Favorite midis?

[Da Werecat]

When I'm trying to think about projects with original music (which is what I want to focus on here for now), only the most famous stuff comes to mind, but I've always been out of touch with who did what. And, to be honest, I've always had problems with original soundtracks in wads. Like, recently I finally decided to give Darkening 2 a proper playthrough. It sounded like I was on a beach, sipping mojitos.

 

I guess that's one way to make music for an FPS game where you slaughter hellspawn.

 

Oh well. I'm usually whining about the same thing when talking about modern megawads, but what they lack in tone, they often make up for with sheer quality. The track in the opening map of BtSX E1, for example, is something I'd love to hear more of:

 

 

It's not too epic, and not too heroic, but has just about enough of that adventuresque vibe that makes you feel like an action hero, about to embark on a dangerous mission. Ideal for the beginning. But perhaps the best of all: it doesn't sound like a gay disco party, no matter the instruments.

 

Another track I remembered is remarkable for the fact that it's actually quite tense:

 

 

It's assigned to a map that maintains about the same tone and pace as the others, so the sense of danger it conveys feels wasted in the end. We've already survived countless revenant ambushes at that point; and I'm not even talking about all the Doom wads, just this one.

 

This one is probably - no, definitely - my favorite track in the entire BtSX:

 

 

Even if I didn't like E2, this track alone would've saved it for me - that one moment in the middle.

 

I think this one was written for Ancient Aliens:

 

 

But I'll be disappointed if it's gonna be replaced in E2. Very fond of its quiet mysterious vibe, and this is by far the most memorable level/track combination in E1 and E2 for me. Also reminds me of Warehouse 13 for some reason.

 

Another AA track that was also featured in a different wad:

 

 

Terribly upbeat, but I just can't help myself.

 

All of this makes me wonder what I'm gonna do when/if I finally make something that pleases me, and I'll need music for that. I can only hope that I'll be able to inspire someone enough to collaborate for free. I'm a cheap bum, so the prospect of commissioning music sounds dreadful to me. Maybe I should start learning me some MIDI creation.

[bonnie]

speaking of midi creation, i wasn't expecting this to get so popular and now i'm frickin happy as heck and i wanna make my own midis

 

someone teach me please

[Lila Feuer]

John Bye's music in The Talosian Incident is one of the main reasons i hold that wad in such high regard; it really makes the atmosphere of it. he also had some good tracks in his previos work, Cygnus IV.

Oh shit I forgot about Cygnus IV, the music in that was often very strange and creepy. The levels were pretty interesting too.

[Bauul]

One of my all time favorite pieces of music, ever, converts to MIDI quite nicely.  

 

 

Not all that suitable for Doom mind you!

 

A better version (sampled, but not MIDI) is here.

[STShotgun]

Plutonia 2's music in general is really good, but I think my favs are the tracks for MAP02 and 32: https://youtu.be/RIpA9dBGhDw?t=2m4s https://youtu.be/RIpA9dBGhDw?t=1h21m11s

 

Songs out of other soundtracks include:

Doom 1 - Sign of Evil, I Sawed the Demons, The Demons from Adrian's Pen, Sinister, Deep into the Code

Doom 2 -  The Healer Stalks, Countdown to Death, Intermission, Waiting for Romero to Play

TNT: Evilution - Soldier of Chaos, Cold Subtleness & Sadistic (fits perfectly with MAP01 since it starts with a Berserk pack :P)

Rise of the Triad - Havana Smooth, Run Like Smeg, Oww!, CCCool, Wendt - Doug Wendt (unused track, so it sorta counts?)

Duke Nukem 3D - Stalker, Taking the Death Toll, The City Streets, Taking Names, Warehaus

 

[Not Jabba]

Plutonia 2 is an interesting soundtrack. I feel like it was the first real Doom OST since Requiem and kind of ushered in a new era musically -- in particular, it made me really start taking notice of that upstart Jimmy, whose then-small number of previous efforts had all seemed a little SNESy for my taste. There's a lot of good stuff in it, and Astral Dreadnaught has already been mentioned, but the track that really blows me away every time I listen to it is "End is Nigh" by Jamie Robertson (map20, or 47:42 in the video linked in the post above).

[Deadwing]

BTW, a question for MIDI composers: How do you guys convert your files to mp3 with the microsoft sound font? I've been searching a lot for this but I can't find a good solution.

 

Sorry if this is too off-topic

[bonnie]

2 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

Sorry if this is too off-topic

nothing is too off-topic best friend :)

[Tristan]

11 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

BTW, a question for MIDI composers: How do you guys convert your files to mp3 with the microsoft sound font? I've been searching a lot for this but I can't find a good solution.

I just opened them in FL Studio and exported to MP3 - this won't work properly if the midi file has different pitch bend ranges anywhere, FL will ignore the events that define the modified range and use the default of ±2 semitones, which has the potential to sound pretty damn awful if pitch bends are used heavily. It is possible to set the pitch range in FL Studio and redraw the bends themselves, but that's a bit of a faff, perhaps there's a simpler way of just applying a multiplier or something that does the entire track, FL's not my main program so I'm not hugely familiar with it.

 

Alternatively use audacity and set the recording device to stereo mix if possible, hit record and play the MIDI back and do whatever editing is needed afterwards.

[Snakes]

Pretty sure the only right answer to this question is EVENFLOW.MID

[leodoom85]

Favorite MIDI....hard question. To me, there's a LOT of great MIDIs.

From They're Going To Get You (E2M4) to Message to the Archvile or Waiting to Romero to Play (maps 18,27 and 20,26)

I like the track from Epic 2 map 31, TNT map 31, some Blood tracks, Gotham from Duke Nukem 3D, The Great Hall from Heretic, Hypostyle from Hexen, and many, many others... 

[Spectre01]

Industrial by Simon Judd, most famously heard in Sunder map09 and Valiant map23. Incredible atmosphere for a rather simple track.

 

This bombastic track originally from Daedalus which I associate with Epic map05 and Epic 2 map11.

 

[silentzorah]

I just wish there was a better sequence of this.

 

[Tracer]

Mouth for Wa- I mean Untitled.

[galileo31dos01]

I'm just going to talk about Doom here, my favourite midis hmm, for sure my favourite is Death Bells from TNT: Evilution (the original Sound Blaster OPL etc format), I can just listen to it all night long and transport me to another dimension. Besides, many TNT maps have a night sky, I didn't read the story but I guess it's the space, and the midi suits perfectly. Others are: 

- Perdition's Gate - Map15 midi is beautiful. 

- Requiem - Map08

- Doom II - Map27 

- Plutonia 2 - Map14 

- Freedoom - C2M5 it's actually pretty catchy. 

 

There are a lot of other midis used in different wads that I also like, but yeah those are my favourites.

[Da Werecat]

Of what I liked recently - Disjunction MAP01 was very promising as far as soundtracks go. I already pictured how I'm gonna go to the forum and express my satisfaction with the fact that the wad doesn't sound like an old platformer. Little did I know - the wad does sound like a bunch of old platformers, literally. The first track, for example, is from Jazz Jackrabbit 2:

 

 

On the other hand, it's a PC game, the culture there was a little bit different. Which is probably why my first impression was similar to UAC Ultra, since UAC Ultra borrowed its soundtrack from Abuse - another old PC platformer. Still, generalizing like that - not OK, generally.

 

And, regardless of the music sources, the wad managed to crush all of my hopes and dreams anyway, by eventually treating me to a track that made me think of Japanese magical girls. It's not that I'm against Japanese magical girls, it's just that there's time and place for everything.

 

Found a nice Jazz remix just now:

 

 

Since I'm so disillusioned and cynical at this point, Disjunction didn't hurt me nearly as much as Wolfen did a long time ago. I was blown away by its first in-game track (gameplay video, sorry):

 

 

Which turned out to be the only track I liked in the wad. And the wad itself didn't quite live up to the expectations set by its opening moments. But said moments alone inspired an elaborate vision of another Hexen adventure - which I'll never even start, of course.

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by Da Werecat

[Deadwing]

12 hours ago, Eris Falling said:

I just opened them in FL Studio and exported to MP3 - this won't work properly if the midi file has different pitch bend ranges anywhere, FL will ignore the events that define the modified range and use the default of ±2 semitones, which has the potential to sound pretty damn awful if pitch bends are used heavily. It is possible to set the pitch range in FL Studio and redraw the bends themselves, but that's a bit of a faff, perhaps there's a simpler way of just applying a multiplier or something that does the entire track, FL's not my main program so I'm not hugely familiar with it.

 

Alternatively use audacity and set the recording device to stereo mix if possible, hit record and play the MIDI back and do whatever editing is needed afterwards.

 

Thanks man!

 

I guess I'll have to download FL Studio then lol For some reason the stereo mix isn't working on my pc, so it doesn't record anything :/

[Spectre01]

Since someone mentioned Scythe, map19's music was always some of my favourite in the wad. Makes one of the best maps even better.

 

[esselfortium]

58 minutes ago, Deadwing said:

 

Thanks man!

 

I guess I'll have to download FL Studio then lol For some reason the stereo mix isn't working on my pc, so it doesn't record anything :/

I use XMPlay for it. There's a module to play MIDIs, and a module to export to WAV. You have to feed the MIDI playback module with a soundfont, such as http://esselfortium.net/wasd/Roland_SoundCanvas.sf2 and then once it's properly set up you can just drop a bunch of MIDI files on it and it'll export them all to audio for you.

[snapshot]

 

[Deadwing]

14 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

I use XMPlay for it. There's a module to play MIDIs, and a module to export to WAV. You have to feed the MIDI playback module with a soundfont, such as http://esselfortium.net/wasd/Roland_SoundCanvas.sf2 and then once it's properly set up you can just drop a bunch of MIDI files on it and it'll export them all to audio for you.

 

Does this SoundCanvas have one have the same sound of the Microsoft GS Wavetable?

[bonnie]

i just wanna know how to make midis

 

i want the whole world to hear my wonderful sounds ;~;

[esselfortium]

1 hour ago, Deadwing said:

 

Does this SoundCanvas have one have the same sound of the Microsoft GS Wavetable?

Close to it. The Microsoft GS midi playback uses what's more-or-less a stripped-down version of the Roland SoundCanvas instrument set. I use that soundfont when I'm composing midis, and I've only rarely encountered noticeable differences.

[Deadwing]

1 hour ago, esselfortium said:

Close to it. The Microsoft GS midi playback uses what's more-or-less a stripped-down version of the Roland SoundCanvas instrument set. I use that soundfont when I'm composing midis, and I've only rarely encountered noticeable differences.

 

Thanks man! I'll take a look on it :)

[pcorf]

Doom

D_E1M1

D_E1M4

D_E1M7

D_E1M8

D_E2M6

D_E2M8

D_E3M1

D_E3M3

Text Screen

 

Doom 2

D_RUNNIN (MAP01)

D_BETWEE (MAP04)

D_DDTBLU (MAP08)

D_IN_CIT (MAP09)

D_ROMERO (MAP18)

D_TENSE (MAP28)

D_OPENIN (MAP30)

D_READ_M (Text screen)

 

TNT Evilution

MAP01

MAP02

MAP04

MAP05

MAP16

MAP31

[Zahid]

haunts me

 

 

[Roofi]

The music from Hell revealed 2 map 09 is very epic :

 

 

[Slimz]

Shrek midi is the best.

[Tristan]

"It's in C-Minor too?" by Ribbiks. 20X7 MAP09. Wow.

[Scotty]

In terms of pure music when it comes to midi compositions, i find this kind of stuff absolutely fucking beautiful and it works so well within midi limitations.

 

 

 

The flipside of this... i really like atmospheric midis that add something intangible to a map by themselves, usually ominous, oppressive music... Sunder map10 being a great example of that (i have no idea what the midi is). Map14 too. Sunder had an awesome soundtrack in terms of atmosphere - the impact of which on that mapset is very underrated i feel.