Regarding TW3 Music and its subconscious effect during gameplay
Imho, while the music was brilliantly composed and performed, the unfortunate thing about it is the fact that much of it is played in exactly the same key.
I can certainly understand why this is the case, as music segues from piece to piece depending on what the player does and overlapping music in different keys can cause an undesired jumble of dissonance, however the downside to this is the subconscious effect it has on the player, particularly during exploration.
Part of the art of music and its effect on the mind is how the notes travel over the spectrum of melody and harmonic combinations. It obviously has the power to generate subtle emotion, evoke feelings and creates an atmosphere as you travel around the world.
Even though each piece is unique and varies in complexity as it evolves, because it dances around one key, (whether in Velen, Novigrad, Skellige and all of the tavern music) the ear becomes bored, as the mind desires change, a movement in tone, contrast, thereby creating the undesired effect of "dragging on".
There are posts scattered around regarding "music too loud" (which sometimes happens) or requests for "adding music" or "too many loops"- and after my own personal experience of partial boredom during extended exploration, I understood that the core of the issue was actually the lack of diversity in the primary key all the pieces are played in. My ears yearned for change.
The one saving grace was the fact that the game compensates for it with an incredible amount of rich content. That is of course a big one, certainly justifying all of the awards TW3 has received. However had the music been more key-diverse, it would have made exploration far more interesting and atmospheric, and less "monotone".
Had I been able to mod the music, I probably would have added select (very select and subtle) pieces from previous Witcher games to improve the atmosphere of exploration. Either that, or experiment with manipulating the existing music in such a way where the key does change, taking care that there would be little dissonance during overlapping moments.