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Ambient Background Music


scarridale

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Hey everyone, just wanted y'all to know that I am in the process of recording ambient background tracks for mission creators to use. I hope to create a wide variety over the next few weeks. I have never recorded ambient tracks before, but I am finding them very fun to experiment with.

 

My goal is to make a couple of tracks for each "occasion" - indoors, outdoors, city streets at night, inside mansion, inside cathedral, haunted areas, dramatic and suspenseful moments, woods, tavern,... I could go on and on. If any mission designers out there have a unique setting in mind for their mission and need a track that is appropriate, I would be more than happy to see what I can do!

 

I have started a SoundCloud profile to post my tracks for all of you to hear and hopefully provide feedback. So far, I have posted 4 "practice tracks". I would greatly appreciate all of your thoughts, opinions, criticisms, requests, etc. Here's my link:

 

 

http://soundcloud.com/scarridale/sets

 

Thanks!

 

--scarridale

Edited by scarridale

Ninja, please!

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Hey! I found those quite interesting. Instantly, they reminded me of most of the Mass Effect musics or some of the pieces heard in Deus Ex Human Revolution.

 

That is the thing and the difficulty. I'm no specialist, but these practice ambients have a great feeling for cyberpunk/modern/space/future setting. Maybe it is the heavy artificial synth vibe of the instruments? I am not sure. That makes usability in a TDM FM a bit problematic: I see passing stars from the viewport of a spacecraft rather than a gritty medieval setting.

 

In TDM the ambients there usually is synth sounding instruments, yes, but they always were sort-of in the background and the ambient was somewhat dominated by one classical sounding instrument: piano, organ, or something old-music-box-like. Maybe the ambients would be more fitting to the setting with some more classical instruments?

 

Maybe someone more proficient in music/sound could give a better analysis?

 

If any mission designers out there have a unique setting in mind for their mission and need a track that is appropriate, I would be more than happy to see what I can do!

 

Also I would certainly be interested in special ambients for my WIP mission. What I had in mind was not a constantly playing ambient, but rather a few tune that only plays once to emphasise some feeling, similar to how half-life missions used their ambients. Initially I was thinking about something in the veins of the Black Mesa soundtrack pieces with the classical instruments, which I like a great deal:

 

However, the mission is very WIP at the moment so I'm not yet sure what kind of stuff I need. But I will contact you when I have enough pieces together to figure out ambient stuff.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I dunno, I rather like Thief's industrial(?)-style loops. It was not genuinely "old-timey", but neither was Thief.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Pretty cool! You must have put many days of work in for them! Maybe you can make the futuristic synthesizer a bit more inconspicious in the songs. It feels more like a space game ambient now. Try to work with echoes, reverb and dumped / blurry instruments (original ones like piano or harp, etc.).

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Track 2 was my favorite. It sounded like it would fit in a mission with lots of guards and high stress levels. (i.e. mission is over if you're spotted)

 

Granted, I listened to these with headphones on at fairly loud volumes, which is not the typical way of experiencing background tracks.

 

Thanks for doing this, the mod could really use some new ambient tracks.

 

and @ Bikerdude, I was able to play these in Firefox on Linux without issue. Do you have noscript installed?

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Thank you for the replies! Very valid feedback! Mass Effect is one of my favorite series so I can definitely see that. I honestly made these seven samples in two nights using only a few sounds that I have available. They are synth heavy. I'll change it up on my next attempts. I'm having a lot of fun trying things that are outside of what I'm used to recording. I'll have more up soon!

Ninja, please!

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Soundcloud does not work in Firefox here, despite giving all permissions for noscript and not blocking google. No idea why.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Scarridale, I agree that these tracks are a bit out of place for Dark Mod. However, the quality itself is really good. I think they would really shine in a sci-fi environment. I'm very much looking forward to what else you will can cook up. Keep up the great work!

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Thanks for the additional feedback guys! Seems we're all in agreement that the synth sounds make the tracks too sci-fi. Cool thing is, I made all seven of these using one collection of sounds. Haven't even started using other collections, so I will try to steer away from the synth sounds and try something else

Plenty of options to pick from, and I have a lot of ideas. Just have to get them recorded!

 

I am reading up on how to create a good loop where you don't hear it start over. Hopefully my future tracks will be looped and ready to go.

Ninja, please!

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Also I need some help. I was trying to get the existing Dark Mod music files pulled to my hard drive so I could listen to them without being in-game. I am using the Steam version of Doom to run the Mod. When I go into the Mod folder, the audio files are in .pk4 format, which I don't know how to use. Is this a Steam only issue? Can someone send me the audio files in .mp3 or OGG format?

Ninja, please!

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hi scarridale,

 

the pk4's are zip archives, so you can for example open them with winrar or any similar problem (if you use linux the standard archive manager will do the trick)

 

EDIT: most of the sound files are OGG's

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hi scarridale,

 

the pk4's are zip archives, so you can for example open them with winrar or any similar problem (if you use linux the standard archive manager will do the trick)

 

EDIT: most of the sound files are OGG's

 

Thank you! I owned up and bought a license for WinRAR. I was able to unzip and get to all the audio files finally.

 

I uploaded another simple ambience track... Practice Ambient 0. Very simple but no synth sound, and I think it works as a loop. I could make a 1000 of these and still have fun doing them!

Ninja, please!

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Scarridale, you could just have used 7-zip, which is a free and extremely powerful packer/unpacker. You can choose from a variety of compression algorithms (the most extreme being LZMA2 for binary and PPMd for text), but pack/unpack ZIP files just as well (and unpack RAR files, of course). Did I mention that it doesn't cost you a penny?

 

Edit: I love that last track. It's perfect for a cathedral or a pagan shrine in a cave or something.

Edited by 7upMan

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Practice Ambient 0.

 

Hmm. For me, that's almost totally some sort of white noise. I thinks a good ambient needs some... well.. some music.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjM9pKeEGw&feature=relmfu

 

Listen how there is this rythmical ambient hum (noise), which is occasionally broken by some instruments to bring the focus from the noise into the guitar. This is a very nice ambient, one of my favourites of all time. But this example is in modern context, so it is very difficult -for a non-music producer like me- to imagine what the musical parts could be for a medieval setting. Keep it up! Hopefully these comments will help.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Hmm. For me, that's almost totally some sort of white noise. I thinks a good ambient needs some... well.. some music.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjM9pKeEGw&feature=relmfu

 

Listen how there is this rythmical ambient hum (noise), which is occasionally broken by some instruments to bring the focus from the noise into the guitar. This is a very nice ambient, one of my favourites of all time. But this example is in modern context, so it is very difficult -for a non-music producer like me- to imagine what the musical parts could be for a medieval setting. Keep it up! Hopefully these comments will help.

 

For a church or temple setting you could have these "hums" and "oms" and brekaa them with some bell sounds, or monks chanting. Lutes, Harps and so on would work for the music parts. But then, I'm not a musician.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Great ideas guys! I really appreciate the excellent replies so far, very helpful. My main obstacle is the fact that I'm used to being the guy that showed up, sang and played, and let the studio guys do the rest... now I'm the studio guy in my own home learning my way through these programs haha. So I have ideas in my head that I haven't been able to put down in the studio like I would like to, but I'm learning more each day.

 

I have a few choir, monk chants, and bell sounds I can try. I'm currently looking around for better quality sound packages. If I can afford some of those without the wife getting too upset, I think I could really lay some good stuff down. Also, I'm going to look around for other musicians and studio experts in my area that I might can work with to improve the sound. I'll keep you all updated!

Ninja, please!

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