I love producing music in my free time as a hobby. There’s something incredibly satisfying about turning a mix of audio clips and synthesized sounds into a coherent and enjoyable piece of music. I’ve been passionate about this since 2016, using it as a creative outlet alongside my visual art endeavors.
However like many music producers, I occasionally run into extremely frustrating issues, such as running out of fresh audio samples for my next track. It’s a common problem that can oftentimes halt progress on a project.
To overcome this, I often search the internet and sift through my physical collection for interesting sounds to sample. This might include a drum loop from a 70s jazz record or breakbeats from 80s and 90s hip-hop songs. While I might enjoy this process, it can be incredibly time-consuming and sometimes leads to abandoning a track altogether. Fortunately, many others have felt the same frustration, leading some good Samaritans to compile lists of samples and organize them into convenient folders for producers. These collections, known as Sample CDs, became popular. They included drum loops, synth sounds, and much more.
Sample CDs were ubiquitous in the 90s and played a significant role in the production of video game soundtracks, electronic music, and even some hip-hop records.
In this post, we’ll explore how video game soundtracks utilized Sample CDs to create memorable music. Specifically, we’ll look at one of my favorite games, Project I.G.I., a tactical stealth-oriented FPS released in 2000.
A lot of video game soundtracks in the 90s relied on specific sample CD libraries from Spectrasonics, notably Distorted Reality (1995) and Distorted Reality 2 (1998). These libraries were known for their experimental sounds, heavily processed loops, and ambient-focused textures.
Info
Spectrasonics also developed the popular virtual instrument plugin Omnisphere, which includes many of the samples from their older CDs. It’s widely used in modern electronic music and trap records.
Several iconic games from the 90s extensively used these sample CDs, including, but not limited to:
- The Legend of Zelda series, particularly Majora’s Mask and Ocarina of Time
- The Silent Hill series
- The Rayman series (Rayman 1, 2, and 3)
Project I.G.I.’s soundtrack, composed by Kim M. Jensen, also incorporates these sample libraries, resulting in a sound that, in my opinion, rivals the work of great composers like Hans Zimmer.
While exploring the game’s soundtrack, I identified a specific sample from these CDs, which stood out and confirmed my suspicions about their use in the OST. This discovery not only deepened my appreciation for the music but also highlighted the significant impact of Sample CDs on 90s video game soundtracks.
Opening up the CD and going through its contents, we come across different partitions for audio samples, all neatly arranged for the producer’s convenience. In our case, we’re going to explore Partition B. Inside, we find another folder named 02 - 120-129, indicating drum loops ranging from 120 BPM to 129 BPM. Here, we see a list of samples ready for use.
The main sample we’re looking for is TENSION 2.wav, which sounds like this: his sound was instantly familiar to me, thanks to countless hours spent playing Project I.G.I. To better match my memory, I pitched it down a bit and ended up with this:
If you’ve played the game, you might recognize it immediately. For those who haven’t, this drum loop is featured in the game’s main menu soundtrack.
Project IGI - Main Menu - Soundtrack
The rush of joy I had when I figured this out was pretty fun :) - I’ll be keeping this updated, I’m pretty sure there’s more sample library CDs used and more samples used from these specific CDs. Stay tuned :)