The DOOM franchise is no stranger to musical cryptography, the music of this popular video game series has hidden images and messages in almost all of their video games. At the end of Hell On Earth you fight the Icon Of Sin who makes some disturbing demonic sounds, but if you reverse the audio of this music what the creature says is for more comical. The creature’s sound reverse makes the sentence “To win the game you mist defeat me John Romero”. Romero is one of the developers of the original DOOM. this is a funny cryptic audio method that was used in DOOM’s history. The most recent DOOM games have also been hiding images such as pentagrams and other symbols in the music’s visualizer, this adds to the games demonic theme. However musical cryptography takes many forms and has been seen in many other artists throughout the history of music, so lets explore the hidden side of music many of us glance over.
DOOM Eternal’s Hidden Language
Eternal uses a lot of heavy metal screamers and throat singers in the games soundtrack, these voices are used to create aggression and ambiance in different tracks. This language was broke down and explained thanks to an interview with the games musical composer Mick Gordon. The ancient sounding language is simply made up of different syllables of the names of Demons within the game. They broke down the syllables and combined them with other syllables of demonic names. This turned out to be simple but effective way to create a new language for DOOM’s video game music.
Types of Musical Cryptography
Back masking
Back masking is when music or audio has a hidden message that can be uncovered when it is played backwards. Some 1980’s rock bands can be found using back masking in their songs, this was and still is today looked down upon. This is because most of the time back masking had satanic or explicit and dark hidden messages. In the song hotel California by the Eagles there is a message that is hidden by back masking. The song its self is about a dark side to the American dream. When the song is reversed the vocals can be heard saying ‘yes, satan organises his own religion’. These types of messages can be heard in numerous songs within the music industry. One of the cooler examples of back masking is found in the song ‘Fire on high’ by the electric light orchestra. When this song is played normally it sounds creepy and disturbing with groans and cut audio. But this music uses back masking in a very cool way with a hidden message. The message says ‘Music is reversible but time isn’t, turn back, turn back, turn back’. I love this because it acknowledges that the listener is listening to the song in reverse. This creates an amazing feeling of interactivity in their music.
Back masking was uncovered by Thomas Edison after the invention of the phonograph which allowed music to be reversed. When he reversed the audio he noticed that it sounded sweet yet unique. It was this moment that back masking was discovered, and it was always being used in music. Listening to music in reverse can be difficult to do, and you may not hear the back masking in songs where it is present sometimes. But your brain will try and search for recognisable sounds such as vowels and words. Back masking was at it’s peak of recognition when a civil action law suit was filed against the band ‘Judas Priest’, this was because they were allegedly responsible for the suicide of a teenage fan This is because in the song ‘Better By You, Better Than Me’ there is evidence of back masking in this song. The lyrics back masked say ‘Do it’ people saw this back masking encouraging the teens suicide. This law suit was dropped as there they could not be charged for back masking as it showed no proof that they were at all responsible for the teens death.
credit of info on back masking: Demain, B., 2011. The Devil Wears Headphones: A Brief History of Backmasking. [online] Mentalfloss.com. Available at: <https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28548/devil-wears-headphones-brief-history-backmasking> [Accessed 28 April 2021].
Audio Stenography and cryptograms
Audio Steganography is a musical cryptography technique where the composer hides images or messages in the musics MIDI files or audio visualisers. Mick Gordon used steganography in DOOM 2016’s musics, he hid pentagram and other images in his music. Especially in the track cyber demon which is ridden with pentagram. Audio steganography is easier to place inside your music than back masking, especially if you have MIDI. With MIDI you can just form a word or image using the piano roll and that classes as steganography. A musical cryptogram is a little bit more complicated, this acts a decoder. There are many different techniques and codes used for cryptogams but the most simple is probably the French method. This method was popular with French composers in the 19th century. The code worked by re-arranging the letters in the alphabet into a table, all the notes where represented by the letter at the top of their column. Here is a grid for an example.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
| H | I | J | K | L | M | N |
| O | P | Q | R | S | T | U |
| V | W | X | Y | Z |
The first 7 notes which are A to G represent the notes within an octave, the notes below that are never present in musical notation. The letters H, O and V are all represented by the letter A because they are in the same column as it. The octaves play apart in this cryptogram, which makes it a little more complicated. If the note play was A4, the note it would be representing is V. This because V is the fourth grid in the A column of the cryptogram and represents the 4th octave. The Letters N and U represent the note G. The French cryptogram is just one of many others, in some others frequency and note lenghts play apart in the cryptography. For an example of how this works if the notes: F2, G3, E3, B2 and C1 where played that would translate to the word music.
Reading List
Åhlén, J., n.d. Music Steganography and Musical Cryptograms | Boxentriq. [online] Boxentriq.com. Available at: <https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking/music-steganography> [Accessed 28 April 2021].
Shado_temple, 2009. ELO’s Fire On High… The Backwards lyrics, turned around. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmeKHv5k3o> [Accessed 28 April 2021].