DOOM: Behind the Music

GDC Festival of Gaming
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2017–2026
YouTube
1.8M views · 9 years ago · talk · intermediate · evergreen

Mick Gordon's GDC 2017 talk on composing and sound-designing the music for DOOM (2016). He shows the experiments, synthesizers, effects chains and instrument design behind the soundtrack, and tells stories about the process.

HN people call it one of the best conference talks, a master of his craft letting loose and explaining how he built the sounds, a lesson in process and change.

“One of my favorite conference talks ever”
Game design
#mickgordon#doom#gameaudio#sounddesign#gdc#synthesis

12 comments from Hacker News

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@epiccoleman2023 · in “Show HN: I've built a spectrogram analyzer web app”
Mick Gordon did some fun hidden spectrogram imagery in the Doom 2016 soundtrack. He talks about that and plenty of other cool stuff in his talk at the 2017 GDC conference. One of my favorite conference talks ever, he did so much cool experimentation to get the sounds he used on the soundtrack, and watching his talk is one of those moments where you really get to see a master of his craft let loose and explain his process. ▶ this video
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@taspeotis2026 · in “The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video]”
I quite like this one ▶ this video
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@agentwiggles2022 · in “My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal”
This is really disappointing to read. Mick's soundtrack was a huge part of making DOOM 2016 and Eternal such great experiences. His talk at GDC where he goes into some of the process of creating the soundtrack is fantastic, so much fun to see the creativity he brought to the game's music. ▶ this video The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him.
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@remarkEon2022 · in “DOOM: Behind the Music [2017]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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@reimertz2022 · in “Doom: Behind the Music [video]”
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@acomjean2020 · in “Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)”
Doom came out right when I left univeristy. Loved that game. I like the new Dooms too. I think they're fun. Way more "doom like" than anything else I've played since. The "New Doom" music/sound producer gave a pretty good GDC one hour talk about the music came about. Some fun stories there ( the sound easter egg story was fun). Its more than about just the sound, its about process and change. ▶ this video
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@acomjean2020 · in “Learn sound theory with an acclaimed synth company”
I had a dx7 in college. Its an FM synth, an from the little diagrams on the top, it was fascinating. I could make my own sounds, but I never could get the time to get programming (beyond detuning the sound and doubling it to make a "fatter" sound, the dx7 had a gray matter mod chip). Lamentably in the 90s information about this stuff was harder to come by, plus the 2 line led screen to input things wasn't ideal. You can see the top of the keyboard images here: link But the internet abounds with sound making tools! ableton has a synth basics online class/demo kind of thing: link visual programing sound machines in pd link Also the GDC talk by the sound designer of doom (the new one). He's using sine wave, and a bunch of effects boxes (some in parallel) to generate all those sounds. There is also a sound morph tool they used to combine sounds with a chainsaw sound... The talk starts a couple minutes in after a doom sound trailer thing: ▶ this video
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@fpgaminer2019 · in “Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track”
The DOOM: Behind the Music (▶ this video) talk is amazing if you like DOOM 2016's music.
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@pault2017 · in “Audio Design Deep Dive: Scoring Wolfenstein II with the Baschet sonic sculptures”
Here's one of the instruments from the Baschet workshop: link Mick Gordon–who scored the previous Wolfenstein game–did a great presentation on the instrument design for the Doom 2016 soundtrack, which is in my opinion one of the best (the best?) game soundtracks of all time: ▶ this video
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@taspeotis2017 · in “DOOM: Behind the Music”
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@yupyup2017 · in “DOOM: Behind the Music”
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@pmoriarty2017 · in “DOOM – Behind the Music [video]”
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