I’ve been wanting to find a way to nicely share videos (whether a music video, documentary, live presentation etc) and of course my blog here is the perfect way to do that. Starting with this post I’ll be posting a series of things I consider “essential viewing”. As that grows this link – https://bit.ly/divkidessentialviewing – will contain all of those posts.
Here’s a talk from GDC (Game Developers Conference) from 2017 with the composer Mick Gordon who “provides a detailed look into the compositional process, production techniques and creative philosophies behind the hell raising soundtrack to the 4th instalment of the seminal first person shooter franchise, Doom.”
Doom is a game I know from playing the original 1993 release, but I don’t know the other titles other than this 2016 4th instalment of the series. It’s rare I get to play games, so a simple way to blast some demons on mars set to some intense music played in short periods worked well for me at the time. This video is a great look at the process of finding the sound and the right tone to fit the game. It also mentions other audio designers involved, “weird Wednesdays” that the team would engage with and plenty more.
For those interested in the technicalities I’d simply say – watch the video – but interestingly the tones generated for the music production come from a case of destructive distortion all based on core sine waves and noise tones ring modulated at the frequencies of the sub notes processed heavily through chains of pedals and hardware. There’s also demonstrations of adding high frequency parts to subs so that they’re audible across the spectrum, talks of rejection and dealing with failure, talk of gated reverb techniques with multiple mics for dynamic reverb with David Bowie … a massively interesting video, just watch and listen!
Added for those really wanting more of Mick Gordon talking Doom. Here just one of the videos from his own YouTube channel.
And also looking at the newest instalment of the Doom game series DOOM Eternal and putting together a heavy metal choir for the new soundtrack. Bit of a promo video but nice to see some familiar faces.
Finally … here’s an extended interview with Mick Gordon that starts by answering the question “how do you get into audio and music for games?”
