"Revamped" Duke Nukem 2 soundtrack

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A Kick in the Pants
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"Revamped" Duke Nukem 2 soundtrack

Post by A Kick in the Pants »

2019 edit: The remixes that used to be linked in this thread were woefully lackluster, used poor quality instrument sounds, and were made when I was still very new to mixing. These lo-fi remixes do not reflect my current ability at all. :)

v1.1 RAR link (320 kbps MP3s):
http://www.mediafire.com/?t44qcbjncqc5xj5

Robert Prince's Duke 2 music is one of my favorite game soundtracks, but at the time Ad Lib was popular and so the songs had to be synthy IMFs. I decided to remake all the songs as high-quality with powerful instruments, mainly aggressive metal guitars.

Still, I kind of prefer the IMFs; I like their old retro sound. Also, some of the songs, like Menu Song 2 and Never End, don't seem to sound as good when played on real/realistic instruments...
Last edited by A Kick in the Pants on Mon Apr 15, 2019 11:05, edited 1 time in total.
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VikingBoyBilly
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

This is one of the coolest releases ever :D
I never did get duke's sountrack extracted so all I could listen to was that "He's back" midi that came with Duke 3D.
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Post by _mr_m_ »

It could be my aging ears deceiving me, but a lot of the guitars sound like they were produced with the FL Slayer VST.

The bass parts - when you can hear them - sound pretty good.

Doesn't matter that they are, this soundtrack is still a brilliant effort on your part! I'd really like to get the source .mid file from you, or maybe even collaborate on an even more epic version of this.


EDIT:

Constructive criticism after listening to everything all the way through:

The mixing on all the songs needs work. A lot of parts are getting buried in the mix. Many of the lead parts are getting drowned out by the accompaniment.

Also a bunch of the pitchbends on many song leads are absent
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A Kick in the Pants
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Post by A Kick in the Pants »

_mr_m_ wrote:It could be my aging ears deceiving me, but a lot of the guitars sound like they were produced with the FL Slayer VST.

The bass parts - when you can hear them - sound pretty good.

Doesn't matter that they are, this soundtrack is still a brilliant effort on your part! I'd really like to get the source .mid file from you, or maybe even collaborate on an even more epic version of this.


EDIT:

Constructive criticism after listening to everything all the way through:

The mixing on all the songs needs work. A lot of parts are getting buried in the mix. Many of the lead parts are getting drowned out by the accompaniment.

Also a bunch of the pitchbends on many song leads are absent
Yes, the Slayer VST was the main instrument used (although I do have a real guitar and amp). I'm pretty sure these would sound better live, but I work solo, so I can't play drums, bass, and guitar at the same time.

I agree that the mixing could be much better - that was the "there's a lot that can be improved" part in the text file. ;)

Thanks for the comments, and I hope that there will eventually be much better versions of this. :)

MIDIs link: http://www.mediafire.com/?z8hael3tqrwj96m

Most of the MIDIs were attempts to create MIDIs of the IMFs from the game. The IMFs were extracted and then converted to MID with DRO2MID. The resulting MIDIs were then edited and used as an "arrangement" for the remixes. Keep in mind that the MIDIs lack panning, effects, and correct instruments (as IMF to MID conversion is not very good), so the MIDIs will sound very, very strange when played normally (with the exception of the ones from Robert Prince). Also note that when viewed with a music sequencer, the notes are not properly aligned to the grid, meaning the tempos of the files are not the "real" tempos.
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