America's Library of Congress Officially Inducts... the Soundtrack for the Videogame 'Doom' (engadget.com) 19
America's Library of Congress "is preserving a little piece of Hell," jokes Engadget, "by inducting the soundtrack to the original Doom into the National Recording Registry."
The album of demon-slaying tracks is joined by several other notable 2026 additions to the registry, like Weezer's self-titled debut album (colloquially known as "The Blue Album"), Taylor Swift's "1989," Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) and the original "Mambo No. 5."
"Doom" was created by Bobby Prince, a freelance composer who worked on lots of id Software games, and also scored Doom's '90s rival Duke Nukem 3D. The soundtrack draws clear inspiration from metal bands, but also touches on techno and ambient music throughout its track list, making for an eclectic soundscape for tearing through enemies. That it all fits together is also impressive in its own right: All of the music for Doom was written before the game had completed levels to play through, according to Prince.
The official announcement from the Library of Congress says Doom "brought a heavy metal energy to MS-DOS systems across the globe," while also pioneering first-person shooter videogames. "Key to Doom's popularity was the adrenaline-fueled soundtrack created by freelance video game music composer Bobby Prince. Prince, a lifelong musician and practicing lawyer, was fascinated by the MIDI technology that rose in prominence in the mid-1980s as a means for instrument control and composition... For "Doom," Prince took inspiration from a pile of CDs loaned by the game's chief designer, John Romero, including seminal works by Alice in Chains, Pantera and Metallica.
Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journey to hell and back. Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies.
"Doom" was created by Bobby Prince, a freelance composer who worked on lots of id Software games, and also scored Doom's '90s rival Duke Nukem 3D. The soundtrack draws clear inspiration from metal bands, but also touches on techno and ambient music throughout its track list, making for an eclectic soundscape for tearing through enemies. That it all fits together is also impressive in its own right: All of the music for Doom was written before the game had completed levels to play through, according to Prince.
The official announcement from the Library of Congress says Doom "brought a heavy metal energy to MS-DOS systems across the globe," while also pioneering first-person shooter videogames. "Key to Doom's popularity was the adrenaline-fueled soundtrack created by freelance video game music composer Bobby Prince. Prince, a lifelong musician and practicing lawyer, was fascinated by the MIDI technology that rose in prominence in the mid-1980s as a means for instrument control and composition... For "Doom," Prince took inspiration from a pile of CDs loaned by the game's chief designer, John Romero, including seminal works by Alice in Chains, Pantera and Metallica.
Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journey to hell and back. Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies.
Obligatory: Single Ladies (Score:3, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/712/ [xkcd.com]
Corrections (Score:5, Informative)
Duke 3D's soundtrack was not exclusively the work of Bobby Prince; Lee Jackson, Apogee's go-to music guy, also did some of the tracks, including the title theme, Grabbag.
Prince used not only his MIDI skills but also his experience as a lawyer to ensure his 'inspired' derivatives were as close as legally possible to the originals. The relationship between individual tracks is often very clear and sometimes even hinted in the metadata of the source files.
Re: (Score:2)
The man really had no shame:
Brian Schmidt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Bobby Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's all a small price to pay for Eat Your Veggies.
The soundtrack (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/2WvoFOwv7z4?s... [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:2)
And the best 'remastered' version (Andrew Hulshult's IDKFA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Author seems unclear on music technology. (Score:4, Informative)
"Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers,"
The Gravis Ultrasound ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), as well as other soundcards which *USED WAVETABLE SYNTHESIS* were available.
Yeah, FM-synthesis sounds like a robot. The SNES SPC-7000 was wavetable. The Sega Genesis used a Z80 for FM synthesis. A GUS card was supperior to the SPC-7000.
If you want to know how good the music is, either run DOOM in DOSBOX with a correct GUS Wavetable patch set (which will let you know how *ACTUALLY GOOD* the music is). Alternatively, the Doom & Doom 2 remaster on Steam has an actual band covering the actual tracks. That also sounds awesome.
Lol; I guess the author wasn't aware of the state of the art in 1993 if that's what they wrote.
Re: (Score:3)
Lol; I guess the author wasn't aware of the state of the art in 1993 if that's what they wrote.
The author likely wasn't even alive in 1993.
Re:Author seems unclear on music technology. (Score:5, Funny)
'Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies."
I know what that's about-- I use fonts with different kerning to make multi-threaded code run faster.
Re: (Score:2)
The Sega Genesis used a Z80 for FM synthesis.
Not exactly, it used the Z80 to control the actual sound chips: a Yamaha YM2612 (which does FM) and a Texas SN76489 (which is a simpler PSG). And this setup, in the right hands, could produce absolutely excellent music.
Re: (Score:2)
The SNES supported ADPCM, and I don't think it has a wavetable built in. It was up to the game to supply and PCM audio needed. It was definitely one of the better sounding 16 bit consoles though. The PC-Engine with CD-ROM is unmatched, of course, at least for music.
I'm wondering what version of the Doom soundtrack they used. The MIDI files? Some specific sound card's rendition, or all of them? I still have a Roland SC-88, and no 90s sound card ever sounded that good.
Re:Author seems unclear on music technology. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the state of the art was a Sound Canvas. GUS was just for rich folk wanting an incompatible soundcard. The music for DOOM was generally composed using a Sound Canvas, likely an SC-55.
Just like how in the past you'd probably want a MT-32.
Of course, you could also keep Sound Blaster compatibility and just get an AWE series card.
The latest DOSBox staging actually has the Nuked SC-55 emulator incorporated into it (with a warning to remove it if it's part of a commercial distribution due to license issues). But basically everything supports piping the MIDI audio to a real MIDI device or an emulator.
But honestly, 99% of people who played Doom experienced it on an OPL2 or OPL3, or a crappy clone of such. (Imagine my surprise when I realized the IBM ThinkPad my parents got me for University was actually a pretty decent retro gaming machine - having one of the Crystal sound chips that was basically a Sound Blaster Pro on a chip complete with decent OPL3 core. A machine I keep to this day and is basically in mint condition).
Re: (Score:2)
Wavetable synths gave you a different set of trade-offs due to limited sample memory. You ended up with low effective sample rate at low pitches. If you compare Super Famicom and Mega Drive soundtracks, you can see the composers tailored them to the systems' strengths. For example, Mega Drive games could do a more convincing rendition of saxophones and brass. The Roland Sound Canvas was what most PC games with MIDI soundtracks were developed against. It was the first proper General MIDI synth module, a
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the statement was necessarily wrong. Computers were really expensive in 1993 relative to today, and a lot of people were playing Doom at the time with hardware way below the state of the art. I remember playing it on a then 5-year-old 386 machine that ran it at sub 10fps. A composer would have needed to consider how the music would sound on less advanced hardware.
Played in 93... (Score:2)
I played it in 93 on shareware from walnut creek cdrom. More recently, like 30 minutes ago I played a UZDoom MOD called Dragon remastered. The mod has custom music from synth to live. Brutal Doom is as good as most of what comes out today. Zandorum lets you frag strangers, and UZDoom is buttery smooth on a boatload of hardware configs.
self confessed Doom fanboi
Once on a development Unix machine we loaded a doom process monitoring tool and Frag'd our problems away.
Genius (Score:2)
I nominate Sonic Mayhem, from Quake II (Score:2)
well (Score:2)
>> Prince took inspiration from a pile of CDs loaned by the game's chief designer, John Romero, including seminal works by Alice in Chains, Pantera and Metallica.
i mean yeah, the main theme sounded a hell of a lot like the pantera song 'mouth for war'