit them so far from the original pitch without it sounding too funky/distorted. I acquired Ableton Live to get really in the weeds messing with formants and stuff to get it as non-funky as I could! I’m still learning though. In the future, I would like to add totally new recordings for different voices, but first I have to get someone to Sing For Me!
  

Individual song notes

Each song has different sources for the vocals, different vibes, voice options, timing, etc. Massive disclaimer: Despite all the work I've done for this mod, I don't actually have much formal music knowledge, so I could be totally wrong about the specifics of key, voice type, and whatnot, please forgive me 😅 (and let me know how to fix, if you want, but be nice plz). Green means this version is currently available as a mod. Yellow means the mod is coming soon. * (Asterisk) means this version has advanced audio editing to try to make the pitch-shifted voice sound more natural, as well as retain the instrument quality. + (Plus) means this uses a new vocalist recording. Spoiler tags used to keep this description from being too long.

The Power (TP)

Sing For Me (SFM)

All Songs (ALL)

HOW TO INSTALL

Install as you would any other pak mod. If you don’t know how, here’s a guide. I suggest using BG3 Mod Manager (BG3 MM). It may be possible with Vortex, but I've never used it and so haven't tested it myself.

There are paks for each individual song in each voice type, as well as All Song combo paks. You can mix and match and have multiple paks installed at once, but only choose one per song or combo. For example, you could have The Power Mezzo and Sing For Me Alto at the same time, but couldn't also have Sing For Me Tenor. You could have All Songs Alto and The Power Soprano at the same time, but couldn't also have The Power Mezzo. If you have a combo pak and an individual song pak, for some reason, make sure to put the song lower on your load order than the combo if you want it to override the combo.

To uninstall, including when switching from one pak version to another, you must delete the pak from your Mods folder and save/export your new load order as well. You can delete via BG3 MM, but make sure to confirm that you want to permanently delete from your Mods folder as well. Or you can delete directly from the folder on your PC, and then make sure to refresh BG3 MM and confirm the removal from the order. Make sure you only have one of each version (as explained in the previous paragraph) in the Mods folder. This is because this mod is a replacer, so even if you disable the mod in the MM, the game will still see it. It's possible that if you don't delete any duplicates of the same song/combo from the Mods folder, it will cause BG3 to dump your load order (modsettings.lsx) when you try to load in to the game. 

It's safe to install, uninstall, or swap different voices partway through a playthrough. BG3 may notice "missing mod(s)" if you fully uninstall, and warn you when you load a save, but it should be safe to load and won't cause a crash.

COMPATIBILITY

The mod replaces/overrides some vanilla audio files (all from MUSIC_BARD or MUSIC_BARD_DEV soundbanks) as well as the icons for song performance. If you have another mod that edits any of these, place my mod lower in your load order than that mod. It uses its own skill icon texture atlas, so there should be no conflicts there.

REQUIREMENTS

• Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Fixer
• You won't be able to perform DLC songs (currently only Sing For Me included in mod) unless you have the Deluxe Edition DLC.
• You won't be able to sing at all unless you have Musical Instrument Proficiency. See above Musical Instrument Proficiency for a comparison of the vanilla and mod methods of gaining this skill.
  

FUTURE PLANS

I have big plans! Some are already in the works, so make sure to Track this mod if you want to see what's coming!

• Post videos - In progress, just need to trim and upload
• Record other vocalist(s) for the existing modded voiced songs, for more voice variety. - Currently in progress, likely in next update
• Add I Want To Live as a song option - In progress
  
  • Replacing Of Divinity and Sin DLC song
  • Create each instrument part to go with it
  • (Maybe rewrite some of the lyrics that I think are a little clunky) - In progress
  • Record solo vocalist tracks (the song is a duet)
    
• Add Weeping Dawn (Alfira’s song) as a song option
  
  • Replacing Old Time Battles vanilla song (I think)
  • Create each instrument part to go with it
    
• Write lyrics for the existing as-yet-un-modded bard songs (Bard Dance, The Queen’s High Seas) - In progress
  
  • Record vocalist(s) performing these new lyrics
    
• Add other songs?
• Possibly add versions that allow singing along to an instrument - i.e. bard sings and also plays lute* to accompany. (*or lyre, violin, drum, or -- if you think your bard is just that magical -- flute.) This could also allow for duets. 
  

Extra stuff that I'd like to do but don't currently don’t know how, or if they’re even possible

• Add the ability to keep singing while walking/fighting
• Allow to swap between multiple voices in a single mod, possibly using one of these methods:
  
  • Add configuration file to choose the voice
  • Add script to automatically select the closest voice based on singer’s voice chosen in CC
  • Add “instrument” items that each have a different voice when equipped - either simple version described above where you sing and play along, or more complicated version where you have multiple singing-only "instruments" that don't replace original instruments)
    
• Allow both whistling and singing the same song (idk if anyone would even want this):
  
  • Add item that restores whistling as an option (tin whistle?)
  • Add item to toggle singing instead (fantasy microphone?)
    
• Add animation that actually moves the mouth of the singer (the vanilla whistling also has a closed mouth)
• Add compatibility with the fantastic Perform With Your Party mod to allow a singer to automatically start a group performance with accompanying instrument players.
  

If anyone is interested in contributing to this mod (e.g. if you want to Sing For Me) (or play) please reach out!