DOOM 30th anniversary

andy_k

I done a thing,


I just thought I'd post it here, as it would be good to get some input.
This is a little teaser YT vid ( my first YT vid ), of a project I am working on, just for fun.
Next year, 2023, is the 30th anniversary of probably the greatest video game ever invented, and the soundtrack is pretty awesome, so when I came across the original midi files, I thought why not re record it all with more modern sounds etc, as you do.
This turned into a bit of an epic project, and once I got started it became a bit of a challenge to stay focused, there are 23 'songs' and a couple of them are direct rip offs of some classic metal like AIC and Slayer, and in general, the drums are very good indeed.
My original plan was to get some of my own guitar recordings in there, but I never got that far and used some VST synths for guitar parts, and there are some good bass and string sounds in there too.
The main work was done on my MBP in Reaper, and once I had got most of the midi stemmed out, I started a new project to just mix audio, the audio in this teaser video was done on stem files mixed in Reaper, on a Raspberry Pi, via my TV and home stereo speakers with native Reaper plugins, ( there is a thread on here in the 1Q22 making and modding thread - the RPi recording studio was my project )
Some of the 23 tracks are nearly done, so I began to think about getting the mastering done, and I have a channel set up to allow some mastering plugins to try things out, and I began to think of a way to actually get the thing released.
This project has been attempted by a couple of guys in the past, and one guy did such a good job he got employed to do the soundtrack for one of the newer versions of the game, and it has become a very metal sounding thing indeed, I think the original soundtrack has a certain charm, so I am trying to stay fairly faithful to the original.
Most of my effort went into the drums really, and I am still working out ways to get them to really shine in the mix - it was also interesting to me to see how this would translate into a YT video, so I had to get one done.
I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of producing YT vids, so I think I will just use my channel to post teasers, eventually making the whole thing available via Bandcamp or Soundcloud, not really sure yet, and I am still not sure how copyright comes into it at this stage, MIDI has always been a bit of a grey area, and the game itself is almost an open source classic by now.
I think I might go a step further than releasing the soundtrack, and make the actual stems available because some of the drum performances really do blow me away, my track is a mix of 6 different kits, and I haven't used any ambience on the tracks at this point.
The video was done in a couple of hours yesterday, in Reaper, on my MBP, and it was a fairly easy process to publish it on YT, so it would be nice to hear any feedback, at all.

PolarityMan

Sounds pretty decent. The drums do indeed sound the best so I reckon focussing on the other elements a bit would have better returns than polishing the drums further. Particularly the little lead flourishes sound a bit out of place. 

Might be cool to add a few callouts to mick gordon era doom music too, kinda bring together the old and the new:



Cos lets face it the doom 2016 music was total bad bottom. 

Stratavarious

That takes me back..

andy_k

Thanks for the comments guys.
@PolarityMan, Mick Gordon is the GOAT of DOOM soundtracks, and this guy came a close second,



I'm trying to keep mine fairly close to the original, and there have been a few other attempts at re-doing the full soundtrack using the original hardware, I chose to stay pretty close to original sounds, but used my own choices for VSTs.
The mix on the video isn't really completed, it is just a kind of teaser for the direction I have gone in, and eventually I will make the full thing available, probably at unmastered stem level.
Trying to keep 23 tracks cohesive at mixing stage is a bit of a challenge, if all the midi stuff is going on, so I'm working towards a final mix with as few stems as possible, which is still a pretty big project.
The final thing comes in at around an hours worth of music, so it has been tricky to stay focused for some of the later tracks, I'm still working on it.
I just wanted to see how the mix translated to both YT and a TV, so the mix you hear is the one done on Raspberry Pi, with native Reaper and JS plugins, the final master will be done on slightly higher spec hardware, with 'bigger' plugins, I'm pretty pleased with how it is coming along.

roberty

This is awesome

Hurling_Fruitmig

Brilliant and yet more Doom deja vu - we watched Grosse Pointe Blank last night which features a guy playing a Doom II arcade machine while a convenience store shoot-out goes on around him.

andy_k

93 was a pretty good year really, music was definitely better than it is now, and this game was the start of many great things.