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40oz

'Background' Music

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If my luck with searching for it is any indication, this kind of music doesn't have a real name. There are parts in movies and in tv shows that are pretty dramatic and suspenseful and they have really quiet background music. It's barely audible over the sound of the dialogue or the sound of what's going on in the environment. I've been dying for music like this in my Doom maps but I can't find anything quite like it. 

 

I haven't had much luck finding this kind of music on youtube. Often when I search background music from TV Shows I get the actual songs they use for the montages and stuff. I've heard of "Dark Ambient" which is a pretty popular music genre, and it's close. However, most of what I've heard is just too spacey or 'rainforesty' for lack of better descriptive words for audio. PSX Doom music and Doom64 music is also pretty good but to me it better resembles 'noise,' like the sounds of metal bending or machines moving in the distance. It's very close but it's still not quite what I want.

 

The kind of stuff I'm thinking of usually has a kind of pulsing drone sound, or a low octave strings sound, a heart beat, a single note bass line or all of the above. I suspect it could be really good as a midi because the length of the track could have a progression that starts quiet, slowly builds up, then fades back down for a neat and tight loop. It doesn't really have a noticeable or 'catchy' melody which actually works in the music's favor. It's a really quiet cacophony. The indistinct noise makes it very easy to listen to on repeat for a long time without getting old, but it still has some repeating tempo in the form of the aforementioned bass line or heartbeat to still be 'music' rather than literal random noise.

 

The best midis I can think of that are closest to what I'm thinking are MAP06 from Sunder (originally used in Scythe 2 MAP16, which was based on a track from Super Metroid Advance.) and MAP07 from Memento Mori

 

I've talked to a few people about this like @Ed and @Eris Falling and a few others. They seemed to have an idea of what I mean, but I'm still not totally sure I'm describing the best I can. I'm hoping someone here is following me and give me some direction towards what I'm talking about.

 

Try watching an intense TV series with really diabolical characters in it. Take the Walking Dead for example. Pay close attention to the music that is used in situations that aren't a complete panic, but are rather a buildup for something crazy that is going to happen later on. There are enough TV series and movies for people to produce this kind of music professionally. What is this stuff called???

 

This music track from Nightmare Creatures linked below kinda has the thing I want. 

 

1. A distant 'boom' on a metronome + funneled wind for about 2 minutes
2. the distant boom gets a faster tempo now, plus an echoing bass line
3. send in some strings with it
4. quietly return to (1.) for a few moments
5. repeat (2.) but include a churchbell
5. quietly return to (1.)

 

It starts off sounding like funneled wind, then there's a distant boom on a metronome, the tempo of the boom gets faster, now with an echoing bass line. Send in some strings for a few moments, tack on some distant church bells to coincide with the booms. Then quietly fade back down to the funneled wind. It's so dark, imposing, and ominous. I love everything about it. It's perfect.

 

It doesn't need to be long, it just needs to be right. I don't know anything about making music so I don't know if this request is a lot to ask; but if someone sequenced like 10-15 of these tracks in MIDI, each with slight deviations from one another it's the exact kind of soundtrack I'd want for my more serious projects.

 

 

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"Drone" is a specific genre of music that seems to be what you've described, although a lot of youtube videos use the name in err and are simply electronic ambient which is quite different. To me it refers to music without melody, with cyclic component (not beat, think more like... sin wave cycles), white noise or walls of noise, and while it seems in the background of your mind while you are listening to it, it is shocking to your ears and general perception when it ceases.

 

one example:

 

o sup another

 

while technically this has melody, it stirs the same juices in my brain. it's soul shattering with proper cabinet speakers:

 

Edited by Vorpal

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I know it's a tracker file not a mid, and it fits only some of your criteria, but Slow Motion might work for you. The song is 22:37 long, but only 285.14KB.

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'Ambience' may also be applicable for you.

 

Come to think of it , some of the stuff from classic Resident Evil games would go quite nicely too.

 

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I had similar thoughts to 40oz about a year ago and struggled to find anything that was quite right for me, so I have since been experimenting with composing music in this kind of style with Doom in mind, as well as experimenting with remixing Doom/Heretic/Hexen tunes in this style.  I don't think I'll be able to help out in the near term as I'm still experimenting and developing my own style, and I'm not currently working with MIDI and also have no experience with converting MP3/OGG into MIDI effectively.  In the long term though I do intend to release some music and share it under a Creative Commons Noncommercial license.

 

I'm into film music and there is a fair amount of film music out there which is along similar lines, though mostly only for brief periods.  Some of Thomas Newman's background music especially springs to my mind, e.g. for American Beauty, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road.  Again I feel a lot of it doesn't quite fit Doom, but it's close.

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I'm finding lots of stuff that has elements of what you're asking for. But it seems the musical structure of what you need is specific enough that it would be best to find a MIDI artist and work with them to create something, if you're serious about it.

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20 minutes ago, GuyMcBrofist said:

But it seems the musical structure of what you need is specific enough that it would be best to find a MIDI artist and work with them to create something, if you're serious about it.

I plan on attempting to follow that path.

 

I think 40 picked an excellent tune and what he's looking for is what I'm looking for, something creepy and atmospheric. That kind of music lends itself to pacier maps as opposed to all-out-war-from-beginning-to-end, which is what I mostly like to create, heh. ;D But I keep wanting to make maps with suspense and jump-scares, with eerie lighting and a lot of small-to-moderate fights punctuated by a few really nasty ones where you seriously try to take the player out.

 

Historically, I've always thought The Agony Rhapsody perfectly fulfills my needs, and apparently a lot of people agree, given how often it's been used.

 

In searching for creepy music, I tend to see the following problems ruin otherwise good tracks. 1) Too much music, or musicality, which detracts from the atmospheric qualities. 2) Too much percussion, especially fast percussion. 3) Crescendoes, because they crown the mood build-up and also suggest the need for a payoff in gameplay, which is impossible to time in classic ports. The ideal creepy BGM should keep you in a state of tension by never reaching a crescendo, because crescendo releases tension and leads to catharsis, the opposite of what we're looking for. The film composer Bernard Herrmann was a master of this technique, notably in some of the quieter music for "Psycho," which was later used in Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force.

 

Here's a couple tracks I plan on sharing with our Doom musicians. I found these on audioblocks.com while searching for much more upbeat material. Stuff like this kept turning up, and I was surprised to see so much ambient industrial music on a site which specializes in BGM. Who would use this for anything besides a horror movie score? I ultimately downloaded a lot of it.

 

Atmospheric Ambient Build-up: http://www.mediafire.com/file/tih1n2dtcdti1ro/atmospheric-ambient-build-up_fkFwtVNu.mp3

Heartbeat Scary Music: http://www.mediafire.com/file/i9ih2wor458upjw/heartbeat-scary-music_GkOY9NN_.mp3

 

For me, the music is more crucial than ever because I prefer mapping to music rather than create a map and then search for music which fits, which is a time-consuming and colossally boring task, not to mention frustrating.

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Thanks for the suggestions everyone. A lot of what has been linked to here sounds like it's prepping me to watch a documentary about galaxies and constellations. I'm not really sure what instruments are contributing to it, but hopefully someone gets what I mean by that. I'd rather be hearing something more grounded and motivating if I'm making any sense here.

 

Steve D, those tracks you've linked are the closest to what I'm thinking so far. From your post, it sounds like you get what I mean. Something about the juxtaposition of fighting bunch of hard monsters against quiet, nearly inaudible but ominous music smells like paradise to me. I realize my tastes are really specific here and I'm running out of vocabulary to make it make more sense. I've been avoiding using a MIDI sequencer for so long because I'm too stupid to figure it out and understand the terminology.

 

Does anybody ever collab on MIDIs? If I could maybe make a few basic examples, would someone be willing to extend, modify or correct them?

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MAP02 in Confinement has what I think may be the closest to what you're thinking of in MIDI form.
 

1 hour ago, Steve D said:

Historically, I've always thought The Agony Rhapsody perfectly fulfills my needs, and apparently a lot of people agree, given how often it's been used.

 

Hah! That's the song that plays in my map in that very mapset I linked :D

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1 hour ago, Xyzzy01 said:

Hah! That's the song that plays in my map in that very mapset I linked :D

Still going strong since its first appearance in IIRC Map06 of TNT:Evilution.

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Games that use a combination of "ambient" music and "event" music appeal to me. In other words, there's a long (preferably non-repetitive) track that plays throughout one or more maps, interspersed with bursts of fast-paced music when something significant happens.

 

Jeff "Davitch" Ligda is a massively-talented musician, who enjoys making music for games, and works in different genres. He might be willing to compose music for you.

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10 hours ago, 40oz said:

If my luck with searching for it is any indication, this kind of music doesn't have a real name. There are parts in movies and in tv shows that are pretty dramatic and suspenseful and they have really quiet background music. It's barely audible over the sound of the dialogue or the sound of what's going on in the environment. I've been dying for music like this in my Doom maps but I can't find anything quite like it. 

 

I haven't had much luck finding this kind of music on youtube. Often when I search background music from TV Shows I get the actual songs they use for the montages and stuff. I've heard of "Dark Ambient" which is a pretty popular music genre, and it's close. However, most of what I've heard is just too spacey or 'rainforesty' for lack of better descriptive words for audio. PSX Doom music and Doom64 music is also pretty good but to me it better resembles 'noise,' like the sounds of metal bending or machines moving in the distance. It's very close but it's still not quite what I want.

 

The kind of stuff I'm thinking of usually has a kind of pulsing drone sound, or a low octave strings sound, a heart beat, a single note bass line or all of the above. I suspect it could be really good as a midi because the length of the track could have a progression that starts quiet, slowly builds up, then fades back down for a neat and tight loop. It doesn't really have a noticeable or 'catchy' melody which actually works in the music's favor. It's a really quiet cacophony. The indistinct noise makes it very easy to listen to on repeat for a long time without getting old, but it still has some repeating tempo in the form of the aforementioned bass line or heartbeat to still be 'music' rather than literal random noise.

 

The best midis I can think of that are closest to what I'm thinking are MAP06 from Sunder (originally used in Scythe 2 MAP16, which was based on a track from Super Metroid Advance.) and MAP07 from Memento Mori

 

I've talked to a few people about this like @Ed and @Eris Falling and a few others. They seemed to have an idea of what I mean, but I'm still not totally sure I'm describing the best I can. I'm hoping someone here is following me and give me some direction towards what I'm talking about.

 

Try watching an intense TV series with really diabolical characters in it. Take the Walking Dead for example. Pay close attention to the music that is used in situations that aren't a complete panic, but are rather a buildup for something crazy that is going to happen later on. There are enough TV series and movies for people to produce this kind of music professionally. What is this stuff called???

 

This music track from Nightmare Creatures linked below kinda has the thing I want. 

 

1. A distant 'boom' on a metronome + funneled wind for about 2 minutes
2. the distant boom gets a faster tempo now, plus an echoing bass line
3. send in some strings with it
4. quietly return to (1.) for a few moments
5. repeat (2.) but include a churchbell
5. quietly return to (1.)

 

It starts off sounding like funneled wind, then there's a distant boom on a metronome, the tempo of the boom gets faster, now with an echoing bass line. Send in some strings for a few moments, tack on some distant church bells to coincide with the booms. Then quietly fade back down to the funneled wind. It's so dark, imposing, and ominous. I love everything about it. It's perfect.

 

It doesn't need to be long, it just needs to be right. I don't know anything about making music so I don't know if this request is a lot to ask; but if someone sequenced like 10-15 of these tracks in MIDI, each with slight deviations from one another it's the exact kind of soundtrack I'd want for my more serious projects.

 

 

 

Have you tried any of Brian Eno's ambient albums, like Discrete Music or Music for Airports or Music for Films?  You might also like his albums Ambient 1, Ambient 2, and Ambient 4.   Ambient 3 he produced, but it was actually performed by someone else, so his name isn't technically associated with it.   He is also the one who coined the term "Ambient Music."

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I actually spent this whole day trying to make the midi you was asking for. Unfortunately I experienced way too much trouble with Open MPT to continue: some notes were not exported to midi file at all and other bizarre stuff happened. I should to move to Sekaiju...

 

Here is my _rough_ attempt anyway (midi): http://www1.zippyshare.com/v/tA7vN5IB/file.html I think it is way too disturbing than you wanted and there is too much strings, but I tried to include some boom and subtle bass line.

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Well, like other people have already pointed out, what you're looking for is most likely (dark) ambient music, so I don't have much else to say, save for offering a couple of playlists which may be close to what you're looking for (perhaps to the more extreme end of the spectrum), at least compared to the Nightmare Creatures 2 soundtrack you linked to in your post.

 

I've also looked for something more similar to Memento Mori (more epic and less creepy) but couldn't find anything that comes as close as it needs to.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

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I also like minimal/suspenseful/dark midis for very hard or long or oppressive maps. I think the midis that I made for my NOVA3 map and World Orifice fit the description:

 

benjomidi.zip

 

Somewhere down the road I'd like to make some more midis like them.

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You might be interested in power electronics. Most of that type of music falls far more into the noise side of the spectrum, but there are many artists who do not completely eschew the rhythmic qualities of traditional music, though there are admittedly very few examples (ime) of artists juxtaposing traditional melodies against the noise and rhythmic elements that you desire. The artist the comes to mind for me that most closely matches what you are looking for is Prurient. Their discography ranges from outright noise to borderline dance music with noise elements, but I have included some examples from albums which struck me as best fitting your criteria.

 

Other artists you may wish to check out (arranged from least to most noise) are Olymphia, Pruce Mary, Pharmakon or 20.sv, though none of them strike me as fitting you needs quite as well as Prurient does. As for finding or creating midis of this sort of music, your guess would be as good as mine, but hopefully I have provided you with something that will help you accomplish your goal.

 

Greenpoint

Bermuda Drain

Christ Among the Broken Glass

 

None of these examples incorporate a great deal of noise, so if you're looking for even more of that element you can check out the remainder of those albums, because it can vary greatly from track to track.  

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On 1/14/2018 at 0:47 AM, Benjogami said:

I also like minimal/suspenseful/dark midis for very hard or long or oppressive maps. I think the midis that I made for my NOVA3 map and World Orifice fit the description:

 

benjomidi.zip

 

Somewhere down the road I'd like to make some more midis like them.

 

Very awesome, this is definitely on the right track for what I'm thinking. It's a very intimidating kinda noise. Very interesting noises you were able to create too. And only 10kb for such long tracks! Nice job!

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You could check tracks from Sam Woodman aka Metabolist, he made some really good dark ambient midis, although I dunno if he is still around

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On 14.1.2018 at 7:47 AM, Benjogami said:

I also like minimal/suspenseful/dark midis for very hard or long or oppressive maps. I think the midis that I made for my NOVA3 map and World Orifice fit the description:

 

benjomidi.zip

 

Somewhere down the road I'd like to make some more midis like them.

Which program did you actually use to create these midis? /slight ot

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1 minute ago, Lore said:

Which program did you actually use to create these midis? /slight ot

I used FL Studio.

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2 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

I used FL Studio.

Okay thanks! I enjoyed the stereo effects and enviroment details you used.

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