MIDI (was Re: They're Making A New Doom)

Rin Stowleigh <rstowleigh@x-nospam-x.com> wrote:
...

I played Dune 2, but honestly do not remember much about the music,
it's been a long time... the others I never played.

Dune 1 (adventure) had memorable MIDI music to me from my original SB
ISA card even though I didn't like adventure games.

But if they had great music, its possible that it was written and
mixed directly on the OPL card, as opposed to composing on different
gear and then tweaking the sounds on the OPL based card to work with
the MIDI data.

At least, I find it to be a much faster workflow to decide on the
specific sounds I'm going to use up front, rather than to write chords
and melody against generic sounds and then work different sounds in
later.

Not saying the latter approach can't work too.  I just find that how
sounds that might sound great by themselves play with each other is
something that's more than the sum of all parts, and it's just easier
to find the magic as early in the process as possible.

So the whole idea of "general MIDI" is to be able to just take some
MIDI data, throw it into a sound generation device and any bass line
should sound like a good bass line, same with piano/drums/brass etc.
But good sounding music isn't quite that simple, each of those sounds
has slightly different envelopes and harmonic characteristics that
don't guarantee they necessarily sound good together.  And then there
can be bugs in the MIDI implementation itself that really comes out
sounding weird.  Sometimes what comes out the other end sounds good,
sometimes not so much.

But given some combination of talent and patience, good sounding music
can be coerced out of even the worst sounding synths.

One of my favorite FM synths from back in the day was a TX81Z.  Used
and in mint condition they still go for about what I paid for mine
back in 1989.

Does anyone remember iMuse in LucasGames like in Star Wars games?
That one was amazing even with FM MIDI!
--
"In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus." --Romans 6:11. Slammy alt. BD Tues. after a catch up quiet Mon.
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