So, who sampled whom?

I noticed this a long time ago but never did point it out on these forums. There's a strange nexus in the time continuum or an anomaly of some sort going on here ;)

Exhibit A, PSX Doom Credits music:

Exhibit B, Hexen II Track 8:

Hmm. Maybe both sampled same sound\music library?

That Doom track is probably one of my favorite Doom songs of all time, I never knew it was in Hexen II. I'm guessing they sampled from the same library as suggested.

The main similarity that's interesting beyond the almost identical instrumentation of PSX at 0:40 and the Hexen track is that the rhythm of the high-pitched clicking percussion instrument is pretty much exactly the same as well. I wonder if that could be attributed to its behavior on sustain on the synth, if you want to operate on the theory that these songs didn't directly influence each other at least.

Bit of a tangent but this reminds me I've been trying to track down a few of the Hexen music inspiration references that are mentioned on the Doom Wiki, which says VOIDR is "Slightly inspired by a bass line in "Escape from New York"."

My hunch is that it refers to this track (also I swear I've heard the musical phrase at 1:53 in another Hexen track as well, yet I can't put my finger on which track offhand...):

Along the way I also noticed that a segment of this one (at the 0:40 and 1:55 marks) sounds reminiscent to the lead-in to the Heretic E1M3 track:


I've yet to figure out any Level 42 song that makes me think of LEVELR (or any other Hexen track), though. Seems Kevin Schilder was a lot subtler with his influences than Bobby Prince was...

Suspiciously similar.

The composition might be coincidence, but the timbre might have some explanation.

I spoke to Aubrey years ago about synth gear and what he had used to compose the soundtrack for PSX Doom. I assumed it was a rompler/work-station synth, like a Korg M1, but he said it was sampled from a generic library. I would assume music sampling libraries weren't as prevalent then as they are now and there could have been an industry standard, much like 'The General'.

A lot of Hexen 2 midi tracks are Hexen 1 tracks but with different instruments I have noticed.

Ed said:

I spoke to Aubrey years ago about synth gear and what he had used to compose the soundtrack for PSX Doom. I assumed it was a rompler/work-station synth, like a Korg M1, but he said it was sampled from a generic library. I would assume music sampling libraries weren't as prevalent then as they are now and there could have been an industry standard, much like 'The General'.

Sample libraries were the go-to for music composers back in the late 80's--early 90's. Aubrey actually acquired the majority of the sound samples used in the soundtrack from sample libraries. In fact, out of all three Doom games he composed soundtracks for, there's only a few samples that I cannot pin-point their original counter-points.
As far as synths go, Aubrey also sampled patch 71 (Nightmare) from the Roland D-50. There are other string pads that I do not know where Aubrey got them but I assume he sampled them as well.

In regards to the OP, the percussion segments could be rhythmic loops apart of a much larger sample library such as The X-Static Goldmine or maybe even Zero-G's Datafile collection.
After a quick Google search, it appears Playstation Doom was released before Hexen II came out but I highly doubt either composer would copy a rhythm like that if it wasn't sample-based to begin with.

For some reason I've often thought of Hexen when listening to "In A Lonely Place" by New Order. I can't really point at a track which is actually similar to it in Hexen, however; perhaps bits of "Seven Portals", and bits of "Bright Crucible" (listening back, yes definitely bits of the latter). It particularly reminds me of the rocky dry bits with serpents and the stakes that rise up and kill you.