Music
From DoomWiki.org
The music in the Doom series features a wide variety of genres, mostly contrasting fast-paced action and atmospheric environments. The original game's soundtrack made by Bobby Prince was popularly associated with heavy metal, a novelty for videogames at the time, but also had a subtle approach for other specific tracks. Over the years, many other composers added their own musical interpretation to the series.
Contents
Games
Classic Doom
All of the music in Doom and Doom II was created by Bobby Prince. Many of the songs were inspired by or closely mirror popular rock and metal songs from groups such as Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, AC/DC, Alice in Chains, and Black Sabbath [1]. In Final Doom, the new music was created by Jonathan El-Bizri, Josh Martel, Tom Mustaine, and L.A. Sieben.
Although most gamers at the time had more affordable FM OPL based Adlib or Sound Blaster sound cards, the soundtrack was composed on the Roland SC-55 sound module. Support in the engine exists for OPL2-based and Gravis Ultrasound cards, in addition to generic General MIDI output. Native Sound Blaster AWE32 support was added in 1.4.
Aubrey Hodges
The music in PlayStation Doom and Doom 64 was composed by Aubrey Hodges and differs greatly from the original PC songs. Hodges composed a soundtrack of eerie an atonal ambient music meant to go along with the darker style of these games and increase a sense of fear with the player. When Quake was released for the Nintendo 64, it featured music identical in style to that of Doom 64, going so far as to use the same samples.
Doom 3
The music for Doom 3 was initially planned with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, but he declined early-on due to time constraints and bad management[1]. The actual music theme was composed by Chris Vrenna and Clint Walsh from Tweaker and it was released via the band's website as a single track.
Doom 2016
The music for Doom (2016) was composed by Mick Gordon and consists of a set of pieces that changes dynamically according to the gameplay. Blending together heavy metal and electronic music, it was released as a cohesive soundtrack on September 28, 2016, featuring 31 tracks and a total play time of 128 minutes.
Music listings
- Doom music
- Doom II music
- Unused Doom music
- Final Doom TNT music
- Final Doom Plutonia music
- Heretic music
- Hexen music
- Strife music
- Chex Quest music
- PlayStation Doom music
- Saturn Doom music
- Doom 64 music
- Doom (2016) music
Trivia
- Virtually all of the music in Doom and Doom II follows the Twelve-bar blues structure.
- The music inside the Doom engine's IWAD files is not stored as MIDIs, but as MUS, a format similar to MIDI created by Paul Radek for DMX. However, PWADs may contain actual MIDI files since the Doom engine obtained MIDI file support in v1.5. In addition, all source ports support MIDI natively and have to convert MUS lumps back to MIDI.
External links
- Doom & Doom II music, remixes and information at Doomworld
- Heavy metal references on Doom's soundtrack
- Doom Covers at Doomworld
- Doom Video Discography
- Aubrey Hodges interview
- Mick Gordon interview I II
- DMX driver fix project
