History of WAD music?

[VersaLeft]

Hi all, does anyone know of where I can find information about the history of music production for .wads? I have a music class project that I want to write about Doom’s modding community for, and I’m looking for stuff like the first MIDIs made by the community, ways in which music trends in popular maps and TCs have changed thematically over time, etc. Thank you!

[Red Recluse]

Rock music in midi format,also brutal or metal render.

[continuum.mid]

On 4/28/2023 at 8:38 AM, VersaLeft said:

Hi all, does anyone know of where I can find information about the history of music production for .wads? I have a music class project that I want to write about Doom’s modding community for, and I’m looking for stuff like the first MIDIs made by the community, ways in which music trends in popular maps and TCs have changed thematically over time, etc. Thank you!

It might honestly be best to just download some old WADs and listen to their soundtracks, maybe look through DoomWiki pages on various prolific Doom composers, etc... because I don't know of a resource like this and I'd love to see someone make one.

 

A few of my own observations:

• The earliest WADs either had no music or used MIDI versions of popular pop, rock, and metal songs. Songs from other games that used MIDI music were also very common - especially Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, and Heretic. An much broader selection of video game music still regularly makes up WAD soundtracks today.
• These artists contributed original music to many early WADs, especially those under the TeamTNT umbrella: Mark Klem, David Shaw, Jeremy Doyle, L.A. Sieben, Jonathan El-Bizri, Rich Nagel, and Tom Mustaine.
• More recently, I've noticed these names pop up more in soundtracks: Stuart Rynn, Esselfortium, James Paddock, Lippeth, Doomkid, Varis Alpha, Tristan Clark, Cammy, PRIMEVAL.
• The kinds of MIDIs common in WADs have diversified with time. Early WADs might have been all metal, but more progressive styles, even jazz or pure ambience, make regular appearances in anything with a bespoke soundtrack nowadays.
• The best composers in the community have rallied around numerous MIDI pack projects replacing the soundtracks of all official releases of Doom and some PWADs like Alien Vendetta - in particular, a lot of these were created between 2020 and 2022.

Edited April 29, 2023 by continuum.mid

[Gez]

Quick wiki links

Category:Composers

Category:PWADs with original soundtrack

Neither category is exhaustive, and especially the older stuff is probably going to be under-represented, but it's still a starting point to look into the question.

 

And yeah, the early scene was mostly about getting whatever MIDIs were floating around on the Internet, converting them with midi2mus, and plopping them down in the wad file with no credit or attribution. The DWANGO wads are a good time capsule of this. Tracking down the origin of all of those songs has been a very long endeavor, which was only completed surprisingly recently.

[LadyMistDragon]

@markklem, or @JDoyle might be able to tell you why they ended up composing music for wads in the first place, but at least half of it had to do with the major projects at the time(though Mark and Jeremy did music for smaller projects before getting roped into megawads). It's interesting that as the 90s were concluding and Doom's death knell was pronounced that original music production for Doom essentially ground to a halt until Plutonia 2 was released and even then, it took time before marquee releases were guaranteed to get an OST (I think that really started increasing between 2011-2014 but feel free to correct me, I just know Stuart and Jimmy were the only game in town for a while at least until the Plutonia Midi Pack which came out in 2013). I also am leaving out @Mr. Freeze's unofficial soundtrack for Doom: The Way Id Did which came out probably around 2012.

Edited April 30, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[Tristan]

Big thoughts on this because I was actually thinking about it recently and for probably obvious reasons it's a topic I'm a little bit passionate about. So, IMO as a general overview you can break the history of the Doom community's music history into 4 eras. This isn't comprehensive by any means so there's plenty more stuff you could add:

 

1. The OGs (mid 90s)

As others have mentioned, the OG community composers were basically the TeamTNT guys, particularly Mark Klem, David "Tolywn" Shaw, and Jeremy Doyle with the the soundtracks to Memento Mori 1&2, Requiem, Icarus, STRAIN, GothicDM... a lot of the WADs best remembered from that period have music from these guys, and a lot of that material still sees regular use in Doom maps today. IMO, this era best defines the basics of Doom music with soundtracks made up of rock and metal as well as sinister more ambient works in the same way that the Doom 1 soundtrack was, but much more refined than the Prince stuff.

 

2. Dedge (most of the 00s)

After the OGs moved on, there's a definite wilderness period where all the popular WADs use IWAD tracks, MIDI covers of music from other games, or stuff from the aforementioned 90s WADs. Original soundtracks were pretty rare in this era. Hell Revealed II is probably the most prominent exception, but only Metabolist's tracks are truly original, Thyrbse's tracks were written in the 90s iirc, and for at least 10 years after HR2 was released, he wasn't even credited for them. Beyond that, there's also pcorf's work on his WADs like 2002ADO, and that's kinda it other than one-offs like The Mucus Flow by B.P.R.D.

 

3. Resurgence (2008-201x)

I'd say this era started with Plutonia 2, three newcomers - James @Jimmy Paddock, Stuart @stewboy Rynn, Jamie Robertson - revived the music scene, and the former two stuck around to make sure it didn't die off again. Thank fuck for Plutonia 2!

This is quite a stretched out period in contrast to the previous one, slowly evolving as the music scene grew. In 2010 there was Speed of Doom, featuring more new music from Jimmy and stewboy. By the way this is where we really start to see a stylistic shift. Jimmy is probably the most versatile composer in the community, but I think his best known output, including that of this era continues that rock/metal/sinister ambience norm that was established by the OGs and Doom 1, while also introducing his influences from progressive metal and electronic music, you see this prominently throughout BTSX E1. Early stewboy wasn't as far removed from this norm as he later became, but tracks like "Stars" showed us that Doom music can be quite beautiful/uplifiting too - and as a composer myself, that's something I'm thankful for.

 

Other composers at the start of the resurgence - @esselfortium, although not the most prolific on the MIDI side, her fantastic atmospheric/rock tracks are like the heartbeat of BTSX, 'Waiting' is one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed for this game. Also @PRIMEVAL, who appeared in around 2011 with contributions to the soundtracks of PRCP and Reverie, as well as the later Unholy Realms (2013) and Resurgence (2014). He's moved on to writing non-MIDI tracks for various retro FPS games now, and honestly, that's where he really shines.

 

In early 2013, Jimmy started the Plutonia MIDI Pack project, this is where people like @Bucket, @Lippeth, @Varis Alpha, Ribbiks, and myself started to hit the scene. I know some of them did stuff before this, but for me that project is how I got into writing music in the first place and Jimmy knows how grateful I am for that. In 2014, myself, Varis Alpha and Bucket wrote the soundtrack for TNT: Revilution alongside Myhrgarok, whose tracks never made it to the eventual final release in 2017, as well as returning OG @JDoyle. In 2016, Ancient Aliens with its 100% stewboy soundtrack... oh god. I've always held the belief that you can kinda get away with anything musically when it comes to Doom, there's so much variation in what mappers are making, that to an extent we can just do whatever the fuck we want and it'll probably work. I can't think of any other WAD that best exemplifies this than Ancient Aliens. Its soundtrack is incredible. It's absolutely nothing like what Bobby Prince did, what the OGs did, but it doesn't need to be, nor should it be. It's probably my favourite Doom OST ever and that's not exactly an unpopular opinion. ^{Side note, I never see 'Moonwalk' (MAP14) get any appreciation, understandable given how goddamn good the AA OST as a whole is, but I always felt like that track is quite underrated and this is like the only chance I'll get to mention that so here we are lol}

 

Other notable composers from this period: yakfak/zan-zan-zawa veia, Alfonzo, Xaser, Mr. Freeze.

 

4. jesus christ what is happening (approx. 2018-present day)

It's been pretty obvious that the new Doom games breathed a lot of new life into the community. Around the end of the last decade I noticed that there's a lot more composers in the community than there were when even I started, which isn't even that long ago in the grand scheme of things. This was reflected in the wave of new community MIDI packs. For context, in 2013 there was the previously mentioned Plutonia pack, then Revolution! in 2016, Rebirth started in 2017 (finished '19). This was followed by the Raven pack for Heretic in 2020 and then...

 

Ultimate Doom, Doom II, TNT, Master Levels, No Rest for the Living in 2021 alone.

Yeah no big deal, just the community dropping like 100+ new MIDIs in a year. Kudos to @continuum.mid, @Doomkid, @Peter and @Cammy for spearheading these.

 

Alright ngl it's 6am and I'm tired so I'm stopping this post here. If for some reason someone wants me to talk about anything else on this topic or explain further, I'll gladly do so!

 

One last thing, I want to give a special mention to @Joshy and @valkiriforce. I'm not sure they've ever gotten any credit for this but I believe these two, as well as the musicians, helped a lot in developing the new PWAD music scene during the early 2010s. PRCP, Speed of Doom, Doom Core, Reverie, Resurgence, Akeldama... all of these WADs contain mostly original music, and in a time where that really wasn't the norm.

Edited April 30, 2023 by Tristan

[stewboy]

Not sure how much use I'll be as I was never particularly in-tune with the community, but I can still talk a bit about my own experiences.

 

My earliest experiences with hearing custom music in wads was when I started playing on ZDaemon when I was 12 (2004/5). This was around the time that HR2 and Scythe 2 came out and they were getting played in coop quite a lot, but zdctfmp was also very popular (along with similar mapsets) and I was kind of introduced to a lot of midis through all of those projects. I also tried to contribute to mapping projects wherever possible, as level design has always been another passion for me. At the time a lot of midis would kind of 'make the rounds' and appear in all sorts of multiplayer mapsets. I even remember being told once that the midi I had chosen for one of my maps was 'overused' even though I hadn't really heard it used much. I usually sourced my own midis from vgmusic.com, and occasionally I would take one from another mapset, though only if I really liked it. While a lot of the music in those days was the sort of rock/metal inspired stuff you'd expect, I still remember there being plenty of variety within that. Scythe 2's music in particular, while not being original, clearly shows a variety of styles.

 

My own earliest ever 'custom music' contribution was in 2007 when I put one of my own tracks in my 'Destination Unknown' co-op mapset. I was a bit nervous about it but I didn't really make a big deal out of it and nobody really noticed or cared, probably because it wasn't that great of a midi anyway. I was kind of vaguely aware that writing bespoke music for a map was something that was occasionally done, but I didn't really see the point in all that effort when there were plenty of great midis already out there.

 

I can't remember at all how I got involved in PL2 - I know that I made a post in the thread asking for musicians in mid-2008 but I don't know if I stumbled upon it accidentally or if someone pointed me towards it. I was a fairly minor contributor music-wise (only 3 tracks) and there were plenty of other tracks there that completely outshined my own from that period. I was also involved in Claustrophobia 1024 at around the same time, and I made a couple tracks for that as well. I think it was basically those two projects that convinced me that writing bespoke music for maps was actually pretty fun and satisfying to do.

In the start of 2009 I posted a thread with my music and said I was interested in writing music for things, and Joshy replied saying that he was working on a 32-map megawad and felt that some new music for it would be nice. This was where I really started to experiment with things - instruments, styles, harmonies to a certain extent. I wasn't really thinking about making things 'Doomy', partly because I had no idea that there was even a 'Doomy' style to begin with, and partly because even if I did I wouldn't have cared. I've always been someone who hates just doing what everyone else is doing. I have to do my own thing to satisfy my own weird brain. Plus, I never really grew up listening to any of that sort of music - the music I mostly grew up listening to was a lot of classical (particularly opera, as my mum is a pianist who frequently works with singers), combined with 90's video game tracker music. I have memories of putting on old Macintosh games just to listen to the music there, while also trying to block out an opera singer wailing loudly in another room of my house.

I think people kind of know how things went after Speed of Doom - I kept getting asked to do stuff and kept trying to improve at it. I probably don't have the same sheer output as a lot of other composers here, mostly because I have a tendency to fill my life with way too many things - at one point in 2016 I was literally playing in seven different ensembles at once, learning my pieces for my final undergrad recital, and playing in a musical, along with all my other uni work. But I'm very grateful of the opportunity to have written for so many projects here, and I'm always happy to hear that my music has really spoken to people - just like there's always been plenty of music out there that speaks to me. I'll no doubt continue to write music, for the same reason that people will continue to make maps.

[JDoyle]

I don't know if this is the kind of info you're looking for, but I believe most of us early "OG" guys were already composing midi music before the Doom community discovered us. You have to remember back in the "olden days" of the internet, there were no MP3s or sites to distribute digital audio music like Bandcamp or SoundCloud, so midi was pretty much the only way to get your music "out there" for people to listen to, other than physically mailing out copies of CDs. All of my early midis were uploaded to the AOL music and sound forum, and it was through there that a few random Doom2 mappers found some of my midis and asked permission to use them. Or in the case of the Dwango wads, didn't ask and I found out 24 years later hah! 

Around the same time (probably early1995), I had a good friend who introduced me to Doom and was getting into modding and mapping, and asked me to write music specifically for his levels, and that led to me joining Team TNT and working on Icarus. Anyway, most of the time, it was mappers contacting me through email asking to contribute to projects, most of which I turned down like an idiot (MM2, GothicDM) because I didn't have enough material at the time. 

Sorry for rambling, but if interested there's a great interview with Tolwyn and Klem by Matt Tropiano and Jimmy, that details their journey into writing music for Doom in the early days as well. 

http://doomradio.org/podcast/interview-with-tolwyn-and-mark-klem/

[markklem]

I hate that interview lol.  I wish you had been on MM2 and Gothic!  That would have been super sweet!

[Coopersville]

Is there much overlap between early wad composers and the tracker community?