DOOM Shareware Casio CTK-2080 Soundtrack Recording
5DOOM, first released in December 1993 for IBM PC compatibles, had music composed for the General MIDI standard. Any device complying with that standard should be able to play back its music with a reasonable degree of fidelity to the original intent of the composer and the devices he may have used. DOOM's music was composed with the Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 in mind. While there are many, many recordings of the soundtrack with a Roland SC-55 and other modules, I wanted to do something a little different.
I own a Casio CTK-2080 Keyboard. This keyboard is General MIDI compatible and supports a USB MIDI Interface. It was released around July of 2011, approximately 20 years after the General MIDI standard was established. Because DOOM outputs General MIDI data and the keyboard can process that data correctly, the game can play its music on the Keyboard. This can be done via a USB to MIDI adapter, or in my case plugging in the keyboard into my modern PC, where it appears as a MIDI device. I have used MIDI files extracted from the game and slightly tweaked. Windows Media Player is still a very reliable MIDI file playing application, even in Windows 11. I have used a program which changes the default MIDI output device from Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth so Windows Media Player will be able to output to any MIDI device connected to a computer. I also tested this setup with DOSBox and it worked fine with DOOM there.
I have limited the recordings to the music which can be heard from the shareware versions of the original game:
00:00 - Intro
00:08 - E1M1 Hangar
01:47 - E1M2 Nuclear Plant
04:24 - E1M3 Toxin Refinery
08:58 - E1M4 Command Control
11:50 - E1M5 Phobos Lab
14:29 - E1M6 Central Processing
15:54 - E1M7 Computer Station
18:24 - E1M8 Phobos Anomaly
20:58 - E1M9 Military base
23:17 - Victory