Who was the person who chose general midi sounds

[whyterabbyt]

I mean who gave the right to Roland to put these sounds in it? Was it the president?

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough. What I would have proposed is okey fine let’s have these kind of dated sounds and then supersaw and wub-wub. And lastly classic analog type sounds like you have in Syntronik or Uvi’s Vintage fault collection. At least 2000 sounds, that would have been great.

(really hoping this is satire)

[Chapelle]

---

[UltimateOutsider]

Thanks for the answers, I’m delighted. But I think gm midi soundset is kind of dated. I mean I now understand that orchestral sounds are kind of timeless so you can have these. And other acoustic instruments thats fine. But why then include new age synth like sounds which is very specific style and it dates it clearly. I mean who gave the right to Roland to put these sounds in it? Was it the president?

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough. What I would have proposed is okey fine let’s have these kind of dated sounds and then supersaw and wub-wub. And lastly classic analog type sounds like you have in Syntronik or Uvi’s Vintage fault collection. At least 2000 sounds, that would have been great.

Like whyterabbyt I'm not convinced you're being serious.

It wasn't one person who chose the GM soundsets, but multi-national, multi-company industry organizations. The original sound set was indeed inspired/influenced by the MT-32 and D-110, but those instruments were already designed with the same goal: A usable set of bread-and-butter sounds.

Wub-wubs weren't a thing when either GM1 or GM2 were formed, and the supersaw was still kind of unique in the GM2 timeframe I think? The hardware these standards were imagined for was insanely limited compared to the stuff that's possible today (to say nothing of software synths, which, while they did exist by the time GM2 was formed, both softsynths and PCs were nowhere near as powerful as they are now), in terms of storage, DSP/computational power.

GM is exactly what it set out to be: General-purpose MIDI. It was much more about ease of use and compatibility than it was about quantity or quality.

GM3 though...

[Hink]

It wasn't one person who chose the GM soundsets,

here here, thank you

it was me ...
i don't like to talk about it ...

i needed the money ...

I'm tellin yah, this has me so miffed ...partially true...yeah, I was there that day too. Do you good folk want to know why mr crow doesn't like talking about it? Well because then he might have to eat some crow. The final day we were charged with picking out a name for the whole bundle, the entire week none of Mr.C's ideas were used (but he deserves a little credit, he did suggest superwave with similar displays as described). So we are all sitting around spitballing and Mr crow finds a sailor cap and puts it on, then he starts prancing around like Mick Jagger singing, "I'm captain midi" to which we all just So then he starts on a different tack, he says "cant carry around all these instruments?" [rips open his shirt] "call captain midi, he can carry all the instruments you'll ever need".

We all groaned. (you would too if you saw what we saw, 7 nipples, each with 7 hairs growing out of it* )

Then he tries to go with "major midi" which of course was met with the same enthusiasm and someone just muttered "why not general midi" ( ) and the whole room went silent. I wouldn't talk about it either, I mean he did the worst Jagger ever

Just curious, how many signs did we pin on your back,how long before you found them and which was your fav

*he was right about needing the money, after seeing that we understood and gave him our shares...I hope the plastic surgery went well...oh and it wasn't me that wrote DD on the surgery order ok maybe it was

[vurt]

where would "----'s" tracks be without them?

[mcbpete]

The clue is in the name, it was General Albert Midi:

[dark_virus]

The clue is in the name, it was General Albert Midi:

Besides all the irony in this thread, some interesting info here too.

[chroma]

and since no one explicitly mentioned it: it's 128 sounds because midi's program change message is 7 bits = 128 programs available (later on they added banks etc. but at a base, it's only 128 programs), and besides the sound rom required to store 2000 sounds would have been huge by 1991 standards.

[do_androids_dream]

I mean who gave the right to Roland to put these sounds in it? Was it the president?

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough. What I would have proposed is okey fine let’s have these kind of dated sounds and then supersaw and wub-wub. And lastly classic analog type sounds like you have in Syntronik or Uvi’s Vintage fault collection. At least 2000 sounds, that would have been great.

(really hoping this is satire)

Indeed

[vurt]

I mean who gave the right to Roland to put these sounds in it? Was it the president?

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough. What I would have proposed is okey fine let’s have these kind of dated sounds and then supersaw and wub-wub. And lastly classic analog type sounds like you have in Syntronik or Uvi’s Vintage fault collection. At least 2000 sounds, that would have been great.

(really hoping this is satire)

indeed, obviously he doesn't want general midi, he needs the specific midi patches for the genres hes interested in.
general midi = general use.
specific midi = specific uses.

[vurt]

and since no one explicitly mentioned it: it's 128 sounds because midi's program change message is 7 bits = 128 programs available (later on they added banks etc. but at a base, it's only 128 programs), and besides the sound rom required to store 2000 sounds would have been huge by 1991 standards.

no, its because anyone who uses more than 128 different sounds ever, is an amateur.

[Watchful]

Just to expand a little bit on my first post...

Roland used their MT-32 sound module because it was pretty much 99% ready to go as a GM source. The eventual GM sound list and the MT-32's patches aren't a perfect match, but they're very close.

When PC manufacturers got on board with the GM spec, they found Roland very willing to license the MT-32's sounds as part of the installed set. That's why so many of the GM boards, chips, etc., all sound alike. A Windows computer's GM sounds? Roland's. A Mac's? Roland's.

The reality was meant to be (and really is) quite different: if you listen to a Korg Kronos', a Yamaha Montage's, or even a Roland's current GM sounds, they're often breathtakingly good. The whole idea was that different manufacturers could improve upon the original sounds and make some excellent alternatives. The problem was, as it often is, that it was easy to just purchase 1991-era sounds from Roland and keep reusing the same sounds, over and over and over. As a result, about 99% of today's GM sounds STILL mimic the MT-32 module.

And a lot of people HATE the GM sounds accordingly. Which is too bad, because it was a really good idea that didn't quite get implemented to its full potential and now, almost thirty years later, we're stuck with it.

[Tj Shredder]

But who is using midi files nowadays, to play back a piece of music, hoping it gets close to the original piece? We distribute mp3 instead, it sounds like the original. Especially the styles you mention, the sound quality and production standards are way too high that a composer even wants to have his composition played back with different (bad) sounds aimed at simplicity...
On the other hand, if you get a midi file or Ableton session of a modern piece and you want to remix it, you wouldn’t even think of GM, instead you’d recreate sounds with the best synth you have...
Back in the days Roland enhanced GM already, but nobody cared, me neither...

[ghettosynth]

It wasn't one person who chose the GM soundsets,

here here, thank you

it was me ...
i don't like to talk about it ...

i needed the money ...

I'm tellin yah, this has me so miffed ...partially true...yeah, I was there that day too. Do you good folk want to know why mr crow doesn't like talking about it? Well because then he might have to eat some crow. The final day we were charged with picking out a name for the whole bundle, the entire week none of Mr.C's ideas were used (but he deserves a little credit, he did suggest superwave with similar displays as described). So we are all sitting around spitballing and Mr crow finds a sailor cap and puts it on, then he starts prancing around like Mick Jagger singing, "I'm captain midi" to which we all just So then he starts on a different tack, he says "cant carry around all these instruments?" [rips open his shirt] "call captain midi, he can carry all the instruments you'll ever need".

We all groaned. (you would too if you saw what we saw, 7 nipples, each with 7 hairs growing out of it* )

Then he tries to go with "major midi" which of course was met with the same enthusiasm and someone just muttered "why not general midi" ( ) and the whole room went silent. I wouldn't talk about it either, I mean he did the worst Jagger ever

Just curious, how many signs did we pin on your back,how long before you found them and which was your fav

*he was right about needing the money, after seeing that we understood and gave him our shares...I hope the plastic surgery went well...oh and it wasn't me that wrote DD on the surgery order ok maybe it was

Worthy of a second showing.

[Topcheese]

no, its because anyone who uses more than 128 different sounds ever, is an amateur.

They even got midi-thru so they could loop.