Heretic & Hexen original source .MID files

[The Almighty Egg]

A few months ago I came upon this thread on Doomworld

Which got me thinking. "Hey you know what, what if I did the same thing but with the other Doom engines games", plus it would be an extremely useful resource to have for people on the community. The first composer I asked was Andrew Benon who did Chex Quest's OST, sadly, the original original files are apparently lost.

"When I did the HD release music for steam, I didn’t have the originals, but the .mid files from the source were widely available online. That’s what I sent. That said, the files I found online had all the correct parts from the original. Sorry if it’s not what you were looking for, but I don’t have the original original files."

The second composer I asked was Mr. Kevin, who luckily had preserved his work! Here are some answers I got from questioning Mr. Kevin about certain aspects of the soundtracks. This info might already be known in previous threads but I'm repeating it here for convenience sake.

 

Spoiler

Q: "What MIDI synth (i.e SC-55, GS Wavetable, etc.) is the intended way to hear these tracks? It would be great to have that canonized. I assume a Roland SC-55 mkII is the intended one?"

A: "Good question. I believe I was composing everything on a Sound Blaster card by Creative Labs. I'm not sure what version. Probably just a Sound Blaster Pro. So, whatever instrument sounds that card was producing at that time."

 

Spoiler

Q: "A thing that I noticed about the Hexen CD Audio, apparently there are some original MIDI tracks that lack CD counterparts. Was this intentional? Or were they not included on accident."

A: "Regarding the Hexen CD, as I recall, there simply wasn't room for all the music I wrote. When I created the Hexen songs, I made them longer than the Heretic songs. I had a better idea of how to compose, I had more time, and I had the desire to develop longer pieces. The total length of music would never fit on a CD once converted to Redbook audio. We had to pick some songs to leave off the CD. I'm not sure if it was me or Romero who decided which songs to include."

 

Spoiler

 

Q: "Is there any significance to the suffix "F" in the tracks?

Strife did something like that for its demos but it used the "FM" prefix to suggest they were done for FM-synth based soundcards."

A: "I had various iterations of my music. I never deleted or copied over them, so I had to keep track of what each version was for.

I had my original versions with no suffix.
I had "R" suffixes which indicated it was a revision in response to something Romero requested.
I had "FM" suffixes for the FM synthesis versions.
And the "F" suffix was to identify the Final version of the song that was going into the game."

 

So without further ado, here are the original Heretic & Hexen midi files, straight from the man Kevin Schilder himself. He was incredibly kind and patient while answering to my emails so very big shout-out to him for that, as well as creating the amazing soundtrack for Heretic and Hexen.

Heretic MIDI Files.zip

Hexen MIDI Files.zip

Edited July 25, 2023 by The Almighty Egg
Formatted the post better.

[The Almighty Egg]

Due to the time dates not being saved for some reason, Mr. Kevin has provided me screenshots with the dates of the Heretic midi files, Hexen ones will come out later.

 

Also forgot to add this to the main post, but the Hexen midis contain earlier versions of songs, plus some edited for FM based synths as indicated by the letters suffix.

Heretic MIDI pics.zip

[Herr Dethnout]

This is GOLD my man!

Is sad to hear that the Chex ones are lost... Probably Strife too :/

[The Almighty Egg]

1 minute ago, Herr Dethnout said:

This is GOLD my man!

Is sad to hear that the Chex ones are lost... Probably Strife too :/

Hmm here is the thing, Strife VE actually has re-recorded songs in .ogg format via a Roland. Perhaps the VE team managed to somehow get the midis and re-record them in that Synth?

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, The Almighty Egg said:

Hmm here is the thing, Strife VE actually has re-recorded songs in .ogg format via a Roland. Perhaps the VE team managed to somehow get the midis and re-record them in that Synth?

I think they used the .mus from the original game and then recorded in .ogg (Like Doom Unity)

Edited July 25, 2023 by Herr Dethnout

[Lippeth]

Thanks for doing this, such a great resource! Would've loved to have had these a few years ago while doing songs for the Deathkings MIDI project, mostly for the tempo and time signature mapping, but it'll still be invaluable for future projects.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Lippeth

[Individualised]

Awesome. Now if only we could get the Final Doom source files. We already have the ones for the tracks composed by Tom Mustaine (which were .s3ms, not .MIDIs!) but not the other composer's tracks. L.A. Sieben may be a good place to start as he had the MIDIs when asked about them in 2021 and gave a lot of info and even the original filenames, but no one bothered to ask him about getting the actual MIDIs themselves for some reason (I presume he didn't know that id converted them to the obfuscated MUS format for the final release)

[Nockson]

This is incredible, thank you very much! I will eventually put this information on the DoomWiki.

 

One question: BUILDING.MID and ACACIAL.MID are very small (43 bytes each), what are they?

[The Almighty Egg]

22 hours ago, Nockson said:

This is incredible, thank you very much! I will eventually put this information on the DoomWiki.

 

One question: BUILDING.MID and ACACIAL.MID are very small (43 bytes each), what are they?

No idea. I use Slade to listen to midis and view their metadata, perhaps you can try that?

Edited July 26, 2023 by The Almighty Egg

[Herr Dethnout]

53 minutes ago, Nockson said:

This is incredible, thank you very much! I will eventually put this information on the DoomWiki.

 

One question: BUILDING.MID and ACACIAL.MID are very small (43 bytes each), what are they?

It seems to be dummy files for something, anyway tried to open it for metadata a gave me errors, sooo.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

In 2018, I contacted Kevin Schilder about what he used for the Heretic soundtrack (due to the SC-55mkII dropping notes due to how it allocates voices to channels), and he replied that he used a Sound Blaster. I didn't ask him about the original source MIDIs however. It's great that we now have the source MIDIs with all the time signatures and instrument track names intact.

[plums]

Nice going! There are lots of early/beta versions of songs in here; I assume anything with an F at the end of the filename means Final, and those with the same name minus the F are earlier versions. (Oh I just read your spoilered correspondence comments, OK!)

Edited July 26, 2023 by plums

[The Almighty Egg]

 

7 hours ago, The Almighty Egg said:

Due to the time dates not being saved for some reason, Mr. Kevin has provided me screenshots with the dates of the Heretic midi files, Hexen ones will come out later.

 

Also forgot to add this to the main post, but the Hexen midis contain earlier versions of songs, plus some edited for FM based synths as indicated by the letters suffix.

Heretic MIDI pics.zip

And here are the Hexen ones. Hope you guys enjoy!

Hexen MIDI Pics.zip

Edited July 26, 2023 by The Almighty Egg

[kschilder]

18 hours ago, Nockson said:

This is incredible, thank you very much! I will eventually put this information on the DoomWiki.

 

One question: BUILDING.MID and ACACIAL.MID are very small (43 bytes each), what are they?

Whoops! BUILDING and ACACIAL were just versions I started and abandoned. Should have deleted them way back when. I just didn't catch them in there when I sent the files out. Sorry about that. 

 

[plums]

@kschilder The man himself appears! Thanks so much for sharing these files!

[Nockson]

4 hours ago, kschilder said:

Whoops! BUILDING and ACACIAL were just versions I started and abandoned. Should have deleted them way back when. I just didn't catch them in there when I sent the files out. Sorry about that. 

 

Thank you, mr. Schilder, for beautiful music and awesome sounds in Heretic/Hexen titles! And for your answer too.

 

While looking through the files I've noticed that MAREKF.MID has May 30, 1996 as its date of creation. This is after the release of both original Heretic and Shadow of the Serpent Riders expansion. Can you tell me, why is that?

[Caffeine Freak]

@The Almighty EggGreat work man! And thank you mister @kschilder! I've long been a fan of the Heretic/Hexen soundtracks and have multiple versions of each in my vast game music library.

[Herr Dethnout]

7 hours ago, kschilder said:

Whoops! BUILDING and ACACIAL were just versions I started and abandoned. Should have deleted them way back when. I just didn't catch them in there when I sent the files out. Sorry about that. 

 

Wait, but you actually started then deleted the notes, or just made the file but never worked with it?

Anyways, glad to see a legend here Mr. Schilder. Your work in Heretic/HeXen is top notch! :P

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Fantastic!

 

Now I wonder if Michael Raymond-Judy still has any of those axed Heretic levels I seem to recall being alluded to in an interview at one point.

[brick]

10 hours ago, kschilder said:

Whoops! BUILDING and ACACIAL were just versions I started and abandoned. Should have deleted them way back when. I just didn't catch them in there when I sent the files out. Sorry about that. 

 

Thank you for posting here, for sharing the MIDI files, and for the wonderful music you made. I really like Heretic's soundtrack, but I love Hexen's. The trio of Hall, Orb and Chess are a major reason that Hexen's ending is one of my favourites in video games, the music almost single-handedly creates a fantastic atmosphere.

[Nockson]

@kschilder 

Would you mind answering two more questions:

1) For Heretic music what's the difference between ARPOF and ARPPOF? They have exactly the same size and sound the same.

2) The only track that is not included in Heretic archive is Intro music (MUS_INTR). Could you please provide us with its original MIDI? It will make the release of Heretic soundtrack complete.

Thanks in advance!

[Dreemurr Deceevurr]

Amazing find! And it's nice to see Schilder himself posting, too!

[plums]

1 hour ago, Nockson said:

1) For Heretic music what's the difference between ARPOF and ARPPOF? They have exactly the same size and sound the same.

There may have been a reason for them having two different filenames, but the files in the zip are exactly the same.

[Doomkid]

I'm so glad to have the un-MUS'd version of these - thanks so much @The Almighty Egg and @kschilder. Really glad the original dates got preserved too. Would possibly be a waste of time since we know the dates anyway, but a tool like AttributeChanger could be used to set them back if someone wanted to do that.

 

(God damn I LOVE the e1m9 midi in Heretic and the Bright Crucible midi in Hexen.. Hell, I love the whole soundtrack for both games)

[Devalaous]

This was a neat thing to listen to, but it did sadly confirm that Hexen's music is way too quiet compared to other IWADs, I always wondered if it was an error. I'd love it if the exact method to make the CD music was explained, so the missing tracks can be redone for a 'full' CD-quality soundtrack. My first experience with Hexen was the playstation port, and I LOVED the music in it, I would play it on my stereo even. To this day the soundtrack doesn't 'feel right' in midi, especially with how quiet it is

[plums]

17 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

This was a neat thing to listen to, but it did sadly confirm that Hexen's music is way too quiet compared to other IWADs, I always wondered if it was an error. I'd love it if the exact method to make the CD music was explained, so the missing tracks can be redone for a 'full' CD-quality soundtrack. My first experience with Hexen was the playstation port, and I LOVED the music in it, I would play it on my stereo even. To this day the soundtrack doesn't 'feel right' in midi, especially with how quiet it is

The PC CD tracks are quiet too. IIRC back when computers first used CD audio for soundtracks, it was hard to adjust the volume of the music from the CD (I don't remember the technical details why), so I assumed it was done on purpose.

 

Do you play with a soundfont, or just normal Windows MIDI? Using a SC-55 soundfont the tracks are pretty close to how they are on CD, especially through timidity++ on GZDoom with the Freeverb reverb on.

[Devalaous]

I only have the base soundfont and the arachno soundfont in my ports. Never actually played the PC version with its CD music, as I always preferred the idea of more tracks to less tracks, I just have memories of the PS1 version's CD music (which is probably identical)

Edited July 29, 2023 by Devalaous

[plums]

@Devalaous just looked it up on youtube and DoomWiki, the PC CD version has more music tracks than the PS1 one does, but still not quite all the music. The PS1 version uses a different MIDI synth, and *slightly* different musical content -- there are more snares on the beat in Winnowing Hall for instance. I agree it sounds quite good (apart from the bad upload quality on these youtube videos), no idea what kind of synth was used to render it though, and Mr. Schilder probably wouldn't either since I doubt he was involved with the port. :/

 

The N64 has quite different musical content. It also kinda sounds like shit :p

 

edit: Saturn version has same music as PS1 but a few more tracks.

 

PS1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCufdi-dHXU&list=PL3123AE3EC1E50635

PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL7Gbpdwv-Y

N64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuWDVeqCgwI&list=PLEBD138EAC6B6A21C&index=5

Saturn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUbHMBoRq3Y&list=PLKkxnBwFOJGKiC1UP2vMHMfDdcCAg4Y9f&index=1&pp=iAQB8AUB

Edited July 29, 2023 by plums

[Quasar]

On 7/25/2023 at 2:41 PM, The Almighty Egg said:

Hmm here is the thing, Strife VE actually has re-recorded songs in .ogg format via a Roland. Perhaps the VE team managed to somehow get the midis and re-record them in that Synth?

Given Morey Goldstein passed away many years ago, I really doubt there's anything left of his work processes or belongings, and the process of looking for them would require disturbing his next-of-kin. Some stones are better left unturned.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

7 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I'd love it if the exact method to make the CD music was explained, so the missing tracks can be redone for a 'full' CD-quality soundtrack.

I don't know what synthesizer or workstation was used for the PS1 soundtrack, but the PC version's CD soundtrack was recorded from some kind of Sound Canvas according to the readme. Interestingly, the device used for the CD music doesn't seem to be an SC-55, as the choir aahs sound quite different from the SC-55 ones. They are much more like an "awwh" sound rather than an "aah" sound.

 

As for the PS1/Saturn music choirs, there are some "ooh" choirs in addition to the more aah-type ones. I prefer the awwh/aah choirs as I'm used to the PC soundtrack, so tracks like Winnowing Hall sound a little strange to me on PS1.

Edited July 29, 2023 by TheUltimateDoomer666