Long before players wore headsets for voice chat, and streaming services were blasting while you’re playing EQ.

People played with the sound ON in EQ

I only say that half jokingly because I do play with the sound and the music on in EverQuest, even to this day

But in EQ’s early days, the sound and music of the game completed the immersion of this 3d world.

And we owe most of that original sound and music to the maestro of EverQuest Jay Barbeau.

An Introduction to Jay Barbeau

“I’m Jay Barbeau. I was the composer of all of the original music, focused on EverQuest audio, 3D audio and MIDI.

I chose a way to make the music using the best sound card at the time and focusing sample set that could give me fairly realistic instruments.

I wrote my music to be memorable and evoke an emotion. I wanted it to be epic, orchestral, like a movie score.”

And what movie score would be complete without a main theme. So I asked Jay, how he came about to write the theme to EverQuest?

“It wasn’t the first thing I wrote for EverQuest. I remember one of the directors kinda humming. And I’m thinking what do I with this?

For that one I was just trying to think of grand epic themes. I don’t just play in one key using normal chords. I look for unique chords and try to emphasize the melody in those unique chords.”

Jay Barbeau plays the original theme of EverQuest.

Something to keep in mind. Jay wrote these songs two and a half decades ago. And he plays all of these songs from memory.

“That’s part of it. I’m not remembering it at all right now. But I play it often enough. It’s my muse.”

The Original Music of EverQuest

And it’s a lot of music. Every song that’s in the game before Planes of Power was composed by Jay Barbeau.

“It ended up being about 150 different pieces. Total time about a year and a half just composing for the game.

All of these I knew had to be played constantly in the zone, and I wanted them not to get sick of the music.

I wrote the themes to be cyclical, so they always come back to some other place and they’ll keep going.

It brings you home. So I’ve already been on an adventure. That’s my whole goal in music and writing. Take the listener on an adventure.”

So I asked Jay if he ever adventured in any of the zones.

“At the point I was doing it I could pretty much explore them. I remember toward the end of the game, I was given a special character that couldn’t die and I was impervious to everything.

So I’d go around and place musical objects wherever I wanted. And then I’d meet people along the way and they’d say ‘Wow how’d you get to be that level?’ And I didn’t know about the hierarchy of how the game worked.”

Memorable Themes

So here’s the point where I throw some zones at Jay and see what he had to say about the music for each:

Qeynos Theme:

You know what inspired me here? It was the football theme (NFL on Fox)

Jay also plays the Sea Theme.

Bard’s Guild Theme

It was inspired by Bach, because I played a lot of Two Part Inventions. That kind of thing. Those are the inspirations so I came up with this theme for the bard.

It’s all melody, but it’s outlining the harmony. Then fill it in with the left hand.”

Rivervale Theme

Rivervale! My inspiration on that was like the 12 dwarves. Because they were kinda like dwarves. But I didn’t want to write something exactly like that. But something whimsical and fanciful.

Now this kinda shows how I was able to produce this music. I’m making mistakes now because I’m trying to remember it. And usually if I sit down and play it, I can make an arrangement of it on the fly.

But one of the nice things about using MIDI sequencers is that you can take little pieces of it and play that and then perfect those pieces.”

Kelethin Theme

And of course, I couldn’t leave without asking about the fan favorite, the Kelethin theme,

“I had a piece that I’d learned when I was working on my classical repertoire in piano that was written by Chopin.

It’s all sixths.”

The Evolution of EverQuest’s Music

By the time Planes of Power launched, the MIDI engine that EverQuest started with had become dated, and MP3s were now the way to go.

So EverQuest employed Paul Romero who I interviewed in a previous episode.

And where Paul Romero is a thoroughbred concert pianist, Jay Barbeau is a practical musical workhorse, using his musical theory to create memorable pieces of music for EverQuest.

“As a body of work, I’m pretty proud of it.

I’m hoping that the effort that I put into it to make memorable themes had something to do with that too.”