How do you decide music for your levels?

What makes you choose a certain piece of music for your map? For instance does the layout, the atmosphere, the speed of the map factor in how you choose?

D_RUNNIN OR BUST

D_AMPIE OR BUST.

Either I listen to something cool and make a map to that, usually with it on 25% of the time I'm mapping or more, or I choose midis I've gathered from places like vgmusic and random searches of videogame music I liked, or of songs that people arranged midis to. I try not to ever use the same midi again, which includes other people using it first, though I'm a bit looser with that if I haven't used it in one of my own maps. I haven't gone midi-hunting for a while though, so my collection is almost used/not suitable for the maps I make. And so I haven't seriously mapped since newgothic was released.

For instance does the layout, the atmosphere, the speed of the map factor in how you choose?

Spin that around. I make the map from the tune.

Just like I prefer to listen a few great songs over and over than a bunch of so-so music, I would rather use great midis everyone else has used a thousand times than go hunting for original but lower quality music.

I don't think you should agonize too much over the choice, as a lot of people will use their own choice of music, or none at all. I normally have a music wad preloaded, and if I don't like the wad's own music, I'll just idmus to one that is more acceptable.

To be honest, picking music is a pain in the arse. But, it's also feels really good to get right, too.

The trick is to think about the 'feel' of your map. Is it a large sprawling map? Claustrophobic? A castle? A church? As long as you know how your map is supposed to 'feel', you should know the music that fits your map when you hear it.

Most of this probably seems pretty obvious, but I can't even begin to count the number of times I've loaded up some guys map, seen some hellish landscape, only to hear something like elevator music, or worse, some tune the author has been listening to recently that they like. Neither really help sell the 'mood' the map has.

So, I think as long as the author knows how their map is supposed to 'feel', they can find some music that (more or less) helps reinforce it. For, as far as I'm concerend (and this applies to other games, not just doom), game music should, simply, set a mood and not attempt to tell a story. Something like that, anyway.

I don't bother with MIDI music (it all sounds like the same bleeps, bloops, pops and thuds to me), so I crawl around the internet for usable regular music, that fits the atmosphere and tone of the map. I've used http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/103863 before as a dark foreboding track, amd http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/240936 as the music for s hort boss battle, for example. I'm sure there are other sources of audio on the internets as well. Just prepare yourself to dig through a mountain of crap before you hit something good.

I usually like to choose music that hasn't been overused lately in the wads I've played (much of that is TNT.WAD music). I don't shy away from choosing MIDI versions of commercial band songs. They fit Doom and actually bring interest in the players to seek the real thing.