Project Button Masher: UNATCO Office Party

By Shamus Posted Thursday Feb 12, 2015

Filed under: Music 26 comments

And so we come to the end of the project. This was an interesting exercise, and it pushed me into doing a lot of new things. So regardless of how good the music is (or isn’t) it was still a success for my purposes.

This week I’m going to attempt to make something that would feel like it belongs in the Deus Ex soundtrack:


Link (YouTube)

Notable characteristics:

  1. The particular sound of the late-90’s UMX music. This technology was used in Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Deus Ex, and has a pretty distinctive sound. If I had to describe it, I’d say it sounded like the mid 90’s synth MIDI music, but with lots of chorus effects. (More on that below.)
  2. Lots of climbing and descending sequences of notes.
  3. There is some really mild gliding and pitch-bending going on in a lot of tracks. That’s when a long note goes slightly out of tune – or glides to a different note – during its duration. I’ve fiddled with this, but I don’t think I really nailed it. Sounds interesting when it works, though.
  4. Echo effects. Nothing says “moody cyberpunk” like echoing synths.

For the purposes of making something Deus Ex-ish, I made a track that has both a slow ambient part and a faster section with drums. In the game it would often shift between the two styles when you entered or ended combat, but here I’ve just worked both into the same song.

The result:

This track kind of freaks me out. I mapped out the section that begins at 19 seconds and when I was done it sounded so familiar I was scared it came from my memory and not my creativity. I ended up listening to the Deus Ex soundtrack looking for that part, worried I’d accidentally ripped it off. So I either nailed the sound of Deus Ex, or I plagiarized it. If I did, it was unintentional.

So this is either my best success so far, or my greatest failure.

Track map:

track_map_unatco.jpg

What I learned:

The Deus Ex and Unreal soundtracks have a particular sound that I’ve always thought of as “synth strings”. They don’t really sound like strings. I mean, they’re just synthesizer noises. But there was always something about them that made me think of orchestral strings. In my fumbling around, I finally figured out that sound is just the “chorus” effect. It’s actually pretty simple: Take the sound of one note being played and make copies of it. Now, if you stacked them perfectly on top of each other it would just make the note louder. But if you time-shift them ever so slightly, then it sounds like many instruments are all playing the same note. (It might also do teeny tiny pitch-shift, I don’t know.)

You can add this effect to any instrument you like, although it’s really most effective on very “pure” sounds. If you use chorus on something with a lot of different frequencies (say, a distortion guitar) it doesn’t work very well. The layers of distortion end up getting mushed together and turn into white noise.

That’s it for my attempts to immitate game soundtracks. I have one last novelty track left for next week, where I’ll wrap this series up.

 


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26 thoughts on “Project Button Masher: UNATCO Office Party

  1. Zeta Kai says:

    For the record, I’ve really enjoyed this series, more so than I thought I would. Music isn’t really my thing, but in-depth analysis & X-for-Dummies explanations are, so that’s cool. I hope that you continue this sort of thing with your future projects, as well.

    1. KingJosh says:

      Ditto. Shamus, you have a way of taking things I’m not really interested in, and making very interesting posts out of them.

      Though if you start with something I’m already very interested in? You have your programming posts.

  2. Da Mage says:

    Sounds good. You’ve definitely improved since the start of this series.

  3. Garci says:

    Hey Shamus, this sounded brilliant! As a musician I can honestly say the work you’re outputting is tremendous, and a testament that being willing to learn and apply knowledge can take you a long way. Props to that.

    As a snarky aside, chorus and distortion guitar make for a very sweet combination, see for example “You Don’t Have to be Old to be Wise” by Judas Priest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RZQCWLEn04). It’s all about the amount of chorus and distortion, as with any effect you’ll ruin the tone if you use too much. You may also be interested in phasers (that slow, wooshing sound that is usually used on synths and slow guitar parts) or flangers (which is a mixture of both, roughly speaking).

    Cheers and hopefully we’ll get more music from you!

    1. Tizzy says:

      I would be at a loss to explain the difference in sound between chorus and phaser, but somehow, I like phaser much much more.

      That being said, thanks for defending the honor of distortion+chorus on the guitar. This is the first thing I looked for in the comments.

      1. Joe Informatico says:

        Chorus is a fuller sound, while a phaser adds an oscillation effect–almost like you were using a wah-pedal at a steady, consistent rate.

        Roland’s YouTube channel has a handy playlist so you can hear how different effects pedals sound.

        1. Tizzy says:

          That’s what I mean: you’re technically correct, but I’m not convinced that anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to switch one effect and then the other would be enlightened by this particular explanation.

          (I can’t even understand why I feel a strong preference for one over the other.)

  4. CJ Kerr says:

    *Insert predictable request for the track map here*

    I really like this one, but I’m going to be picky anyway:

    – I’m not sure you’ve quite nailed the synth sound – the lead part that comes in at 0:19 is a lot brighter (contains more high-frequency harmonics) than anything I remember in the Deus Ex soundtrack.

    – Now that you’ve really got tracking nailed down, you could stand to spend more time on mixing. The percussion that comes in at 1:34 stands out as a particular example – it’s really rather loud. Similarly, your tracks generally have very little dynamic range – it doesn’t sound like you’re using a compressor, so I suspect you’re just leaving most samples at around the same volume for most of the song. The loud bits would have more impact if the soft bits were softer.

  5. WILL says:

    Oh what the heck, I’ll just repeat myself – learn about using more bass. Even Pokemon songs on the GBC had deeper tones. I’m no music professional but it’s at least one important aspect of music you’re missing out on.

    1. Groboclown says:

      This tune has more bass than most of the other ones, with that bass line, unless you’re referring to a kick drum with some reverb.

    2. WILL says:

      Ok so I’ve gone through it again.

      I can tell where the main theme is but it feels like notes going up and down and nothing else. I know you’re not writing pop here, but this has to be the least catchy song I’ve heard in a while.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        Politeness may be at least one important aspect of constructive feedback that you are missing out on! :P

    3. krellen says:

      Not everyone is all about the bass.

  6. Tsi says:

    Nice ! I like it overall but there are still a few things that feel weird to my ears.

    The notes at 00:45 and 00:55 sound out of place.
    The part from 00:18 to 00:59 is too long. It might be interesting to speed it up a bit but then the pause at 00:59 to 00:14 would have to be removed as you already have a breather at 1:55. I’m not sure how this would sound like though.
    Otherwise, it’s quite interesting (just don’t like the very oldish/basic tempo introduction at 1:33 that has nothing to do at this point, it’s the kind of thing that could be counted out loud by a member of a band before starting to play, you know, that cliché “one, two, and one two three four”. Maybe something like offbeats could sound better).

    You’re improving quite fast !

    1. Tsi says:

      Oh, I think there is a bug with the edit function. After posting, I thought I’d add a bit more to my comment and fix some sentences but the site said I didn’t have the right to edit when I clicked to save my changes.
      After refreshing, the counter simply disappeared and all I can do is reply…

      Here is the updated post :

      Nice ! I like it overall but there are still a few things that feel weird to my ears.

      The notes at 00:45 and 00:55 sound out of place. I Think it would have sounded okay if they were offbeat and reused again later as well.
      The part from 00:18 to 00:59 is too long. It might be interesting to speed it up a bit but then the pause at 00:59 to 00:14 would have to be removed as you already have a breather at 1:55. I’m not sure how this would sound like though.
      Otherwise, it’s quite interesting. I just don’t like the very oldish/basic tempo introduction at 1:33 that has nothing to do at this point, it’s the kind of thing that could be counted out loud by a member of a band before starting to play, you know, that cliché “one, two, and one two three four” (which is an important tool btw, i’m not mocking it). Maybe something like offbeats could sound better here.

      You’re improving quite fast !

  7. Joseph P. Tallylicker says:

    I can’t tell you why, but it reminds me of the credits for Hostile Waters – Antaeus Rising.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ2pZZs52no&t=3m44s

  8. swenson says:

    I went back and listened to that “first” track–the one from last August, “Burning”–and… Shamus, man! You’ve come a long way! The early stuff was nice enough to listen to, but there’s a whole lot more complexity in this track. In particular, there’s an identifiable melody in the newer stuff, whereas the older stuff, it’s more blurry.

    Also, the first time I listened to this one, I got distracted in the middle and forgot I wasn’t actually listening to a real Deus Ex track. The ending in particular sounds very Deus Ex-y.

    As a sidebar, while listening to Shamus’ stuff is cool, these posts have also gotten me into listening to more videogame soundtracks again! Something I realized while listening to the Deus Ex soundtrack… Hong Kong Helipad could almost be a Half-Life 2 song. Portions of it are definitely not, but there’s bits that could come straight out of HL2. (or maybe there’s bits of HL2 soundtrack that could come straight out of Deus Ex!)

  9. Rick says:

    I really admire your ability to reverse engineer things :)

  10. Brian says:

    For something completely different and game soundtracky, what about exploring the quest for glory (whichever one of the five you like the best) game music. Chance Thomas has a very distinctive sound, and explores motif and theme in an interesting way.

  11. Decius says:

    I wouldn’t be disappointed to have this as a BGM in a Shadowrun module with a full Steam price of $20 or so.

  12. “I either nailed the sound of Deus Ex, or I plagiarized it”
    Actually to me it sounds like you made a Tron / Deus Ex hybrid of sorts (with some undertones of Vangelis and Tangerine Dreams).

  13. Nataline says:

    “The particular sound of the late-90's UMX music. This technology was used in Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Deus Ex, and has a pretty distinctive sound.”

    So.. would a non-compressed pkzip archive of audio files have the distinctive sound of “ZIP music”? UMX is just a package file (or a file header, really) for use with Unreal Engine. The treats inside are actually tracker modules, such as .S3M (Scream Tracker), .XM (Fasttracker II) and .IT (Impulse Tracker). I’d wager the distinctiveness has more to do with the composing styles and sample libraries of Siren, M.C.A. and Basehead, who all worked on every title mentioned above. Necros also composed for Unreal and Unreal Tournament (one track for each) but not Deus Ex.

    For anyone interested, Schism Tracker is a nice multiplatform stick for poking the innards of Deus Ex title music or Chizra, Isotoxin or Bluff Eversmoking from Unreal. I recommend Schism over, say, OpenMPT for this curious sniffing of ancient history because it more closely resembles the original trackers these mods were composed with. Schism Tracker has a keyboard-driven interface: F9 to load, arrows and Enter to navigate filesystem (and requesters with Continue/Cancel/Done etc), F5 to play, F8 to stop, Ctrl+Q to exit, F1 for help.

    For cracking open those UMX/UAX nuts, there are a couple of simple hammers available.

    1. lethal_guitar says:

      I was just about to say this. Unlike video game music in MIDI format, which (most of the time) has a very distinctive sound due to the way it’s played back by soundcards, UMX is entirely sample-based, so it will always sound the same, and the sound of the instruments is completely determined by the composer’s sample library.

      Consequently, the strings in these soundtracks are not necessarily “synths” – they could very well be samples from real instruments (and I bet they were at some point). All the electric guitar samples from the Unreal and UT soundtrack definitely are. They just sound more artificial due to the way the sample playback works, and the effects that are applied to them etc.

  14. SyrusRayne says:

    I’d buy an album of synthsy stuff somewhere between this, Triop Employee Of The Month, and Reroute Kanal. Just saying.

  15. Cuthalion says:

    This project was fun to listen to. Looking forward to the final entry, but I hope you keep making music after that! :)

  16. Chris Mowerk says:

    I'm really looking forward to reading/hering about this! This sound was what got me started reading your blog. See you

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