===========================================================================
Title                   : Duke It Out In D.C. MIDI Pack
Filename                : dcmidi.zip
Release date            : April 30, 2017
Author                  : James "Jimmy" Paddock / Robin "NightFright" Reisinger
Email Address           : jamespaddock@hotmail.com / nightfright2k7@gmail.com
Other Files By Author   : Jenesis, Jenocide DM, Jiffy Bag, Jimmy's Jukebox,
                          Jungle Spirits, The Joy of Mapping, realms of Zo0n,
                          Harmony/Plutonia/Revolution MIDI Packs.
 
Description             : This is a music pack that provides the Duke Nukem 3D
                          total conversion "Duke It Out In D.C." with original
                          music when run with EDuke32.
 
                          A series of .def files is included to play the new
                          music in-game. A track listing text file is also
                          included, disclosing the tracks' full names and order.
 
                          For installation instructions, see dukedc_music.txt.
                         
Additional Credits to   : - NightFright for his gracious patronage.
                          - Maxime Abbey for his work on the Arachno soundfont.
                          - Patch93 for their work on the SC-55 soundfont.
                          - WizardWorks/Sunstorm Interactive for the original
                            levels which are still iconic today.
===========================================================================
* What is included *
 
New levels              : No
Sounds                  : No
Music                   : Yes
Graphics                : No
Other                   : DEF file
                         
Other files required    : dukedc.grp
 
* Play Information *
 
Game                    : Duke Nukem 3D - Duke It Out In DC
Single Player           : Yes
Cooperative 2-4 Player  : Yes
Deathmatch 2-4 Player   : Yes
Other game styles       : No
 
* Construction *
 
Base                    : All music new from scratch
Build Time              : ~3 years of highly on-off development
Editor(s) used          : Cakewalk Express 3.02, Audacity, MIDI Converter Studio
May Not Run With...     : A sourceport for Duke not derived from EDuke32.
                          Any *.grp file loaded that is not dukedc.grp.
 
 = TBSS uses "The Star-Spangled Banner" as a base for musical material.
    Additionally some tracks were based off already-existing material of mine -
    I outline these below.
 
* Copyright / Permissions *
 
Authors MAY use the contents of this file as a base for modification or
reuse.  Permissions have been obtained from original authors for any of
their resources modified or included in this file.
 
You MAY distribute this file, provided you include this text file, with no
modifications.  You may distribute this file in any electronic format (BBS,
Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact.  I have
received permission from the original authors of any modified or included
content in this file to allow further distribution.
 
* Where to get the file that this text file describes *
 
Web sites: http://www.jamespaddockmusic.com/
           http://jimmy.the-powerhouse.net/WAD/
 
===========================================================================
 
COMPOSER'S NOTES:
 
 
The Project:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
I am a sucker for the things I play possessing a musical identity.
Therefore I make it my mission to write original music where there is a
dearth or outright lack of it. "Duke It Out In D.C." is the latest set of
levels to receive such creative treatment from me, and while it is the
first set of Duke Nukem 3D levels I have specifically written music for, it
is preceded by other "MIDI Pack" projects of mine, namely the "Harmony MIDI
Pack" in 2011, featuring 13 tracks written for the independently-developed
Doom clone "Harmony" by Thomas van der Velden, released in 2009; the
"Plutonia MIDI Pack", a project I brought to the Doomworld.com forums with
intent to involve fellow composers with the creative task of adding brand
new musical content to the Doom 2 mapset "The Plutonia Experiment", released
alongside "TNT: Evilution" in 1995 as part of the "Final Doom" add-on (the
latter mapset had new music of its own, which separated it from the former);
and the "Revolution! MIDI Pack", which neatly tied Thomas van der Velden's
involvement back into this pursuit - directly, as it turned out - by again
calling upon the Doomworld community's musicians to create new works for
his 2001 mapset "Revolution!" - this project piqued his interest enough for
him to, 15 years after completing the original 32 levels, create a 33rd map
specifically for the MIDI Pack add-on, and he also assisted the project
with custom title art.
 
The "DCmidi" (for short) project was posited to me in 2013 by NightFright,
whose name I recognised from work on the HRP (High Resolution Pack) for
Duke Nukem 3D. I was certainly keen to write some material for another
iconic set of levels that was lacking in original music of its own - my
"Plutonia MIDI Pack" and "Revolution! MIDI Pack" community projects I had
previously headed on Doomworld sought to achieve the same thing - fill the
musical void in a famous levelset with creative input from composers who
had played the levels, and furthermore to establish a resource of musical
material for future modders to work with. It was not discussed whether
this MIDI Pack for "Duke It Out In D.C." should be brought to the Doom or
Duke communities, as only a handful of tracks were needed, and NightFright
cited the Harmony MIDI Pack - a project involving just my own musical work -
to be what I should strive for regarding the project's structure and quality.
 
Some time elapsed, during which I began a Bachelor's Degree of Composition
and Music Technology at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts,
which would be a four-year commitment that as at the time of this writing,
I am still moving towards completing. The project remained on my "to-do"
list, but of course projects I got involved with at university stalled it
and quite a few of my other personal projects, particularly where working
with the Doom community, and of course the stringently limiting General
MIDI format of composition was concerned.
 
In 2016 I set up commissions for my MIDI files. When NightFright approached
me again to ask about the status of the DCmidi project and whether I would
be on board with the idea of getting it out before the year's end, I agreed
to giving it my best shot, given that a few years had passed since the
original project's proposition, and I had only a handful of tracks to show
for it. I introduced the concept of my commissions, telling him that due to
university commitments, I could not really afford to be spending a huge
amount of time on MIDI-related projects unless I was getting paid for them,
although I was willing to make an exception for this project given that he'd
proposed it no fewer than 3 years prior to the arrangement of my commissions.
Nonetheless, NightFright very selflessly provided me with his patronage, so
he has my eternal thanks for his graciousness. :) Not what I was expecting!
 
The final month of the year, in which I pushed to get this project out the
door, was however fraught with some creative difficulty. Not all the tracks
were "resonating" with me in the way that they might usually do. The trial-
and-error nature of setting the MIDI loop points was tough to endure. It
didn't help that a creative dry spell was besetting me around this time, and
I'd just come from a particularly demanding year at university. Despite this,
I powered through, working on the project almost every day and completing as
much as I could manage using what creativity I could muster. Perhaps
dialling back my inclination to fill the songs with complex melodies and
solos, as many may attest is my traditional compositional approach, was a
bit of a shock to the system. Not that I don't enjoy composing largely
ambient or subdued tunes, but all the same something was different, more
demanding about this project, than many of the others I've been a part of.
 
The Process:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Each track in this set was born from my close listening to and memorisation
of the musical stylings of Lee Jackson, that is, his work from the
beginning in Duke Nukem 3D's original 4 episodes, plus the recent (and
awesome) Alien World Order episode for which he also composed. Some
inspiration was also taken from the works of J. M. Ramsey, composer for
Duke: Caribbean, and whose darkly orchestral style seen in The Gate's
soundtrack also shows up in a few select spots here. The result is my
approach to the music of Jackson and Ramsey almost in equal measure
(Jackson took precedence, I would definitely say), capturing as much of the
"feel" from those composers' works as was possible. A lot of the tracks are
gloomy and understated, many having a menacing, military feel to them, and
gone are the complex melodies and noodly synth and guitar solos that make
up a good portion of my earlier work, like in the Back to Saturn X trilogy.
There's even a couple of "ambient" tracks in here - no hard-hitting rock or
metal as such, but all the same I hope there is an adequate amount of
catchiness and moodiness to be heard in the tunes, and that they don't
grate on the eardrums given the repetition that will occur through casually
playing through Duke It Out In DC's arguably lengthy levels.
 
I tested all the MIDIs extensively in-game to get a feel for them and to
establish what needed changing, whether it was instrument volume/panning,
the point of looping being too abrupt, or whether the music itself was
simply too overstated for a DN3D level. Generally I found I had to greatly
dial back the number of complex melodies and rhythms I used in order to
convey the mood of the levels efficiently - with music composition for Doom
I generally have much freer rein to do what I want creatively. Perhaps the
monsters being slightly tougher and the levels being somewhat larger and
more exploration-focused that means the conveyance of the proper atmosphere
is absolutely paramount in Duke Nukem 3D, whereas in Doom, a game which
featured a diverse set of musical genres, from heavy metal to spooky
ambience to even salsa, the levels are more about blasting through a more
abstract landscape and enjoying the mindless slaughter along the way.
Composing for DN3D, therefore, requires more thought to be put into the
tracks, such that they can provoke deeper thought and focus in the player
while they explore more believably real locales infested with a sinister
alien presence.
 
I implemented loop point events for each track (every one contains an
"initbar" of 1 beat, as per Lee Jackson's "extended MIDI" specification) -
which was a pretty painstaking process. Looping MIDIs can be extremely
fickle in their behavior where the smoothness of the loop point is
concerned - notes will hang even if they terminate quite a few ticks before
the loop point, and of course patch changes had to be instated for
tracks that looped repeatedly past a patch change event. And of course
there is no real way to "test" the looping point of a MIDI (that I know of)
without literally just listening to the whole track in-game. Hours were
spent just listening to my work, which I tend not to do for fear of getting
sick of it, especially before the end product is done.
 
The OGG versions of the tracks were rendered using the Arachno soundfont
and the registered version of MIDI Converter Studio by ManiacTools. Markers
were then added to the OGG renders using Audacity's metadata editor, in
order to establish the loop points in these renders of the song. This
process was arduous and my method to it could easily have been much more
refined if I had opted to look up the software and precision measurements
needed to establish effective loop points, rather than relying on crude
guesswork and rudimentary calculations to convert timestamps to samples.
 
The Tracks:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1  - TBSS   - The Bar-Strangled Spanner (Title) - 4:16
This track was in fact the final one that I wrote for the project. It very
much had to be, due to its nature - it is not just a 5/8, "heavy metal"
interpretation of 'The Star Spangled Banner' (which pulls a few cues from
Jackson's 'Grabbag'), but is a full-on pastiche of every track contained
within this pack, an overture of sorts. After the anthemic opening, the
track progresses into the string section from 'One Bad Dude', followed by
the keyboard segments of 'Sneak Peek', then an ominous section from 'Night
Watch', followed by the bassline from the latter portion of 'Sluice Gate',
which leads into the main rhythmic part of 'Burning Flag', then into the
chords from 'A Secret Place', which modulate down to the ones from 'Samurai
Pizzicato', and finally to 'Liberty or Duke''s intense percussive rhythms.
The atmospheric closer quotes from both 'Unknown Data' and 'Wrecked 'Em'.
The tracks' order of appearance here is dictated largely by the key
signature of each individual piece, the music progressing *mostly* in
descending fourths. We start in C major with the intro, from which point
it's easy to go to F minor, then C minor, then G minor, then D minor, then
a bit of a cheeky drop to B minor and then more logically to A minor, and
E minor for the outro. With the exception of the D->B minor drop, this is
an entirely logical harmonic progression, which is the backbone of almost
all music you hear. Honestly there isn't a huge deal else for me to talk
about this track on a non-technical level, because it's based off the
tracks I'm about to talk about below. As for the name? I don't know. I
imagine that "bar-strangled" would mean either literally strangled with an
iron bar, or, alternatively: drunk. The word "spanner", either way, is a UK
slang word for "idiot", which is how I imagine it to be used in the context
of this track's title - the adjective, however, is up to you. :)
 
2  - LIBERTY    - Liberty or Duke (E3L1)        - 1:51
The first level is always the hardest to write for - it has to capture the
tone of the entire mapset right off the bat. With the first level of DukeDC,
it drops you right into the thick of the action, especially on 'Come Get
Some', with multiple troopers and pigs bearing down on your starting
position. I decided something strong and military would befit this opening,
and NightFright furnished me with an anthem-like track to work on as
inspiration. My track didn't turn out quite like his one, as I went with a
disjointed, orchestral march-like tune in 7/8. The piano and strings
working in conjunction was a cue I took from Jenna Ramsey, and the voice
lead serving a strong harmonic purpose was one borrowed from Lee Jackson in
tracks like 'Gloomy'. Actually deciding on the melodic material proved a
little bit difficult for some reason, but overall I'm glad that I didn't
inject too many different ideas into this piece - it needed to be a concise,
straightforward track that sets up the pace for the whole game. Its sense
of urgency in its driving rhythms and general unease in the variable time
signature definitely help to communicate the chaotic and often difficult
nature of DukeDC's levels, and while this opening level is not necessarily
all non-stop action, I think the rising and falling intensity of the piece
carries the explorative factor through quite effectively, too.
 
3  - SAMURAI    - Samurai Pizzicato (E3L2)      - 2:42
While this piece materialised fairly quickly (it was just under half a
day's worth of work to put it together), I did struggle finding a general
mood that would work for this level. I worked on a now scrapped track for
this level for a good while before hitting a massive roadblock with it and
deciding that it was (a) too derivative, and (b) too heavy for the
exploration-centric nature of this level. It was with this track that I
discovered how well the sitar and koto instruments both blend together, so
I couldn't refrain from using this combination in some loose way in the
track. I didn't especially want a theme that would sound particular ethnic,
indeed, the melodies and chord progressions probably couldn't be described
as anything but Western, but all the same those instruments served as a
fine bedrock for this track's mood - it's not too forefront, not too
subdued.
 
4  - DATA   - Unknown Data (E3L3)           - 3:20
The 'X-Files' theme, was, perhaps obviously, the material I was offered as
inspiration for this piece. An alien shootout in the FBI building would be
incomplete without at least some subtle quotation from that iconic theme.
In the end I went with something that was very much my own spin on the
original theme - the material is only tangentially related, having similar
instrumentation and melodic contours but nothing lifted directly. The piece
is in fact in 4/4, but it uses fairly complex rhythms like nested thirds to
make the beginnings and ends of bars slightly ambiguous. Perhaps one of the
most sparsely note-populated tracks I ended up writing for this, only using
as many as I absolutely needed to convey the chordal structure and melodic
phrases. Particularly towards the end, it tapers out greatly in terms of
its instrumentation, perhaps quite dramatically, but the chords that carry
the piece are thick and layered enough to firmly establish an atmosphere.
 
5  - NIGHT  - Night Watch (E3L4)            - 3:50
The track "Roads to Nowhere" (ROADS) was originally slated for this slot,
but NightFright wasn't entirely sold on it. He suggested 'Big Ben Bang',
Jackson's track for the level in Duke Nukem 3D World Tour set in London,
as an alternative point of inspiration, and honestly I was only too happy
to oblige, the track being one of my very favorites from the new episode.
Rhythmically straightforward but quite harmonically complex, with plenty of
chromatic movement leading to chords that are quite unexpected. I ended up
spending a good while on the percussion line for this track, varying up the
snare hits to make them seem like the most dynamic part of the track,
wanting to keep them vaguely realistic-sounding. Ultimately I'm very glad
that NightFright raised his concerns with ROADS and that I ended up making
this track for this slot instead, as ROADS was definitely one of the ones I
was unsure about, although it is still included in this pack as a bonus
track; you can even change the music in-game (with the F5 key) to hear it!
 
6  - BURNING    - Burning Flag (E3L5)           - 2:25
Perhaps obviously inspired by 'Invader', at least to some degree. The
confrontations Duke faces in the Capitol building demanded something
dramatic and heavy, I felt, so I went for a pretty repetitive rhythmic
structure, making the bassline the centerpiece of the track, doubling it up
with the guitar for some extra crunch. The dissonant intro certainly puts
me on edge, perhaps even moreso than the one in NIGHT, and this might be
the most consistently urgent and driving tune in the set. It's straight-up
rock, of which there was no short supply in Jackson and Ramsey's OSTs. This
track simply serves as an adrenaline pumper of sorts, rather than being
anything particularly inspiring or innovative on my part.
 
7  - SNEAK  - Sneak Peek (E3L6)         - 2:41
5/8 is a time signature I will never get tired of, and unusual meters have
certainly been employed by Jackson and Ramsey before in their soundtracks.
This track was in fact originally slated for E3L3, but this was before I
settled on incorporating the 'X-Files' theme into that track. The piece
remained fairly short and incomplete for a long while - since about 2014
when I sent the initial batch of WIPs to NightFright, and it wasn't until
more or less the final month of this project's development that I patched
it up and made it a well-rounded product. The 16 bars towards the end of
the song, that could probably be argued as being the 'B' section are hence
perhaps three years younger than the main body of the track, as is the
short intro which establishes the 5/8 meter with some simple timpani.
Unusual melodic contours also make an appearance here, perhaps more
distinctly than in any other track in this pack. The "refrain" that happens
in the middle features probably one of the most esoteric chord structures
I've used in a song in a good while. I'm not even fully sure what I ended
up doing, but I suppose it ended up being one way of modulating from
C minor back to D minor.
 
8  - SLUICE - Sluice Gate (E3L7)            - 4:11
I think this might have been the first track I really fleshed out for the
project, completing the first 2 minutes of it early on and sending the
work-in-progress, along with a few others, to NightFright in 2014. He was
very enthusiastic about this track from the outset, and luckily it was also
clear to him which level I was composing for. He gave me a solid thumbs-up
to go ahead with the completion of this track, and I think the end product
pleases both of us equally. Even though the track is subdued and non-
eventful, I think it still conveys a mood quite efficiently and hearkens
back to the compositions by Jackson that had less going on in them but were
quite strong in tone. That said, I still had a little bit of trouble
addressing the closing half of this track. The 'B' section did not come
quite so naturally to me - I had multiple attempts at the main bassline
before settling on this one.
 
9  - WRECKED    - Wrecked 'Em (E3L8)            - 3:24
The base for this track was an effort from around 2009 - 'Wreck', or as it
was also known for a brief while - 'Harbor'. With some of my earlier
efforts, before I got truly immersed in the Doom community, I was seemingly
equally inspired by Doom and Duke Nukem settings - the track 'Floghorn'
from Episode 4 certainly served as the kind of aesthetic I should aim for.
Deciding that a claustrophobic, labyrinthine submarine level would best be
accompanied by a low, droning ambient track, I took this piece, which
already fit that criteria to some degree, and added to it. The original was
highly repetitive, so I added elements like the harp section and the
droning chordal pads. NightFright also encouraged me to add a "sonar ping"
sound to the track, which was simple enough to do - it's simply a staccato
high note on "FX 5 (brightness)". Also, this really wouldn't be a set of
music for Duke without at least one puerile pun in the track title(s).
 
10 - BADDUDE    - One Bad Dude (E3L9)           - 2:38
This is an odd piece, as while the track certainly climaxes at the Bond-
esque augmented chords, it doesn't do what my tracks usually do in terms of
picking up and rolling with momentum. Perhaps its overall lack of distinct
rising and falling in intensity serves to make it a suitably disjointed
track for the final level, but even after finishing it I am still not 100%
certain. As with LIBERTY, which had a particularly demanding set of
expectations surrounding it, the boss level theme for this pack was a very
troubling affair. I think I pulled it off, though - just about. It swerves
a bit in terms of its melodic and instrumental direction, but I think as a
whole it wraps up the episode nicely. Its length is probably still a weak
point, but I'm happy with the amount of musical content in it nonetheless.
The ominous marching string section in the middle and towards the end was
in fact lifted from a scrap for the Harmony MIDI Pack project, one also
intended for the final level of that set, as I recall. Both were in the
same key, and seemed to be related in terms of content, so drawing them
together seemed logical.
 
11 - ASECRET    - A Secret Place (E3L10)        - 3:34
This piece may have been the most difficult to write. I really wanted to
have a track that conveyed something that would fit both sides to this
level - that is, the top secret military base, and the prehistoric temple
area - in equal measure. In the end I went with something heavily string-
oriented, with 'Mission Impossible'-style conga drumming to provide some
intense rhythmic structures to coincide with the drawn-out string chords.
I believe the end product succeeds to some extent in rolling along with the
time-travel idea and the dramatic mystique that surrounds it. This piece
probably also underwent the most changes after NightFright asked that I cut
out some extraneous notes from the intro. This honestly served to lift the
track up and allow for a much stronger and more gradual build-up, so his
suggestion was certainly warranted.
 
12 - ROADS  - Roads to Nowhere (Bonus)      - 3:10
The track originally intended for E3L4, 'Smithsonian Terror'. Another scrap
originally written around 2013 when the project was first suggested -
perhaps why it didn't pan out quite the way I envisaged. I wager you can
probably tell the moment I deviate from my 2013 compositional approach into
the complex chordal structures of my 2016 approach, which I used to finish
and polish off the track, as well as to add the string-heavy 'B' section.
Either way, I still think it's a solid piece, but perhaps too repetitive
and not subdued enough for the E3L4 slot, as NightFright correctly pointed
out. The melodic material, while staying more or less faithful to the
harmonic progression of the piece, may also be slightly esoteric, and not
the kind one might wish to hear on indefinite repeat while you roam the
serpentine halls of the Smithsonian desperately looking for that yellow
access card which was hidden in a vent all this time.
 
In Conclusion:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
All this said, the project was fun to work on in spite of the creative and
technical difficulties I might have faced, and overall I'm very pleased
with the results, even if they took several years to come to fruition. It
was a great way to challenge and restrain myself, as well as a satisfying
means of contributing to the Duke community which I've long been apart from.
NightFright has my many thanks for enduring the long bouts of radio silence
on the project and for assisting me creatively and technically with it the
whole way through. Thanks, mate! o/
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Tracks composed by James Paddock
jamespaddock@hotmail.com
 
Copyright (c) James Paddock, 2016-17.
All rights reserved.