Duke Nukem 3D Music and Sound Project

[Pete B]

OK so this is the thread where I will be posting the music tracks for people to download. I know you have all been waiting for me to post a full track so here it is:

http://www.djpeteb.com/peteb_stalker_(mix1).mp3

NOTE: this is slightly different from the sample I posted a few months back. Alot of the orchestral instruments are real now, not keyboard stuff.

Please dont use this in the game just yet, as I may go back to it for changes etc. This will be the only full track released until the whole project is done, but at the time of writing I have 31 tracks completed - so not much longer to wait.

Enjoy

[Geoffrey]

I lack the required musical slang to describe what part I like, so I'll just say that I dig it when it sounds really cool all of a sudden, in the center or so. Uh, good job!

[zilppuri]

I like it very much. But as always I have an opinion

-Maybe little more BOOM to the sounds? Then again maybe I'm a bass freak, and it is background music after all..
But I think the drum sounds are somewhat syntetic. Atleast the snare is very "loose" and should have more snap to it.
Would it be possible to have couple flam shots in fills just to add variety?

Also, do you accept drum sound donations? I have recorder/collected nice set of royalty free drum sounds. I think some of them might be such that you could use
Although I'm sure you already have lots and lots of them.
But if you want more, then I could put the online and give you the server. They are perfectly legal to give out, but I don't want to give them to just anyone

And please, put oboe in some song. Oboe must be one of my favourite instruments and you can make very nice mood changes with it. You know, just in background so you can hardly hear it, and then maybe silence rest of the orchestra a bit, and bring it up.

One thing we did (although I know you clearly know more about music mixing than I) to create really powerful orchestra, was to have like 3 backgrounds and 2 solo instruments and then lay them in stereo, all playing the same thing.
So you could have 2 different string-orchestars, one left and one right. Then have horn section in the middle. Then but like two solo instruments like violin (oboe! ) and put them in different sides in stereo. This greats the feeling like you really are listening to huge orchestra, and is much better than using "pre-made" huge-orchestra sound.

Then you start conducting the music, by adding different volumes/panning to different sections of your orchestra in key point of the track. And then same with percussion. One big drum on both sides and couple different piched gongs to spice up...

Well anyways.. I hope this gives you some idea/inspiration. Ofcourse you might know this all already, but I also just wanted to share my way of doing it anyway

OBOE!

[Soul Collector]

The Song is awesome
sounds very atmospheric!
keep it that way!!

[Lazaroth]

The song is good.

The thing I'm asking is how true to the midis should a soundtrack be?
What's the opinion on that?
The doom remixes that exists are good stuff.
Should the a soundtrack be like that or more as this song.

But if you do a complete remix of a song, you would have to put down much more work into it....

As for the song, the drums are a bit weak, the strings aswell and the the bass isn't good, especially the one in the beginning.

But thats just my opinion.

[Phayzon]

I like the part thats near 53sec or so, sound awesome! Great job!

[Dr. Kill]

I really like it except one thing:

the bass line is too heavy and electronic sounding. I like all the synth stuff, but the bass is way too heavy. Other than that it sounds better than the Saturn version! But that bass is too heavy. That's it. Except for that bass, it is perfect! I am truely impressed.

[Parkar]

This is just to god damn awsome.

Just remeber that jfduke will only suport ogg so it would be best if you could encode them to ogg for the versions to be used ingame.

[Dr. Kill]

why not mp3 (yes, I know why... still pisses me off that I don't have the plugins for them) for sound effects at least?

[zilppuri]

mp3 is worse quality and not free as far as I know..

[Parkar]

Yes I believe the free part is the main reason it will not support mp3. It does not realy matter much if you ask me when it comes to quality etc its pretty much the same. One small problem is that if you only have md3 version of the song you want to put in it will have to re encoded to ogg loosing some quality compared to going directly to ogg.

[Pete B]

Thanks for your comments guys. The songs will be in ogg format once they are ready for the game. As said before I might also make some adjustments later on, but right now im busy with other Duke tracks.

What im trying to do with these tracks is make them how I imagine the original artists would have wanted them to sound if he was no limited to just Midi. So yes, some parts will be heavey and electronic, whilst other bits might be atmospheric or orchesrtral.

[Parkar]

TerminX just imformed me that mp3 is indeed suported.

[Dr. Kill]

If you want to see how 7-8 songs would've sounded originally, check out the sega saturn tracks. Good for reference. Like I said, make the base line less harsh and your version of Stalker will be perfect, and blow the Saturn one away! I really like the synth stuff, but I think the bass should sound more natural, and less of that "thumpy rap sound"... at least that's how the bass sounded to me.

[Phayzon]

jfDuke will infact support MP3.

[Deth]

I like it, but I think a more natural bass would be better.

[gungriffon geona]

I'm sorry, but I simply don't like this. It sounds really bland and has no upbeat whatsoever. I personally prefer the Mark Knight version, no offence of course. It's good, but it's just not upbeat for me to get into.

[endmilled]

This track is really great! Especially about 53 seconds into it as mentioned earlier. The techno feel fits in perfectly with the L.A. setting. My only concern would be having the beginning and end mesh together better so when it's looping in game it would be harder to detect the beginning and end meeting.

Very excellent work!! I love it!! I love it!!

[coksakinol]

Parkar said:
This is just to god damn awsome.

Just remeber that jfduke will only suport ogg so it would be best if you could encode them to ogg for the versions to be used ingame.

Parkar,How to make music.def for ogg format in hrp ?

[Boinky]

Great work.. I agree w/ Windmilled though needs to be brought together so that when it loops you dont loose the atmosphere of it all. I'd say about 2:35 or so just start the intro off again a bit, then when it finishes you will here the intro all over again, should be work decently imo.. At least when I turned on crossfading thats where I put it. Sounded pretty good to me that way

[Parkar]

coksakinol said:

Parkar,How to make music.def for ogg format in hrp ?

You can't, yet. jfDuke with ogg suport is not done yet.

[gamejunkie]

Good job with the music

[DSotM]

Ah yes I have been waiting, nice job, look forward to the rest

but it's just not upbeat for me to get into.

It's supposed to be background music dude, not radio music

[Blade Nightflame]

Parkar said:

You can't, yet. jfDuke with ogg suport is not done yet.

Currently, that version is not out yet. Although I did make a music def on my own, it doesn't have the right settings. Although how the music IS setup, in sense of directories, is by me.

[Pete B]

I totally agree! This is not pop dance or RnB. Its game music, its not supposed to be distracting and 'up beat' as you call it.

As for the looping. The intro and exit sections will be better when I finish them off in ogg format. The cross fading you hear in game with the Midi files is dead easy, but thats not so much the case with real audio tracks.

That part is gonna be up you guys not me, as it will require quite some programming I guess to get it right.

[gungriffon geona]

DSotM said:

It's supposed to be background music dude, not radio music

I understand that, but I prefer background music to be more upbeat. It get's the blood going for me, just like how in Gungrave the soundtrack was really fast paced for the majority of the game, because the gameplay itself was fast paced. Duke is a very fast paced game, and I prefer listening to something that will keep with the pace of the gameplay.

[Pete B]

Actually, out of 42 tracks, stalker is 1 of about 5 tracks which are 'upbeat'. The rest are all slow or atmospehric.

[endmilled]

Just for fun I loaded the new Stalker track into windows media player and set it to repeat. Next I started JFduke and muted the game’s music volume to check out how the new track sounded inside the game. Pretty cool! While the music was in the slow “darker” section at the beginning, it gave me some time to complain about aliens shooting up my ride and wander around the roof before jumping down the vent duct. When I hit the ground Stalker became more active. Right on time for a little ass kicking! The music was bammed up another notch (about 1:44 min) about the time I entered the theater and started blasting away.

Some new sound effects will be needed soon. The old ones were more noticeably crummy with the new music. The texture loading caching issue was also more noticeable. That could have been in part because I was playing the MP3 in the background with windows media player and more system resources were being used.

Boinky said:
I agree w/ Windmilled...

Windmilled !?

[gungriffon geona]

endmilled said:The texture loading caching issue was also more noticeable. That could have been in part because I was playing the MP3 in the background with windows media player and more system resources were being used.

use an MP3 player that uses less system resources. I find that WMP has serious system draining issues. Winamp does okay, I haven't really tested anything else though.

[Pete B]

Lol yeah I tried that when I first made the track. I've started doing it with all of them now as a kind of 'test run' to make sure they fit the job.

[Boinky]

endmilled said:

Windmilled !?

My apologies.. I wasnt paying much attention to the name and was in a hurry as I was omw out so I just guessed and hoped for the best .. Ive been called Binky b4 so I know the feelin

[Pete B]

zilppuri said:
-Maybe little more BOOM to the sounds?

Atleast the snare is very "loose" and should have more snap to it.

OBOE!

You're spot on with most of what you said. I agree that snare needs more 'snap'. I didnt want to use an oboe in the track because it wasn't there originally.

As for layering, well its already been done but by the looks (err sounds rather) of things I didnt bother to pan them. I'll sort this out later, as I will be going back to alot of the tracks during my personal 'testing' phase.

Of course the above track hasn't been mastered yet, as I will do them altogether at the same time. This is important because you dont want any one track being louder or more dynamic than another in the game. Imagine what it would be like flipping over to the next level and having to adjust your music settings each time?

At the mastering stage, I will most likely add more bass as the tracks will most likely be played at low volumes. Due to the way human hearing works, we tend to think there is less bass when quiet music is played - thats what the Loudness Function does on your home stereo unit, it turns up the bass the more you lower the music volume.

Please excuse my excessive blabbering....

[zilppuri]

There forums are all about excessive blabbering

Yeah, I can see your point there. The best way to do them now is really to make them sound true to the originals and remain the style over the entire game.

Later if someone really want's to have something different, they can build some remix music set, but I doubt anything like that could be pulled off. In the doom remix packs there has always been atleast the same amount of bad remixes as good ones. By bad I mean that someone simply imported the midi to sequenzer, changes some *Weird* sounding noised to them and changed beat to boring techno thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb-thumb-thumb..

Anyways anyways
I like the work you have done so far, and you also seem to have enough work-a-holism in you to actually pull this off

[Jokke_r]

i was so dissapointed when the doom remix project made the E1L2 sound nothing like the original and it was one of my favourite tracks

[eMale]

i also have (had?) a dn3d score project in mind

and i never thought of doing this track in such a techno style (thought more of a symphonic orchestra)

but after a second to get used to it's really a nice take on the original midi

i hope sooner or later there'll be a nice collection of dn3d scores (based on the midis)

[Dr. Kill]

I am used to the techno style. That is what the Sega Saturn version had, and they were they best versions of the duke songs.

[Pete B]

eMale said:
i also have (had?) a dn3d score project in mind

and i never thought of doing this track in such a techno style (thought more of a symphonic orchestra)

but after a second to get used to it's really a nice take on the original midi

i hope sooner or later there'll be a nice collection of dn3d scores (based on the midis)

Alot of the other tracks I've done are symphonic scores like you say, and pretty much like movie sound tracks actually.

[JMB]

So far, I really can't see anything wrong with this track. Sounds great.

When listening to it while playing the first level, it sounded much like the original music... which is good, since the original music kicked ass, and this is a replacement after all. Only this sounded a bit better and more modern. I didn't mind the bass at all; in fact, I actually liked it. It's a nice change, and fits.

I'm hoping the rest of the soundtrack stays as true to the original music as this song, if so it'll be perfect. I can't stand Marc McWane's soundtrack personally... I always hated orchestrated crap, for the most part. Only hearing one track so far, it sounds promising... can't wait to hear more.

Good work. And if you do change the bass at the beginning, hopefully it's for the better... but I personally like (and prefer) it as it is.

[fofo.rider]

Pete B said:
http://www.djpeteb.com/peteb_stalker_(mix1).mp3

good job

It's OK... a little spacey sort of futuristic, but I don't think it's too bad...