Descent
Level 1: Lunar Outpost
Original composer: Parallax Software, 1994
Year I made this: 2005
Length: 2:57, size: 3.11 MB
The music played in the first level of the 3D robot action PC game Descent from 1994. All the music from this game is awesome, so I decided to make a remake of the first track. Most of it is played with the original MIDI because it's so damn good! Recorded using the Synthex for pads, D-50 for techno sound and Virus KB in the main sequence.
Level 2: Lunar SciLab
Original composer: Parallax Software, 1994
Year I made this: 2010
Length: 3.47, size: 3.47 MB
A remake of the track from the second level in Descent. Another cool Descent tune.
Duke Nukem 3D
Bobby Prince made half of the music in Duke Nukem 3D. The other half was made by another great composer; Lee Jackson - who made the famous Duke Nukem 3D theme; Grabbag
The City Streets
Played in episode 1 map 3
I wanted to keep the square lead sound from the MIDI because it's a very recognizable sound from this track. The drums and bass are of 80's style which suits the Duke Nukem b-movie action.
Water World
Played in episode 1 map 4
As the name indicates; the map this track is played on has lots of flowing water and under water game play. Thus having soft drums and Chinese gong seemed appropriate.
Sneaky Snake
Played in episode 1 map 5
A remake I made in 2002 which is sort of slow and repetitive, but I like these slow drone tracks. Never the less; I made a version of it and here it is.
Space Storm
Played in episode 2 map 2
The annoying alarm sounds is toned down and the lead sounds are changed a little, but basically it's the same track.
Gut Wrencher
Played in episode 2 map 3
I did quite a bit of work with the drums on this track; making them more dynamic. Also added some more strings here and there - strings are cool!
Unreal
Spire Village
Original composer: Michiel van den Bos, 1997
Year I made this: 2009
Length: 3:51, size: 3.53 MB
This epic movie style track is suitably played on a map with wide open spaces.
The wonderful Unreal engine could render huge outdoor spaces without the need of a high-end computer and I was really amazed on how big this particular map was.
This track is dominated by the JD-990, doing harp, guitar and the bass pad.
I found the JD-990 preset "Massive Pad" to be completely identical to the bass used in the original, although the filename for this sound inside the MOD is KORG01WS.764.wav which suggests otherwise.
I had lots of trouble recording the soundfont strings, as my SBlive have never been the same since I had to stop using the old AudioHQ control panel - the only useable software Creative ever made.
Soundfont playback on an X-fi is also utter crap.
To bad Creative don’t care about soundfonts anymore...
Luckily I found this excellent free soundfont player and I was able to properly record the strings.
The rest of this track is D-50 bells and the Synthex doing various effects and pads.
The Virus KB has a very minor role as the bass sound that comes in at 1:06.
Here is the original track as it is played in the game.