Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Hi! Here's a long and ominous orchestral piece I wrote for the Doom level 'Maskim Xul,' a huge Lovecraftian-themed nightmare that was named as a winner of the 2018 Cacowards and also as the 61st most memorable user map of all time in the 25 Years of Doom feature on Doomworld.
Obsidian had worked on Maskim Xul for several years, and in August 2017, with the finish line in sight, he reached out to me to write a music track for the main map, which bears the name of the set. Obsidian's request was a MIDI, but preferably also an OGG track if possible, and the pairing of the map's atmosphere with the temp track that was included showed me that this was a great opportunity to try writing something especially for the instruments I'd only been doing remakes with up until that point.
After writing Shadows, I had restored my confidence that I could still write music, and turned my attention to Maskim Xul. My first playthrough of it took me over three hours, even after resorting to using infinite ammo because the balance of the pre-release version was way off, and after seeing the full map I knew I wanted to go for a crushingly dark atmosphere and have a really long track.
It was quite an easy piece to write. I kept the instrument choice small because I wanted to keep the scale of the piece restrained, so there's a string ensemble, accompanied by a distant-sounding choir, a solo viola for melodies, percussive elements from timpani, bells and the occasional cymbal crash, a celesta for that classic horror vibe, and from the woodwinds there's just a clarinet and bass clarinet, to mix up the timbres a bit.
The different sections aren't numerous, a lot of the length comes from repeating established sections and melodies with variations, but the introductions of new sections are spread out across the piece so it keeps changing between unfamiliar and familiar ground.
The only problem was that there needed to be a MIDI version of it. I exported the data from this version into a MIDI file and did my best to clean it up. The MIDI version has grown on me whilst I've been preparing it for uploading here, but you can tell that the piece wasn't written with MIDI sounds in mind.
Also just wanna say that apart from some very small mix adjustments, I've left this unchanged from when I first wrote it. Unlike my previous adventures in writing non-MIDI music, I've still got the original project files so rebuilding from scratch wasn't necessary.
Thanks everyone for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this piece! See you next time!
--
The Library of Nightmares, originally written by Tristan Clark on 17-25 October 2017 for Maskim Xul by Obsidian.
MIDI version: youtu.be/b8uRx35QpJM
--
Twitter: twitter.com/TristanClark97
Bandcamp: tristanclark.bandcamp.com/releases
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/1Xgjt8c9Myki3Nstvn1gCN
--
Download links:
MP3 (256kbps): drive.google.com/file/d/1zsL0tNkLgINoIdjJynfTHhHB046tuEuw/view?usp=sharing
MIDI: drive.google.com/file/d/0B80fpMvOvDFNRVJRVkllWjE5NDg/view?usp=sharing
Maskim Xul: doomworld.com/idgames/?id=19061
Hi! Here's a long and ominous orchestral piece I wrote for the Doom level 'Maskim Xul,' a huge Lovecraftian-themed nightmare that was named as a winner of the 2018 Cacowards and also as the 61st most memorable user map of all time in the 25 Years of Doom feature on Doomworld.
Obsidian had worked on Maskim Xul for several years, and in August 2017, with the finish line in sight, he reached out to me to write a music track for the main map, which bears the name of the set. Obsidian's request was a MIDI, but preferably also an OGG track if possible, and the pairing of the map's atmosphere with the temp track that was included showed me that this was a great opportunity to try writing something especially for the instruments I'd only been doing remakes with up until that point.
After writing Shadows, I had restored my confidence that I could still write music, and turned my attention to Maskim Xul. My first playthrough of it took me over three hours, even after resorting to using infinite ammo because the balance of the pre-release version was way off, and after seeing the full map I knew I wanted to go for a crushingly dark atmosphere and have a really long track.
It was quite an easy piece to write. I kept the instrument choice small because I wanted to keep the scale of the piece restrained, so there's a string ensemble, accompanied by a distant-sounding choir, a solo viola for melodies, percussive elements from timpani, bells and the occasional cymbal crash, a celesta for that classic horror vibe, and from the woodwinds there's just a clarinet and bass clarinet, to mix up the timbres a bit.
The different sections aren't numerous, a lot of the length comes from repeating established sections and melodies with variations, but the introductions of new sections are spread out across the piece so it keeps changing between unfamiliar and familiar ground.
The only problem was that there needed to be a MIDI version of it. I exported the data from this version into a MIDI file and did my best to clean it up. The MIDI version has grown on me whilst I've been preparing it for uploading here, but you can tell that the piece wasn't written with MIDI sounds in mind.
Also just wanna say that apart from some very small mix adjustments, I've left this unchanged from when I first wrote it. Unlike my previous adventures in writing non-MIDI music, I've still got the original project files so rebuilding from scratch wasn't necessary.
Thanks everyone for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this piece! See you next time!
--
The Library of Nightmares, originally written by Tristan Clark on 17-25 October 2017 for Maskim Xul by Obsidian.
MIDI version: youtu.be/b8uRx35QpJM
--
Twitter: twitter.com/TristanClark97
Bandcamp: tristanclark.bandcamp.com/releases
Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/1Xgjt8c9Myki3Nstvn1gCN
--
Download links:
MP3 (256kbps): drive.google.com/file/d/1zsL0tNkLgINoIdjJynfTHhHB046tuEuw/view?usp=sharing
MIDI: drive.google.com/file/d/0B80fpMvOvDFNRVJRVkllWjE5NDg/view?usp=sharing
Maskim Xul: doomworld.com/idgames/?id=19061
