Well if Joel is to be believed, then the devs might just fix it when they update.
Would just love to gush my praises for the soundtrack too. It was literally perfect to me. In fact my only gripe would be that I’d love the final game to have more of the music dynamically paced like “Surface Tension 3” is in-game. I beat the Questionable Ethics shootout before the music finished for example, so it was hard to hear the scientists over it.
What I love most about the soundtrack is how melancholy some of the tracks are. The entire soundtrack for Blast Pit (including the criminally unused “Blast Pit 2”) was just… beautiful. They really captured that sense of what was once a place of magnificance and wonder being turned into a place of fear and death on an emotional level mere “scary” music cannot do.
The main theme as well is amazing. The moment I heard Black Mesa had launched and I went onto the site and that beautiful piano piece played, I just KNEW I was in for a treat with the soundtrack. When it was then reprised in remix form on the title screen and after the resonance cascade I was in love.
End Credits 2 was also wonderful. I love how the “backing” to the track at 0:49 sounds so eiree and intimidating, yet the violin main melody keeps that sense of hope/sadness at the exact same time.
(Although as perfect as the end credits music was I hope you can somehow surprise us musically during the ending in the final release because I know I’ll have listened to these tracks a million times by then and it won’t be as fresh anymore).
Now I’m done gushing, just an aside, an open question to anyone being as nerdily obsessive about the soundtrack as me. I blasted through the game with cheats to put all the tracks in chronological order but I think I noclipped past the point that “Office Complex (Mesa Remix)” plays, can anyone confirm for me that it DOES play in Office Complex and not elsewhere (because on my quick, partially noclipping runthrough, no music played in Office Complex to my noticing).
Also were all the Ambience tracks not included in the OST used? I was considering adding them into my playlist for completionists sake but they’re even harder to pin down!
BMS - Mscl_Ambience2 - plays after “We’ve Got Hostiles”
BMS - Mscl_Ambience7 - plays after “Blast Pit 1”
BMS - Mscl_Ambience8 - plays after “Residue Processing”
BMS - Mscl_Ambience3 - plays after “Lambda Core”
BMS - Mscl_Ambience3 - plays again after BMS - Mscl_Ambience3
Didn’t notice 1, 4, 5 or 6 when speeding through.
Figured you guys would enjoy these. Not sure if this is the proper place to put this, or if I am uploading this quite right. Just took the advice of two of the comments here and posted.
Great work Joel! I’d like to provide some small feedback, my favourite tracks in order:
Questionable Ethics 1 - Best Rock Song, stuck with me the most, the second being Blast Pit 3
On A Rail 1 - epic, would like it more without the lead piano in the chorus
Office Complex (Mesa Remix) - Love the deep electric sound
Blast Pit 1 - Great introduction song
Blast Pit 2 (Mesa Remix) Best emotional song
Black Mesa Theme (Mesa Remix) - The first song I heard when I booted up the game for the first time, awesome
Apprehension (Mesa Remix) - love it and hate it, makes me sad, but I know it’s good, also why does the giant crusher part need to be so emotional? I interpreted it as either emphasising the fact that Gordon’s alone in this giant factory, or that there’s a very good chance he’s about to die in this next obstacle
I cant wait for the xen songs, i know the will blow our minds 
The look on Joel’s face when he realizes he forgot about composing for Xen:
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They all should be playing in game. Off the top of my head, I think this is where they were placed:
ambience 1 - plays in UC during the crate jump area.
ambience 4 - this is either in the second part of QE or in LC
ambience 5 - plays on your way down into the depths of blast pit
ambience 6 - plays in blast pit before starting up the big fan
Ah, thanks a bunch! As said when I played through to make my playlist I did a bit of noclipping to skip moments so I might have missed a music trigger or two.
I absolutely love most of the songs in BM, but I definitely think that Blast Pit 3 song should have been more fitting.
The thing is, the tentacle encounter was meant to be played in a stealthy way to begin with. People can run straight through and dodge them if they want, but that’s usually riskier. Usually the music in the game is there to fit with what you’re doing, or with what is going on. At the end of Blast Pit, it felt like the music was just telling me how to play the area, rather than fit with whatever I was doing. It felt kind of cheesy and overly dramatic, too. I think something more subtle and tense would have fit the situation better (as well as suit multiple play styles), but that’s just my opinion.
There were also some other songs that I thought were great, but not very well time. On the Surface Tension dam, I already killed the soldiers attacking my by the time the music got really exciting, so I was very dramatically recharging my suit and getting more health. Same with the end of Forget About Freeman. Though again, I loved both of those tracks.
And then there’s stuff like Questionable Ethics 1, which was incredibly awesome and perfectly timed. It pumped me up so much that I actually had to take a break when I won the fight in order to cool off. That bit was my favorite part of the whole game, and the music is what really made it.
I can understand the controversy with Blast Pit 3. Personally it worked great for me. It took me ages to work out how to get past the tentacles on the way down, but on the way back up I knew exactly what I was doing so the whole thing felt very dramatic and triumphant since I got back up there first time, no problems. However if you mess up or just need to take it slower I can understand the music coming off as awkward.
As said though I have a total musical fetish for using melancholy melodies to give a sense of epicness when there’s nothing really that “sad” happening, so all of Blast Pit’s music was incredibly atmospheric and gorgeous to me.
Oh, if I can ask Joel, what scenes were the unused tracks originally intended for? Or were they for the same scenes as the Mesa Remixes are used for and you just decided you wanted something more ambient than the very clear melodies and instrumentation of the original versions?
Uh-huh.
Personally i love the guitar tacks, they just make some scenes so much more badass.
I remember the part with the tentacle, i messed up and fell to the bottom, which sucked because the track continued playing and i messed up the timing. I promptly killed myself in order to get it right.
As a suggestion for that part, have Blast Pit 2 playing up until you reach the final ladder, at which point BP3 starts, so you can time the guitar part with the launching of the rocket.
They forgot to ask the more important question: How did you get SO fabulous, and where can we buy a can of Joel Fabulous for ourselves!?
too expensive :fffuuu:
no surprize there!
Great interview tho. He brought some great things to this game.
So did you! 
You gave us the tram ride voice and the VOX.
And overhead announcements and don’t forget the assassins pain sounds!
Which oddly enough sound like sex sounds.
Bit I am not really sure I am cool with that. 
Let’s hope those Source Filmmaker people don’t get any ideas.
Exactly right. They were meant to go where the mesa remixes are set, and just didn’t quite have the right feel. (Which is sort of unfortunate, as a keen listener would pick up that all 3 blast pit songs use the same chord progression. Having to replace it with the blast pit 2 mesa remix wrecked that. Ah well.)
When was Blast Pit 3 track suppose to kick in? It started as soon as I set the Tentacles on fire.