In the Beta1 version Uo simply used the same music as Creepy Keep and I immediately complained about it -- such amazing, eerie textures and all they get is a copy of a music already used in a far more "familiar" environment? Then I thought "why complain instead of doing" and decided to try to take the matter into my own hands.
The music you hear in the final game (originally called "randUOm.ogg", and yes, it's a terrible pun) is my third approach to Uo, one that took the most work. Yes, I did sample lots of other Wonderland songs, pitch shifting and slowing them down, but I really did sample piece by piece with lots of finer editing and I added a ton of my own sounds. Even the sounds I sampled, I can no longer tell which exact tracks do they come from. The bass is mine, the choir in the back is mine, the ending "tremolo something" is mine, the creepy space ambience accompanying the melody is mostly mine (with some samples of MOFI's cave ambience on top of it), etc, etc... All in all, I had most of these sounds pre-done, so creating that track was less composing and more audio editing, trying all kinds of things and listening to what works. I still really like the result, though.
But there were two other approaches, both of which were just slight audio edits on pre-existing tracks making them sound different.
The first was this: http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=897439
Your ears are probably not going to understand what the original track is (and that's the point), but it's still the "Creepy Keep" theme, only now it's reversed, pitched down and I heavily reverb'ed it to "wash out" the drums. If you pitch it up by 5 semitones and reverse it again, you can still hear the creepy keep theme, but the drums will be heavily mangled due to reverb.
The second approach was based on the idea of "twisting the familiar": taking a pre-existing track (Star's End theme was suggested) and then making it horrifying. I immediately remembered about a certain voice correction plugin that does weird stuff on anything that isn't a voice. Giggling like an idiot, I proceeded to ruin the Star's End theme, using that plugin in combination with PaulStretch.
The result was this: http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=897450
The first one had drums that were panned hard left/hard right and sounded a bit too harsh, especially in an environment as mystical as UO. The second one makes some sounds scream-like, but it could have become final. I just happened to create "randUOm.ogg" in the meantime and it was selected as the best one.
I also think randUOm.ogg is the best one and the most suitable for UO, but since some of you crafty adventure creators use custom music anyway... here's some "official custom music" for you.
