Doom pre-MUS original source MIDI files

[Litude]

I came across most of the original source MIDI files for the original Doom and Doom II when going through the various official ports that have been made to various systems. Unlike other ports that utilize MIDI music, the OS/2 port actually uses the original source MIDI files as its music and not some MUS2MIDI conversions. Even better, it does not include just the shareware MIDI files but also the registered and most Doom II midi files (ULTIMA and READ_M are missing for some reason). The following facts about these MIDI files support them being the original material:

- They are complete with metadata, including the inspiring tracks (just like the unreleased music MIDI files)

- They have multiple tracks; all MUS2MIDI conversions have just a single track

- I tried converting some of them using the official MIDI2MUS utility and got .MUS files that are byte for byte identical to the original .WAD music files

 

There are some interesting finds here, such as the debated E1M1 track being inspired by Master of Puppets. Only two of the Doom 1 MIDI files seem to have track names assigned to them in the metadata, which differ from the later(?) official names. Donna to the Rescue is called I've Been Hurted By Your Words!. Also, Sweet Little Dead Bunny was called The Sweet Little Fucked Up Bunny (wonder why that was changed).

 

I attached a zip of official MIDI files to this post. It includes the following:

- OS/2 midi files for Doom and Doom II

- MIDI files released by Bobby Prince on his website. These are not the original source MIDI files but have been slightly altered, such as joining the separate MIDI tracks to a single track. But he did release the Wolfenstein 3D version of The Ultimate Challenge as MIDI (which the OS/2 version is for some reason missing).

- The 2 MIDI files included with Doom95 Doom and Doom II. The Doom II track matches the OS/2 track, the original Doom track differs slightly (no idea why).

doommidi.zip

[Gez]

4 hours ago, Litude said:

I came across most of the original source MIDI files for the original Doom and Doom II when going through the various official ports that have been made to various systems. Unlike other ports that utilize MIDI music, the OS/2 port actually uses the original source MIDI files as its music and not some MUS2MIDI conversions.

Now that's very interesting.

 

I found an archive to check, dmos219s.zip. The MIDI files are in the included os2.wad (and are its only content), the doom1.wad shareware file contains the usual MUS lumps and is presumably unchanged from the regular DOS shareware version.

[Individualised]

HOLY SHIT. This is great to finally have! Can't believe we're getting original Doom and Earthworm Jim MIDIs in possibly the same month!

 

For those who don't know why this is significant; the original PC release of Doom uses the MUS format. While this format can be converted back to MIDI, it does not preserve things like metadata or timing information. The latter is especially important as it means they're basically useless for editing or DAWs (say if you wanted to transcribe the songs, or make a remix), and won't play nice in things that expect standard timing. We already had the source MIDIs for the prototype tracks so we know what to expect here. This is really fucking cool.

 

E1M1 being inspired by Master of Puppets is a huge find. Everyone already kinda thought that but since Bobby Prince remembered composing that one before making the placeholder cover songs it was thought to be a coincidence since it's a common metal riff. I guess he misremembered - I doubt he intentionally spread misinformation, he doesn't seem like the type of guy, and most of his other information matches up. Doomwiki needs to be updated for sure.

 

Thanks for sharing, @Litude! This deserves much more attention.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Individualised

[Gregor]

2 hours ago, Individualised said:

E1M1 being inspired by Master of Puppets is a huge find. Everyone already kinda thought that but since Bobby Prince remembered composing that one before making the placeholder cover songs it was thought to be a coincidence since it's a common metal riff. I guess he misremembered - I doubt he intentionally spread misinformation, he doesn't seem like the type of guy, and most of his other information matches up. Doomwiki needs to be updated for sure.

Hold your horses. One person appearing out of the blue that claims to have found something no-one else has found before and hasn't been verified by anyone else but themselves is not exactly a reliable source.

 

How is it that this was not discovered earlier if it's so plain to see? Sounds kinda fishy to me.

[Individualised]

13 minutes ago, Gregor said:

Hold your horses. One person appearing out of the blue that claims to have found something no-one else has found before and hasn't been verified by anyone else but themselves is not exactly a reliable source.

 

How is it that this was not discovered earlier if it's so plain to see? Sounds kinda fishy to me.

The OS/2 port is obscure and Gez seems to back up that this is legit. Would be nice if other people can corroborate this. I do also admit that it's weird that this just pops up out of the blue.

[Individualised]

Found a copy of the OS/2 port myself. I can confirm this is real, Master of Puppets metadata and all.

[Litude]

29 minutes ago, Gregor said:

Hold your horses. One person appearing out of the blue that claims to have found something no-one else has found before and hasn't been verified by anyone else but themselves is not exactly a reliable source.

 

How is it that this was not discovered earlier if it's so plain to see? Sounds kinda fishy to me.

You could just download the OS/2 port yourself and check it out...

[Individualised]

Some things that weren't mentioned in OP:
-Intermission from DOOM's metadata: Metallica -- Ride The Lightening -- "Fight Fire With Fire"

-Along with the songs we already knew were originally for Doom 1, "DOOM" and "Getting too Tense" were originally composed for Doom 1. Out of all the Doom 2 songs I would have never guessed those two were originally for Doom 1. Getting too Tense especially sounds Wolfenstein-ish like the other tracks composed specifically for Doom 2 and doesn't seem like it would have fit in Doom 1 to me (it's possible that it was heavily modified from it's Doom 1 form) but there we go I guess.

-E2M6 has a track title "This should be one evil son of a bitch!". Don't know if this is an alternate title or just a note from Bobby Prince.

[Quasar]

19 minutes ago, Individualised said:

Found a copy of the OS/2 port myself. I can confirm this is real, Master of Puppets metadata and all.

I already had it from earlier research for the wiki but I never thought to look into the MIDI files because I assumed they'd be knock-off MUS2MIDI back-conversions done in a haste by the ONE guy they had working on that port. But nope, this is legit.

[Gez]

1 hour ago, Gregor said:

and hasn't been verified by anyone else but themselves

What did I do to end on your ignore list?

1 hour ago, Individualised said:

The OS/2 port is obscure and Gez seems to back up that this is legit.

Yeah, I gave a link and all, so anyone who wants to check can download and open that in SLADE.

48 minutes ago, Individualised said:

-E2M6 has a track title "This should be one evil son of a bitch!". Don't know if this is an alternate title or just a note from Bobby Prince.

Looks like a mere comment/note to me. There's also M_MESSAG with the note "Use Taiko on track 1?" which shows Bobby hesitating about instruments...

 

When titles are provided, they are between quotes, these comments aren't.

 

Also the "DOOM" track is titled "Doom!" by Bobby, with exclamation mark. There's a few other minor title differences, like "The Dave D. Taylor Blues" being just "Dave's Blues"...

Edited April 17, 2023 by Gez

[deleted-account]

 ̶I̶n̶t̶e̶r̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶E̶2̶M̶6̶'̶s̶ ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶"̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶ ̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶c̶h̶!̶"̶

̶I̶ ̶w̶o̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶i̶g̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶(̶y̶'̶k̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶"̶S̶i̶n̶i̶s̶t̶e̶r̶"̶)̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶-̶r̶e̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶h̶y̶p̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶?̶

Edit: I should learn how to read previous user comments...

Edited April 17, 2023 by Robo_Cola

[Doomkid]

Even though it’s commonly talked about, I’m baffled that E1M1 is inspired by Master of Puppets and not No Remorse. Shit man, when you analyse the riffs closely, the riff structure and rhythm and everything objectively match far more closely with No Remorse. It’s the linguistic equivalent of a long word that’s different by a single letter!

 

Check out 6:25 onward in the following video to see what I mean. It’s probably even more useful if you aren’t a musician:

 

 

 

It is nice to know beyond any doubt that it’s Metallica, at least - not to mention definitively disproving that claim about it being an original riff (let’s be real here, the id dudes play really fast and loose with Doom history sometimes, moreso the further we get from Doom’s birthday.)

 

Awesome finds! I had like 10 “non-mus” MIDIs scraped together over the years, nice to have a neat pack like this!

[Quasar]

7 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Even though it’s commonly talked about, I’m baffled that E1M1 is inspired by Master of Puppets and not No Remorse. Shit man, when you analyse the riffs closely, the riff structure and rhythm and everything objectively match far more closely with No Remorse. It’s the linguistic equivalent of a long word that’s different by a single letter!

 

Check out 6:25 onward in the following video to see what I mean. It’s probably even more useful if you aren’t a musician:

 

 

 

It is nice to know beyond any doubt that it’s Metallica, at least - not to mention definitively disproving that claim about it being an original riff (let’s be real here, the id dudes play really fast and loose with Doom history sometimes, moreso the further we get from Doom’s birthday.)

 

Awesome finds! I had like 10 “non-mus” MIDIs scraped together over the years, nice to have a neat pack like this!

I really suspect that No Remorse was still an influence on it. However the rhythm does unambiguously occur in Master of Puppets as well. It's possible he did a blend on the songs, and maybe that's why he doesn't seem to remember which one he based it on.

 

@Gez Your listing of the os2.wad file claims two different songs are listed for E2M1; is this correct? The only part of Silent Scream that sounds remotely like E2M1 to me are the various shreds in the last third of the song. The rest of E2M1 is unambiguously Big Gun, but Big Gun does not contain any running shreds even remotely like the ones in E2M1 so it's interesting - it may be a mix of ideas. However that being said this also confirms Silent Scream was an influence and I hear other parts of Doom songs in it and I'm terrible at matching that kind of thing from memory so it'd be good for somebody to figure that out and get it on the wiki.

[Doomkid]

I think what’s happening here is some leftover metadata. Silent Scream was transcribed as un18 among the Alpha Doom music and it has “absolute zero” in common with E2M1’s music (to my ears), which is an almost direct match for un44 (Big Gun).

 

I’m thinking it’s similar to how Outshined is mentioned in the metadata of like 4 Alpha MIDIs even though un32 is the only one that sounds anything like it at all. It’s as if Bobby never started new MIDIs from a blank template and copied things over for new songs instead.

 

Heres a full YT rip for convenience,

 

 

[Gez]

1 minute ago, Quasar said:

Your listing of the os2.wad file claims two different songs are listed for E2M1; is this correct?

Full SLADE metadata output:

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 1 with 16 tracks and time division 192
Text: AC-DC "Big Gun"
Text: Slayer -- South Of Heaven -- "Silent Scream"
Title: Bass                
Title: Mute Guitar         
Title: Guitar I            
Title: Lead Guitar         
Title: Guitar I/V          
Title: Kick/Snare          
Title: Toms                
Title: HiHat               
Title: Crash               
Title: Kick                
Title: HiHat               
Title: Crash               
Title: Snare/Tom           
Title: Lead Guitar         
Title: Lead Harmony        

(As usual, MIDI metadata tags are used for everything except what they're supposed to be used for. Here text is used for the title, and title is used for instrument names.)

[Doomkid]

It’d be worth comparing to the metadata of un18. If it bizarrely uses the second text line rather than the first for the song title and the capitalisation, and the pointless “double dashes” between composer, album and track, we could come closer to confirming the E2M1 Big Gun midi possibly being built off of un18 (Silent Scream) very early on, which obviously ended up almost entirely cut out of the finished product..?

 

(Also, to be fair to Bobby - Slade shows instrument track titles as “Title” for some reason. Very rarely do I see people use those blank instrument title slots for the actual song title, because you’re never going to have to specify that for each instrument - it’s far more convenient to denote which instrument is meant to be used for that specific track. I sometimes see the song title as the title of Track 0 or Track 1, but rarely elsewhere)

[Quasar]

1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

I think what’s happening here is some leftover metadata. Silent Scream was transcribed as un18 among the Alpha Doom music and it has “absolute zero” in common with E2M1’s music, which is an almost direct match for un44 (Big Gun).

 

I’m thinking it’s similar to how Outshined is mentioned in the metadata of like 4 Alpha MIDIs even though un32 is the only one that sounds anything like it at all. It’s as if Bobby never started new MIDIs from a blank template and copied things over for new songs instead.

Unfortunately a very real possibility. Though for clarity the shredding I'm referring to starts at 1:34 in Silent Scream. The other part of a Doom song I'm hearing in it is at 10 seconds but now I'm remembering that's probably un18.mid and not any of the others.

[Bank]

Most likely Bobby Prince composed all music independently and any likeness to existing songs is purely coincidental or the result of historical revisionism/time-travel.

[Gregor]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

What did I do to end on your ignore list?

Whoopsie.

[Gez]

14 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

(Also, to be fair to Bobby - Slade shows instrument track titles as “Title” for some reason. Very rarely do I see people use those blank instrument title slots for the actual song title, because you’re never going to have to specify that for each instrument - it’s far more convenient to denote which instrument is meant to be used for that specific track. I sometimes see the song title as the title of Track 0 or Track 1, but rarely elsewhere)

I think it's more an issue of MIDI composing software, since I don't expect musicians to write their songs in a hex editor. MIDI specifications says there are seven types of text strings, which are, in order, text (01), copyright (02), title (03), instrument (04), lyrics (05), marker (06), and cue point (07), but I've basically never seen any of them besides text and title used, and most often it's just title that's used for everything.

[DNSKILL5]

I still don’t hear Master of Puppets but if it’s the inspiration for E1M1 then he did a good job making it vague enough to be interpreted as several other songs with a similar riff to No Remorse. 

[Doomkid]

37 minutes ago, Gez said:

I think it's more an issue of MIDI composing software, since I don't expect musicians to write their songs in a hex editor. MIDI specifications says there are seven types of text strings, which are, in order, text (01), copyright (02), title (03), instrument (04), lyrics (05), marker (06), and cue point (07), but I've basically never seen any of them besides text and title used, and most often it's just title that's used for everything.

I don't want to go too far afield here, but I wonder why about 90% of MIDI sequencing software chooses to put title (03) where almost anyone would expect the info for instrument (04) to be? It's true in Sekaiju, GuitarPro, TuxGuitar, the old-ass sequencer I used back in 2005 called JazzWare, and apparently in what Bobby used as well, Cakewalk iirc. Well anyway I guess this isn't the thread to ruminate on this, but I've always found it kinda odd.

[Individualised]

22 minutes ago, CAM-7EA said:

I still don’t hear Master of Puppets but if it’s the inspiration for E1M1 then he did a good job making it vague enough to be interpreted as several other songs with a similar riff to No Remorse. 

It probably started out as a cover and then became it's own thing. Like how Hiding the Secrets was originally a cover of We Die Young by Alice in Chains but in the final it became practically unrecognisable from the original song. And yes, the metadata here still mentions We Die Young.

 

I doubt that Bobby Prince gave false info on purpose. I know John Romero sometimes likes to exaggerate stuff (like the intentional broken secret thing) but Bobby Prince wasn't a part of the id team, he was a contractor. It is such a common riff and it's not as close to the original song that many of the Doom covers are that I can totally believe him going back to listen to it and thinking "I probably made this one before I made the cover stuff" if he didn't have access to the original MIDIs anymore. Remember this game is 30 years old this year.

[Biz!]

Is there any major differences, or minor differences in the songs, and not the titles and such?

[DNSKILL5]

2 minutes ago, Biz! said:

Is there any major differences, or minor differences in the songs, and not the titles and such?

The songs themselves there’s no differences; it’s the information within the files that are different. This is almost like the equivalent to a “master track” for these MIDIs. 

[Individualised]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

Looks like a mere comment/note to me. There's also M_MESSAG with the note "Use Taiko on track 1?" which shows Bobby hesitating about instruments...

Okay so this may just be me misremembering but I could have sworn Bobby mentioned something about Message for the Archvile originally using a taiko in an interview? I know Into Sandy's City originally used a grand piano for it's lead.

[Individualised]

2 minutes ago, Biz! said:

Is there any major differences, or minor differences in the songs, and not the titles and such?

The original timing is also preserved in the note data itself, so it will look normal in a MIDI editor and will play normally on things that expect standard timing (the .MUS versions were all at like tempo 125 and fit the notes in how they could. They used the MUS files for the SNES version, and its sound driver doesn't like the strange timing so a lot of songs in that port sound slightly out of beat.)

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

Damn, if it weren't for the percussion being so different Fight Fire With Fire for intermission would be super obvious. I'm surprised nobody caught it after 30 years.

[SiFi270]

I thought this thread was about this at first. Once it was mentioned that the OS/2 music didn't sound that different from the .MUS versions (which I think was the reason I also overlooked them despite knowing about them), I got confused, because the version of At Doom's Gate in the above thread has noticeably stronger percussion at the start. I thought they were the original originals with details lost in the conversion to .MUS, but I guess not? Here's the metadata for the WebTV versions of Doom's tracks.

 

Spoiler

doom - deepcode.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: Deep Into The Code
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: Copyright 1993, Robert C. Prince, III
Marker: All Rights Reserved

 

doom - demons.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: The Demons From Adrian's Pen
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: Copyright 1993, Robert C. Prince, III
Marker: All Rights Reserved

 

doom - doomgate.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: At Doom's Gate
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: "At Doom's Gate"

Text: (C) (P)  1993, Robert C. Prince

Text: bobby prince Music, BMI

Text: All Rights Reserved

Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: (C) (P)  1993, Robert C. Prince
Marker: bobby prince Music, BMI
Marker: All Rights Reserved

 

doom - nobody.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: Nobody Told Me About id
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: Copyright 1993, Robert C. Prince
Marker: All Rights Reserved

 

doom - suspense.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: Suspense
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

 

doom ii - davedtaylorblues.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 120
Title: The Dave D. Taylor Blues
Title: DDT's Blues
Copyright: ©1994, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: Written for DOOM II
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

 

doom ii - intosandyscity.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 120
Title: Into Sandy's City
Copyright: 1994, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

 

doom ii - romero.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 120
Title: Waiting For Romero To Play
Copyright: 1994, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: Written for Doom but used for Doom II
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

 

doom ii - shawn.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 120
Title: Shawn's Got The Shotgun
Copyright: © 1994, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: Written for Doom II
Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: I - I
Marker: I
Marker: IV
Marker: I
Marker: V
Marker: IV
Marker: I
Marker: II - I
Marker: I
Marker: IV
Marker: I
Marker: V
Marker: IV
Marker: I

 

wolfenstein 3d-doom ii - evilincarnate.mid

Music (MIDI)
MIDI format 0 with time division 192
Title: Evil Incarnate
Copyright: 1993, Robert C. Prince - bobby prince Music, BMI
Text: Robert C. Prince
Text: "Evil Incarnate"    

Text: (C) (P) 1993, Robert C. Prince

Text: bobby prince Music, BMI

Text: All Rights Reserved

Text: NOT FOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE WITHOUT A LICENSE FROM BMI - license@bpmusic.com for info

Marker: "Evil Incarnate"    
Marker: (C) (P) 1994, Robert C. Prince
Marker: bobby prince Music, BMI
Marker: All Rights Reserved

EDIT: Oh silly me. The thread was partly about those, and the OS/2 stuff was just what people were most focused on.

[prfunky]

Funny. All my friends were playing DooM at this point in time. I, instead, was

farting around with OS/2 Warp. And I never knew a separate version of DooM

existed for OS/2. This is an awesome find! Thanks for the .zip, thank you all

for the commentary on the musical stuff that goes WAY over my head (I'm

musically inept). I hate Metallica...